The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Suprim X is a truly massive card. If you look at the photos you could just assume that it's big but normal-sized—nope, it is 34 cm long and 14 cm tall, bigger than any card I've ever tested. MSI went all out in terms of product design to create this new series, which sits a notch above even the Gaming X. The rated boost has been bumped to 1905 MHz—the highest of all RTX 3080 cards, only the ASUS STRIX and Gigabyte Extreme can match that.

Averaged over our performance tests at 4K resolution, we see the Suprim X 2% ahead of the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, 3% when you use the Gaming BIOS. With the Suprim, MSI is offering a dual-BIOS feature, too, which lets you toggle between the "Silent" and "Gaming" BIOS. Both BIOSes run the same rated boost, but the Gaming BIOS is slightly faster in the end, look at the charts on page 30. Overall, performance gains from the factory OC are limited, but other RTX 3080s aren't doing any better here either, so this isn't unexpected. Compared to the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, the MSI Suprim is 8% faster, and compared to the RX 6800, the performance uplift is 19%. NVIDIA's mighty RTX 3090 is another 7% faster than the Suprim X, not a huge gap for almost twice the price.

If you are looking for fluid 4K gaming, the RTX 3080 is the card you want. At lower resolutions, many games are CPU bottlenecked, though, so the card won't be able to play out its full potential. The RTX 3080 is also a good option for 1440p high refresh-rate gaming, but I definitely wouldn't spend that much money just for Full HD 1080p gaming.

MSI has engineered a new cooler for the Suprim lineup, and it looks great. The design is blocky, industrial, and feels the way high quality is supposed to, yet keeps the "MSI" DNA in terms of looks, so nice work. Under the hood, impressive mechanics are at work. You get seven heatpipes and a huge heatsink that fills most of the space available. This makes the cooler one of the best we've ever seen, beating everything except for the RTX 3090 FE cooler, which it matches in our new apples-to-apples cooler comparison test. Temperatures are good of course, only 67°C with the Gaming BIOS, which is lower than most RTX 3080s we've tested. At 34 dBA, noise levels are quite decent in that mode, too, 2 dBA quieter than the FE and comparable to your typical RTX 3080 custom design. Things change dramatically with the "Silent" BIOS, which is the default. Now, the card is unbelievably quiet, only 29 dBA under full load, while giving you 4K 60 FPS—incredible. If you want low noise, this is the card you must buy. MSI did a great job with their BIOS profiles; they are sufficiently distinct, so you actually have a choice. Personally, I would just use the low-noise BIOS all day as the lower temperatures and 1% performance increase really aren't worth it.

The RTX 3080 Suprim X is a huge card—make sure it will fit your case. At over 33 cm long, it is the longest graphics card I've ever reviewed. Given the positioning, I don't think this is a big deal as there's plenty of space in cases nowadays, and triple-slot isn't a problem either because SLI is dead anyway. MSI includes an anti-sag brace should you want support for your card to stabilize it. Just like other GeForce 30 cards, idle fan stop is included on the Suprim X, on both BIOSes, for the perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, media playback, and light gaming. The large heatsink will give you more "thermal capacity," so the fans will stay off for longer as the heatsink can easily soak up short spikes of increased heat output.

Gaming power consumption of RTX 3080 is high in absolute terms, and the Suprim X adds consumes even more. We measured around 390 W in typical gaming, which is slightly higher than even the RTX 3090. Please note that I switched to Metro at 1440p for the power consumption of high-end cards, so older reviews don't have comparable data. The increased power consumption is the price you pay for the factory overclock. NVIDIA designed their Founders Edition cards to run at the efficiency sweet spot. To achieve higher clocks, higher voltage and power limit are needed, which affects energy efficiency. Should you worry about this? I don't think so. Remember we're talking about a top-end flagship RTX 3080 for $800 here. Still, AMD's Radeon RX 6800 Series was released earlier this week, with very competitive performance at lower power consumption, 100 W lower for 8% lower performance.

MSI is using triple 8-pin power inputs on their card, so handling all the juice won't be a problem at all. They also built an impressive 16+4 VRM for voltage regulation. The manual power limit defaults to 370 W, which is 50 W higher than the Founders Edition. The manual adjustment range goes all the way up to 430 W, wow! Only the EVGA FTW3 Ultra with the optional XOC BIOS goes higher, to 450 W; their default BIOS tops out at 400 W.

On recent NVIDIA generations, overclocking is highly dependent on the power limit. The cards will always run into their power limit, so maximum boost frequencies are capped. The problem is that while you can set a frequency offset, this offset is also applied to the boost frequencies during light loads, which will run the card above its maximum stable frequency, causing it to crash. This effect gets smaller the higher your power limit. That's why power limit increases are so effective at getting higher clocks out of Ampere. While the average GPU OC frequency on the Suprim X was 2033 MHz with the default power limit, it jumped to 2117 MHz at 430 W—I didn't touch the clocks at all, Boost will simply boost higher due to more power headroom. With this manual OC, the RTX 3080 Suprim X was the fastest RTX 3080 we've tested so far, but differences are small, one or two percent.

MSI wants $900 for the RTX 3080 Suprim X, which is too much money. The Founders Edition retails for $700. The factory overclock of 3% alone doesn't justify the 28% price increase. The cooler is awesome, of course, but doesn't add $200. Still, I personally value low noise a lot and could as such see myself spending another $220 for this incredible low-noise experience if looking for a 4K-capable card. Just this week, AMD released their impressive Radeon RX 6800 XT, which can take the RTX 3080 head on. It offers comparable rasterization performance and similar power efficiency. AMD is only weaker in raytracing, which may or may not be relevant to you. AMD's reference design is a great, quiet card that retails at $650, quite a big gap to $900, and the upcoming RX 6900 XT will be $999. All these price considerations don't matter, though, because everything is sold out everywhere, and scalpers are asking crazy prices people are apparently willing to pay—don't do that. I guess as supply balances out in the coming weeks and months, we'll see prices in this segment adjust to market situations, and a price war will benefit us, the customers.