Right in time for Computex, NVIDIA had great news to share: the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is launching—reviews today, in stores tomorrow. We have a total of six GeForce RTX 3080 Ti reviews today: ASUS RTX 3080 Ti STRIX LC, EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra, MSI RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X, Palit RTX 3080 Ti Gaming Pro, NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, and Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack.

The GeForce RTX 3080 has been a huge success NVIDIA sought to +1—partly because AMD has launched extremely competitive cards in the meantime, partly to introduce their hash-rate limiter designed to make new GeForce cards unattractive to miners. The Radeon RX 6800 XT matched the 3080, and he RX 6900 XT beat it. That's why NVIDIA has increased the number of cores by 17%, from 8,704 to 10,240. At the same time, the memory bus width got bumped to 384-bit, matching the RTX 3090. VRAM has also been increased from 10 GB to 12 GB, a good PR move, though of little effect in real-life gaming.

Averaged over our 22-game-strong test suite at 4K resolution, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition achieves very impressive numbers. It has a 10% lead over the RTX 3080, which means it beats both the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT, by 11% and 5%, respectively. Another highlight is that NVIDIA's new card is really close to the RTX 3090; the difference is just 1%, impossible to notice subjectively. This also confirms once again that there is no significant difference between 24 GB and 12 GB VRAM, or the gap would be bigger. Against last generation's RTX 2080 Ti, the performance uplift is 47%.

With those performance numbers, RTX 3080 Ti is the perfect choice for 4K gaming at 60 FPS and above. It's probably the only resolution you should consider for this beast because we've seen some CPU-limited titles even at 1440p—for 1080p, it's definitely overkill. On the other hand, if you have a strong CPU and a 1440p high-refresh-rate monitor, 3080 Ti could be an option. The added performance of the RTX 3080 Ti will also give you more headroom in case future game titles significantly increase their hardware requirements, which seems unlikely considering the new consoles are out and their hardware specifications will define what's possible for the next few years.

There's no big surprises with raytracing performance; the RTX 3080 Ti is basically 10% faster than RTX 3080 and nearly as fast as RTX 3090. The underlying reason is that there has been no change in the GPU chip or GPU architecture. Still, compared to AMD Radeon RDNA 2, NVIDIA's raytracing performance is better. The new game consoles use AMD graphics tech, though, so we'll see how much of that can be helped through optimization, or whether simply less demanding RT implementations are chosen. For example, Resident Evil Village has support for raytracing, but only uses very limited RT effects, which cushions the performance penalty incurred by Radeon cards. I'm sure we'll learn more about it in the coming months if this trend can persist, or whether the only option for serious raytracing will continue to be NVIDIA GeForce.

NVIDIA's RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition design is identical to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, only "Ti" has been added in various places. Under the hood, the cooler is identical, too. A large vapor-chamber baseplate sucks up heat from the GPU and memory chips, moves it to the cooling fins, using four heatpipes. With Ampere, NVIDIA pioneered a new cooler design that has air moving through the card and to the top of the case, where it gets exhausted by the case fans. While disassembly isn't trivial, it's still reasonably easy and can be done without breaking anything, or having to glue things back together. This shows that NVIDIA did care about maintainability when designing their new FE. For a dual-slot design, cooling is really good, I still feel that it would have been better had NVIDIA used the much bigger RTX 3090 thermal solution. This would have allowed for lower noise levels—important now that AMD and NVIDIA are so close in performance. With 39 dBA, the RTX 3080 Ti FE isn't loud, but can definitely be noticed; the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT reference card, on the other hand, is whisper-quiet and basically inaudible when installed in a case. Temperatures are alright with 79°C for the GPU under load and memory reaching 99°C. The other custom designs we've reviewed today do much better here, but they're all triple-slot designs. With Ampere, NVIDIA introduced idle fan stop on their Founders Edition, which previously was one of the biggest reasons for gamers to look at other brands. In idle, during desktop work, internet browsing, and light gaming, the RTX 3080 Ti will turn off its fans completely for the perfect noise-free experience.

This generation of cards sees the introduction of the 12-pin Molex MicroFit 3.0 connector NVIDIA debuted on graphics cards, which is used on the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, too. Just like on the other Ampere cards, placing the power connector in the middle of the board makes clean cable routing difficult. What I do have to praise NVIDIA for is their inclusion of an adapter with all Founders Edition cards, so you're ready to go without an additional purchase.

Power efficiency of RTX 3080 Ti is very similar to RTX 3080 and considerably better than RTX 3090, probably because the RTX 3090 has 12 GB of additional VRAM sipping power without providing much of a performance boost. In absolute terms, gaming power usage of RTX 3080 Ti (356 W) matches RTX 3090 (355 W), which is a 10% increase over RTX 3080 (318 W)—you're getting this power back as additional performance, so overall efficiency stays constant. Compared to AMD's new generation of GPUs, NVIDIA has fallen behind in power efficiency partly because AMD is using a better 7 nanometer process, but also because AMD made huge improvements in efficient chip design. The Radeon RX 6900 XT is 15% more efficient than the RTX 3080 Ti, which helps keep cooler requirements low because less heat needs to be moved away from the card.

NVIDIA has announced a $1200 price point for the RTX 3080 Ti FE, which matches the RTX 2080 Ti MSRP. In reality, I doubt we'll see cards retail for anything close to that. To put things into perspective: The RTX 3090 goes for $2900 right now, RTX 3080 for $1500, RX 6800 XT for $1700, and RX 6900 XT for $2100. NVIDIA confirmed to us that the RTX 3080 Ti comes with the LHR (low-hash-rate) mining performance limiter, which hopefully won't be circumvented this time so that at least gamers can get those cards. For pricing, it won't make much of a difference, though, as the general market demand is simply too high and supply too low. I talked to various board partners and none of them was enthusiastic about supply levels, most predicting that "everything will sell out instantly." Some mentioned that they "have more coming next week/in the coming weeks." I'm quite certain we'll see prices of around $2000 for RTX 3080 Ti very soon, which is A LOT of money, but everything else is just as expensive. The RTX 3080 at $1500 is still a very compelling alternative to a $2000 RTX 3080 Ti; the break-even point for price/performance would be 10%, so $1725. Against the Radeon RX 6900 XT—$2100 currently—the RTX 3080 Ti will be the better choice because it offers better overall performance and better RT, with higher power draw, though. Last but not least, possibly the strongest competition for GeForce, and for the PC gaming market overall, comes from game consoles, which can be found for well under $1000 and will play all the new games as well, although perhaps with slightly worse graphics, but the money saved can buy you a 4K TV and a lot of games.