Default GPU Frequency
Before we look at performance, we need to find out the actual real-world gaming frequency the video card performs. With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs today, the GPU frequency is very dynamic. What may be quoted as the “Boost Clock” is not necessarily the performance it will actually run at. Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically. We need to find out what it actually runs at, in this way we can see how well things like cooling, and power headroom are working.
To do this we will record the GPU clock frequency over time while playing a game. We use Cyberpunk 2077 for this with a very long manual run-through at “Ultra” settings. We also record GPUz sensor data to look at GPU temperature, Voltage, and Power.
Keep in mind that the boost clock is 1665MHz on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition. You can see this frequency at the bottom of our graph. What we have here shows that the video card actually boosts well above the boost clock while gaming. It exceeds that frequency quite a bit. It settles around 1785MHz-1815MHz while gaming. The exact average of the clock speed shown above is 1804MHz.
This clock speed boost is important to note because we found that this clock speed exceeds that of the GeForce RTX 3090. This is important because of the performance we are about to show you on the following pages. The clock speed boost explains how the RTX 3080 Ti is performing as it does compared to the RTX 3090. For comparison, our GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC has an average clock speed of 1780MHz, but really it is between 1755MHz-1785MHz mostly. The RTX 3080 Ti is therefore boosting higher, even though our GIGABYTE is a factory overclocked 3090.
GPUz sensor data shows the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition hit 74.2c at an automatic fan speed of 53% and 56%. The GPU Voltage was 1.0750V.
