Introduction
NVIDIA has announced their RTX 3080 exactly 24 hours ago as of this writing and for that are following the RTX 30 series launch, this will be one of the most intense launch periods in the history of PC with NVIDIA, AMD, Sony and Microsoft all having releases at the same time period. Its an interesting time, no doubt, but all eyes are on NVIDIA as today they finally and officially launch the RTX 3080. Unlike previous launches, the RTX 3080 will have custom models available on launch day and with that comes one of the most diverse release library in the past 10 years in the GPU segment. With NVIDIA speaheading the custom RTX 30 series cards with their compact RTX 3080 Founders Edition (full review here), brand partners are challenged to step up their game but there’s a glaring contrast between NVIDIA’s card and partner cards as you have noticed… most partner cards are huge 2.5x slot cards.
We’ve already looked at the Founders Edition and also a reference PCB. In this review we’ll explore one of the first custom cards for the RTX 3080 in our lab, the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC. A 2.7x slot design featuring a wider PCB and emblazoned with ASUS’ brand new TUF GAMING branding, swapping in the Caterpillar Black/Yellow for the their new Black/Grey color scheme as well as a new logo for TUF GAMING.
About the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC
The TUF GAMING line of graphics card have only been in the market as of last year and its been a bumpy ride since then and for the most part, its still finding its footing in the graphics card space. The ROG Strix has been the flag bearer for ASUS’s VGA line up and the DUAL and the more obscure Phoenix line-up rounds up the rest with the occasional mainline ROG product appearing as halo product but brings with it radical new features that will never make it to mainstream or eventually become the new mainstream. Going back to the ASUS TUF GAMING cards, the previous designs were utilitarian, being bulky, hulking masses of metal wrapped with a blocky plastic shroud. I’ve always seen the TUF GAMING graphics cards are purely pedestrian. But that changes today.
The ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 debuts the new TUF GAMING coolers from ASUS which brings with the tried and tested Axial-tech fans, which cools down a resdesigned and more please-to-the-eye metal shroud that closely wraps the ornate heatsink which fuses a larger heatsink together with a dedicated VRAM heatsink. The TUF GAMING cooler features Max Contact tech from ASUS, technically just super fine surface area for maximum contact between the GPU die and the heatsink. Think of it as a perfectly lapped surface.
The new TUF cooler and the new TUF GAMING logo design. There’s still traces of the old TUF GAMING shroud here but its a totally difference make with nearly no more plastic remaining on the shroud and the shroud itself is made of metal giving a heftier and solid feel to this card.
This card is a hair short of 12 inches in length and around 5 1/2 inch wide. The custom PCB allows ASUS to go with a stylized backplate which shows us the rear of the GPU die. The backplate itself is industrial-looking making it fit right in with current-gen TUF GAMING products.
The card is power by two 8-pin connector. Also in the photove above is the RGB logo for the TUF GAMING series and it extends outwards from the heatsink. It adds barely half-an-inch to the shroud but allow me to nitpick for a bit and say that this logo addition is needless and ruins the rather flush side on this part of the card. Its totally unnecessary and the branding work could use more thought.
RTX 2080 Ti FE | RTX 3080 FE | ZOTAC RTX 3080 Trinity | ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Architecture | Turing | Ampere | Ampere | Ampere |
CUDA Cores | 4352 | 8704 | 8704 | 8704 |
Boost frequency | 1635Mhz | 1710 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1785 MHz |
Memory | 11GB GDDR6 | 10GB GDDR6X | 10GB GDDR6X | 10GB GDDR6X |
Memory frequency | 14 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
Memory bus | 352-bit | 320-bit | 320-bit | 320-bit |
PCI Express Gen3 vs. Gen4
This section is borrowed from our NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition review and is used here for clarification and reference.
We’ll start this off with the most frequently asked question: do I need to have PCIe Gen4 to maximize the RTX 3080? We’ll answer that here: given that PCI Express Gen4 is only present on AMD platforms, this test will answer two questions: 1) does Gen4 have an impact and 2) do we test with Intel or AMD?
Test Setup: Intel | |
Processor | Intel Core i9-10900K |
Motherboard | ASUS ProArt Z490 Creator 10G |
RAM | Gskill TridentZ RGB DDR4-3600 32GB (8GB)x4 CL16 |
VGA | NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition |
Storage | Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB |
Power Supply | Seasonic Platinum 1050w |
Test Setup: AMD | |
Processor | AMD Ryzen 9 3900X |
Motherboard | ROG Crosshair VIII Formula |
RAM | Gskill TridentZ RGB DDR4-3600 32GB (8GB)x4 CL16 |
VGA | NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition |
Storage | Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB |
Power Supply | Seasonic P1000 Platinum 1000w |
Here are our two test bench that we maintain for situations like this. I was already considering switching to AMD earlier this year but with Intel still holding on to their performance crown by a little bit, we stay for 1 more generation. Back to our test, our two systems will help us show show which system to use for this review.
For testing, we use the Final Fantasy XV benchmark. I find this benchmark more realistic than 3DMark Time Spy but speaking of 3DMark, here’s a quick summary of some tests done with 3DMark for our Gen3 vs Gen4 comparison:
This tests goes through the feature tests as well as the more intense benchmarks from the 3DMark suite. We have a 2080 Ti on the Intel system just for a quick comparison if we do get a massive jump. There is a PCI Express test in 3DMark and we can see have an improvement there, proving that gen4 is still indeed present but in actual GPU performance, Gen4 does not really impact everything as the Intel system proves the better system from pure synthetics.
Back to Final Fantasy XV, testing on the same system with Gen3 against Gen4 we get the benchmark results below:
In an AMD vs AMD setup, the difference can be accounted to standard deviation. Here’s some further charts for your reference:
The final set of charts shows us that we still get a minimal advantage on an Intel system which ultimately led me to decide to stick with our Intel system. This testing was done 3 days ago and thankfully results are favorable in my case as I would need to retest the entire lot we have.
Power Draw, Clock Speed and Temperature
We’ll switch things up and open with the power and temperature behavior of the graphics card first. We use Final Fantasy XV Benchmark to simulate a gaming workload but for those looking extreme loads, we do put our cards through Kombustor on first installation for stress testing to check for stability. For our reviews though, we use Final Fantasy XV to simulate a true gaming scenario. Power draw is captured inline via PCAT or Powenetics so no other components affects readings. Readings are taken from the average 15 min idle readings for both load and idle. Ambient temperature is kept at 28*C.
Let’s take a look at clock behavior versus temperature:
Thermal Images
Sorry about the music. Homelander just won’t stop cursing in the background.
ASUS GPU Tweak II
GPU Tweak II remains unchanged but this is the current version but I’m including it here for those that may ask for the software. All the previous tools work on the RTX 3080 and monitoring also works.
Test Setup and Methodology
Processor: Intel Core i9 10900K
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3600 32GB
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB SATA
PSU:Â Seasonic Platinum 1050w
Cooling: Corsair H150i Pro 360mm AIO
Monitor: ROG PG27UQ 4K 144hz HDR1000
VGA: Listed
For a full-hardware workout, visit https://benchmarks.ul.com for our system warm-up and stress test of choice.
For benchmarking methodology please see our game benchmark method guide.
Test results are gathered and produced on CapFrameX.
Since this is a GPU review, we benchmarked the area of the games that put heavy load on the GPU.
All our test runs are repeatable, click the links below for area and details. Read our benchmarking methodology.
- DOTA2 – Kiev Major Grand Finals Game 5: OG vs Virtus.Pro (54:05 – 55:05)
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: FPS Benchmark Workshop Map
- The Witcher 3 – Woesong Bridge
- Grand Theft Auto V – Palomino Highlands
- Rainbow Six: Siege – Benchmark Mode
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider – Kuwaq Yaqu
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 – Fog of War
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborne – Wildspire Waste
- F1 2020 – Benchmark Mode
See our Youtube playlist for benchmark sequences.
Note: Some proprietary technologies of NVIDIA like PCSS, HBAO+, and HairWorks work on AMD GPU’s BUT to maintain uniformity amongst GPUs, these have been turned OFF. The AMD equivalent of these features are disabled as well.
You can click on any of the benchmark charts enlarge. You can also move forward and backwards to quickly navigate through our charts via gallery view. For this test, only the out-of-box normal mode will be tested.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO)
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, popularly known as CSGO, competes for Steam’s most popular game. It has found a resurgence in its popularity and has recently peaked in 2020 in the number of players that play the game. Based on Valve’s Source Engine, the game received major asset overhauls during the years since its inception nearly 10 years ago. Still, it’s a light game and can be played on fairly lighter systems but the competitive scene for CSGO has seen average players demand high FPS from their systems thus gaining favorable standing with GPU vendors just from the demand for higher FPS alone. CSGO is a game that can easily go past 500FPS on enthusiast systems on maximum settings. We’re including CSGO as requested by our community.
API: DirectX9 (default)
Maximum In-Game Settings
Texture Streaming Disabled
Vsync OFF
DOTA 2
Note: JUNE 2020 – DOTA2 has recently implemented a transition from DirectX9 to DirectX11 and new install of the game will prompt users to switch from DX9 to DX11. With that said, we are testing DOTA2 in DX11 from now on.
In contention for the most popular game on Steam and the biggest competition in eSports: DOTA 2 is powered by the Source 2 engine. The game is fairly light on low to medium settings but maxed out, with heavy action on screen especially during clashes, can really stress most systems. This is a game where frame times matter as responsiveness is very important in high-stakes competition. We’re looking at consistently low frametimes in this game for the best experience
Our test uses actual game replay, using the segment from game 5 of the Kiev Major 2017 Grand Finals between OG and VP. The clash during the 54:05 to 55:05 of the game is a nice example of how much a system will get punished during intense team fights in DOTA2.
You can watch the replay of the actual game used in the benchmark here in Youtube or download the replay file here for your DOTA2 client: Game 3149572447. (save it to your DOTA2 replays folder)
API: DirectX11 (default)
Best-Looking slider setting (Ultra)
FPS_MAX 240
Vsync OFF
Rainbow Six: Siege
Nearly 4 years later and Rainbow Six: Siege has become a phenomenon after a lukewarm beginning. The massive shift in focus of the game sees it stepping into eSports territory and the excellent mix of gameplay mechanics, good design and a dedicated dev team has put R6: Siege in a position it couldn’t even picture during launch. Rainbow Six: Siege focuses heavily on tactical and creative gameplay and its vertical levels and highly destructible maps encourage players to be quick on their feet so the action is always going. Powered by Ubisoft’s own AnvilNext 2.0 engine which powers some of Ubi’s recent visual masterpieces, R6:Siege also feature excellent graphics and can get very taxing at high detail settings. The game also features an Ultra HD texture pack download for those that want higher resolution textures but will of course demand more from the system.
API: DirectX 11
Ultra Settings
Anti Aliasing: TAA
Ultra HD Texture pack not installed
Ambient Occlusion: SSBC
Vsync OFF
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD Projekt Red’s latest installment in the Witcher saga features one of the most graphically intense offering the company has to date. As Geralt of Rivia, slay monsters, beasts and men as you unravel the mysteries of your past. Vast worlds and lush sceneries make this game a visual feast and promises to make any system crawl at its highest settings. This game has found great resurgence in its playerbase thanks to the release of Netflix’ Witcher series.
API: DirectX 11
Frame Rate: Unlimited
Nvidia HairWorks: Off
Ultra Settings
Motion Blur: Off
Blur: Off
Anti-aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: High
Ambient Occlusion: SSAO
Depth of Field: On
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: On
Light Shafts: On
VSync OFF
Grand Theft Auto V
The fifth and most successful installment to date in the highly controversial Grand Theft Auto series brings a graphical overhaul to the PC version of GTA V which many have lauded as a superior approach in porting a console game to PC. Featuring large areas and detailing, GTA V is a highly challenging application in terms of scene complexity.
Our benchmark uses a run from Palomina Highlands running through a lush area to a remote road all the way to a neighborhood in our car to simulate multiple scene changes.
API: DirectX 11
FXAA Off
MSAA 4x
TXAA Off
Very High settings
Anisotropic Filtering: 16x
Motion Blur disabled
Advanced Graphics enabled
Vsync OFF
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
API: DirectX 12
Graphics Settings Preset: Highest
Texture Quality: Ultra
Texture Filtering: 8x Anisotropic
Anti-Aliasing: TAA
DLSS: OFF
Raytraced Shadow: OFF
Vsync OFF
Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019)
Call of Duty Modern Warfare is a reboot of the original Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare storyline, set in a different world where you, along with Captain Price have to stop the world from going to war. Call of Duty Modern Warfare reignites the franchise by introducing full crossplay support where Xbox and PS4 players can play together with PC players. On PC, the game features a new engine pushing photorealism for COD far beyond what their older engine is capable of. The new engine also introduces raytracing and the AI is designed to perceive light as well. With a revitalized multiplayer arena, the game will require fast frame rates.
API: DirectX 12
Render Resolution: 100%
Texture Resolution: High
Texture Filter Anisotropic: High
Particle Quality: High
Tessellation: All
Shadow Map Resolution: Extra
Particle Lighting: Ultra
DirectX Raytracing: OFF
Ambient Occlusion: Both
Anti-Aliasing: Filmic SMAA T2X
World Motion Blur: Off
Vsync: OFF
Shaders Installed before benchmarks*
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
Easily Capcom’s most successful game to date. Available in both consoles and PC, Monster Hunter World ranks in Steam’s top played games for the platform. The 2020 Iceborne update for PC brings the game to new PC frontier, introducing DirectX 12 support. The game features rich graphical detail settings and an Ultra HD texture pack for highend gamers. MHW’s features fast-paced action with traditional RPG farings and has captured a new market thanks to the transition from portable.
Our benchmark for this game uses an expedition track in the Wildspire Waste Southwest Camp (Area 1) and finishes in the Rathian nest at Area 12 in the caves. This run gives us runs from barren area, to watery area with lush vegetation to a cave which replicates the varied nature of exploration and monster combat in MHW.
API: DirectX 12
Graphical Settings: Manual (customized from High)
All variable settings set to High
Image Quality: High
Anti-Aliasing: TAA
Max LOD Level: No Limit
Volume Rendering Quality: High
Motion Blur: Off
DLSS and AMD FidelityFX: OFF
DLSS and Raytracing Quick Test
This section is borrowed from our NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founders Edition review and is used here for clarification and reference.
There’s no denying it, we’re not seeing the performance promise we many have initially and that’s the crux of the matter for the RTX 3080. It is a generational leap in performance, but to use word “greatest generational leap” is a bit circumstantial.
Most of our benchmarks and games are selected primarily to neutralize any proprietary technology. As the chart above shows, DLSS on the RTX 3080 suddenly puts us in 100FPS+ territory vs. the 2080 Ti. This puts NVIDIA’s promise to perspective: more than twice the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti is indeed possible, but only in situations wherein the technology of the RTX 3080 can be taken advantage off.
That puts us in a dilemma. From a price perspective, the RTX 3080 does present a visible performance uplift in most games but in general, this is a small increase compared to what initially expected and NVIDIA might’ve expected this and used the pricing to offset expectation. Given that, the main take here is that NVIDIA is pushing for DLSS and raytraced games given the amount titles they provided us during the testing of these cards. A
Conclusion
Let’s open up with a clear distinction. The card we are reviewing today is the factory overclocked model of the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080. There also exists a very reasonably price stock ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 which goes by that model name.
Factory overclocked cards usually modest and usually do not show performance improves over similarly cooled cards. The situation is quite different for the RTX 3080 as NVIDIA’s custom-cooled Founders Edition boasts a relatively decent cooler which is a historical first for the company but this also means that subvendors like ASUS need to show up NVIDIA since these value-added boards or custom design cards will have a higher asking price than the Founders Edition.
The chart above shows us a gaming workload and most people will readily notice the very impressive temperatures with the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC (again this is the OC model) boasting a steady 60*C peak at a 28*C ambient temp. For an enthusiast-class, these are almost watercooling levels. That is simply how cool the new Ampere silicon is and with an effective cooler design, there is simply no reason for this chip to go past +40*C delta on gaming loads. But the other thing I’d like to bring to your attention is the GPU clock that this card has. At 60*C, this GPU is boosting to nearly 2Ghz with just the factory OC. This in turn provides us with a relatively significant boost in games that can utilize it. The drawback is that we are sipping a bit more power from the socket versus a reference card. We’re looking anywhere from +10 to +50W of extra power for the increase in performance. If that doesn’t sound impressive then the non-OC ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 would be the better choice for you. To be completely honest, with ASUS being a priority partner for NVIDIA, its not rare to see non-OC cards to go further despite being advertise as stock cards.
Moving over to cooling, there’s just simply nothing to more to say about this aspect of the card. The cooling is just phenomenal allowing the card to perform so much better than it would normally would. The Axial-tech fans are a great addition and something I had hope to see ASUS include in all of their cooler and now we’re seeing that. Axial-tech fans feature a design which allows it be more powerful than previous designs. The TUF GAMING cooler itself features 3 fans with the central fan being a separately controlled which spins the other way to help reduce turbulence within the cooler. That in itself doesn’t really mean a lot to me, but I just felt like throwing that one out because whatever it is ASUS is doing with this cooler, simply just works. Makes you wonder what to expect from the beefier ROG Strix models.
So we have performance out of the, we cooling down, so its time to weigh-in value. Why is this the RTX 3080 card that you should choose? At Php49,400 MSRP, the argument here is that for Php8,000 less, you can have the same cooling yet still gain the performance through manual overclocking and to which I agree. But the Php41,000 price of the ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 (non-OC) is only abiding by NVIDIA PH’s SRP mandate despite it being a custom card, reference cards potentially selling for the same, the allure of a custom ASUS card will easily sway buyers to go for ASUS. This will undoubtedly affect availability on closer to launch but in a more relaxed market, price should be a bit more forgiving.
That said, this is a wonderful product and an amazing demonstration of just how far the Ampere GPUs from NVIDIA can go given excellent cooling. ASUS has definitely leveled-up the TUF GAMING line and puts the product line right next to the conversation together with the ROG Strix on which RTX 3080 is good?
Related: Compare this card with other ASUS TUF Gaming graphics card in our review: ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3070 OC | ASUS TUF GAMING Radeon RX 6800 XT OC Graphics Card Review | ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3060 Ti OC
The ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC is a solid, purpose-built, high-performance graphics card for those that want straightforward gaming throughput with no extra bells and whistle but still boast excellent build quality and a cleaner, industrial look. ASUS backs the TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC with a 3-year warranty. We give it our B2G Recommended Seal!
4 Comments
These Witcher 3 results are strange. Do you have any idea why the ASUS TUF is doing so well? The average and minimum frame rates are so much higher than the Zotac and FE?? Did the other cards thermal throttle or something?
The ASUS TUF GAMING RTX 3080 OC is effectively running at 2Ghz during these tests giving it a bit of an edge versus the 1850Mhz or lower that we see from the FE and Trinity.
Actually, a rep from ZOTAC stated that the Trinity is by design, slower than other cards and that’s actually mind boggling an employee will say that. It’s on Reddit just don’t have the link right now.
thanks for giving us such a good article.
One of the best