GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition
In today’s review, we will focus only on the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition also called GA102. This is a Founders Edition graphics card. When we review the other models, we will talk about their features and specifications, today it’s all about the RTX 3080 Founders Edition at $699.
At $699 the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition is the direct generational leap and replacement for the GeForce RTX 2080 which also debuted at $699. NVIDIA’s comparison is a bit lean, so we completed our own comparison table below, this time also including the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
| GeForce RTX 3080 FE | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER FE | GeForce RTX 2080 FE | |
| SMs | 68 | 68 | 48 | 46 |
| CUDA Cores | 8704 | 4352 | 3072 | 2944 |
| RT Cores | 68 | 68 | 48 | 46 |
| Tensor Cores | 272 | 544 | 384 | 368 |
| ROPs | 96 | 88 | 64 | 64 |
| Texture Units | 272 | 272 | 192 | 184 |
| GPU Boost | 1710 MHz | 1635 MHz (FE) | 1815 MHz | 1800 MHz (FE) |
| Mem Clock | 19 GHz | 14 GHz | 15.5 GHz | 14 GHz |
| Mem Bus | 320-bit | 352-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Mem Size | 10GB GDDR6X | 11GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Bandwidth | 760 GB/s | 616 GB/s | 496 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| TGP | 320W | 250W | 250W | 215W |
| MSRP | $699 | $1199 | $699 | $699 |
You will find that its specs more closely match the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, it has the same number of SMs and RT Cores and Texture Units. However, the new 3080 Founders Edition Graphics uses the newer 2nd generation RT Cores, and while it has less overall Tensor Cores, it is using the newer 3rd generation Tensor Cores which while fewer in number, do more work. Otherwise, the memory and bandwidth is greater, and the clock speed is actually higher than the RTX 2080 Ti was. The TGP is also greater, this video card consumes more power than the RTX 2080 Ti. Thankfully it is $500 cheaper than the RTX 2080 Ti was at launch. Compared to the GeForce RTX 2080, it blows the specs off the page in almost every regard. One other thing, let’s also not forget this generation supports PCI-Express 4.0 as well, while the last-gen did not.
New Cooling Design
The first thing you will notice about the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition is the unique card design. The Founders Edition is a unique design from NVIDIA, it is not, however, the “reference” design. You can only get this unique design and fan configuration from NVIDIA. Add-in-board partners will have custom designs based on the reference design, though they could adopt this design as well, we will just have to wait and see.
The way the Founders Edition is designed is to bring air from the front of your case and exhaust air both up through the video card out the top and back, and also through the bracket. A video card has never been designed like this before, and instant worries about heating up your RAM or CPU air cooler come to mind. You will be heating up the intake air of your CPU air-cooled tower fan in front of it. In addition, you may not have a solid exhaust fan at the back of your PC at the top or even one at all. With a myriad of different case designs, only through testing can we find out what it does to the rest of your system.
To achieve this fan design the PCB has been customized to a unique design in shape. A lot of the back-end has been cut-out to allow the fan to blow through. The power connectors also had to be reduced in size to allow this custom PCB. In doing so NVIDIA created its own 12pin power connector that is really about the size of one 8pin connector. Otherwise, this custom PCB would not have been possible.
A hybrid vapor chamber with heatpipe combination sits on the GPU, and there are heatpipes that extend through the fins to the back. The back-end fan pulls air up and through the fins and these heatpipes. The front-end fan pushes air through the front part out the back of the bracket. In this way the fans are in a push-pull configuration, operating reverse of each other. Finally, a unibody frame attaches around the entire video card providing rigidity. NVIDIA claims that at the same TDP (320W) this thermal solution is 20c cooler and 10dBA quieter than the GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition.
Pictures
The GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition comes in a unique design from NVIDIA, you can’t get this design anywhere else. The Founders Edition is not the “reference” design. There is in fact a reference design with a rectangular PCB sent to add-in-board manufacturers. This custom design from the NVIDIA Founders Edition utilizes a custom-sized and shaped PCB that is quite compact.
The PCB is only half the video card size, while the back-end is taken up by a large heatsink and fins and fan. The color is not exactly silver on this video card, it’s more of a pewter color. The video card feels solid, and a bit heavy, and robust. Nothing on it feels loose or cheaply made, it feels very premium and well built.
The fans operate in a push/pull configuration. The fan on the bottom pushes air out the back exhaust, while the pass-through fan on the top pulls air from underneath through the fins and heatpipes.
The controversial 12pin power connector is shown, and you can see that the backside is completely covered. The RTX 3080 branding on the backside does not light up, even though it looks like it should. Recommended System Power is 750W PSU and it does require 2-8pin power connectors to connect to the 12pin adapter.
There are three DisplayPorts supporting DisplayPort 1.4a. There is one HDMI 2.1 port. The video card supports HDCP 2.3 and 4 multi-monitors.
The fan passthrough can be seen above, it pulls in air from underneath and pulls it through the fins and the extended thick heatpipes. The front fan, while exhausting out the I/O bracket also flings some air backwards through the middle fin-stack.
The 12-pin power adapter will be included with all Founders Edition purchased video cards. Above you can also see the size comparison with a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. You will notice that it isn’t much longer at all, or fatter.
The official slot design is a 2-slot design for the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition. The official length is 11.2″ long and 4.4″ in width/height. For comparison, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition is 10.5″ long and 4.556″ in width/height. Therefore, the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition is only 0.7″ longer than the RTX 2080 Ti FE and is actually narrower in width/height than the RTX 2080 Ti FE. It’s a narrower/longer video card, but not by much. This size is surprising, as early rumored pictures and sizes had a lot of people worried it would be a monster video card, and it just is not.
The insides of the “X” formation are lit up with an LED strip on the front. There is also one strip on the back on the edge of the pass-through fan housing. It’s very subtle, not too bright. We have no idea if it is RGB or just capable of one color, but add-in-board partners will of course have their own RGB designs, this one is unique to the Founders Edition.
As you can see the GeForce RTX lights up on the top as well, however, the RTX 3080 on the backside does not light up.
Overall, the video card looks quite good in our system, and it does overhang a bit with the length, so make sure your case can support an 11.2″ video card, if you want a fan or AIO radiator in front of the video card then make sure to account for the extra space.