Overclocking NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition

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Conclusion

In our review today we have overclocked the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition video card. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE is a video card that was launched on June 2nd, 2021 with an MSRP of $1,199. In our launch evaluation, we found the video card competed well with the more expensive factory overclocked GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC. However, we did need to overclock it and see if it really can provide faster performance than a GeForce RTX 3090.

Overclocking Experiences

Overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition was not an overly complex task. The hardest component to overclock on it was the GDDR6X memory for reasons that are inherent to the technology. GDDR6X memory runs hot, and it demands much more power than GDDR6 memory. This works against overclocking the GPU frequency on two fronts.

The power demand from overclocking GDDR6X pushes the TDP or board power over the limits much quicker. This means there is less TDP available to the GPU to overclock without hitting the power limits, and this means lower potential GPU clock speed frequencies while gaming. In addition, the heat generated by the GDDR6X can mean lower clock speeds as it starts to affect everything from the GPU temperatures to the VRM temperatures.

In our testing, we found it was more advantageous to focus on overclocking the GPU frequency, versus the memory. On the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition the memory bandwidth is already very high by default at 912GB/s. The video card is more engine limited, than memory bandwidth limited. This means increasing the core GPU frequency as much as possible will net you the most result in a performance gain. Especially when you start throwing things like Ray Tracing and DLSS into the mix. The higher compute performance means faster game performance and rendering of complex math like Ray Tracing and machine learning.

Therefore, by keeping the memory at a lower overclock, you are able to raise the GPU core to overclock higher. This is what we did, and we obtained a +130 on the GPU Clock. This provided an average clock speed of 1954MHz from GPU Boost while gaming. This is compared to the default average of 1804MHz when not overclocked. This is an 8% overclock on the GPU frequency. In addition, we still did manage a smaller memory overclock, up to 20GHz from the default 19GHz. This gave us an increase to 960GB/s of bandwidth versus 912GB/s.

Now, the caveat here is that we were using a 100% fan speed which also helped reduce the memory temperatures on this overclock. With 100% fan speed the memory temperature was not hot at 86c. However, if we had not done this, then the memory would have been in excess of 100c. At default clock speeds and default, fan speeds the memory clocked in already at 94c without any overclock. So overclocking it at default fan speeds would have been very high.

This is where custom add-in-board coolers are going to really help on custom-built video cards. It will be important to look at the cooling and make sure it is properly cooling the memory for overclocking. The potential is that add-in-board custom video cards can have much better cooling on the memory, and not require a high fan speed profile to keep it cool while overclocking. It is something we will be sure to test on custom cards when we review them, as it will certainly set cards apart.

Performance

After we overclocked the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE we found that performance increased on average 7-8% depending on the game. This was in rasterization performance, Ray Tracing performance, and DLSS performance. There were some games that were a little higher, and some a little lower. In general, though, this performance improvement meant the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE was outperforming a factory overclocked GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC video card in every game. It provided better, smoother performance in everything.

It was also faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. Especially when it came to Ray Tracing performance. DLSS was also the icing on the cake for performance with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE overclocked. DLSS improved performance in many situations making Ray Tracing playable. With DLSS plus an overclock the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE offered the best gaming experience in our lineup today.

Final Points

A lot of feedback from readers after the initial NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition launch expressed disappointment at the level of performance improvement over the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition. We looked at the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition for what it is, a cut-down GeForce RTX 3090. In that regard, it performed closer, if not at, or sometimes faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 for a lesser price than the GeForce RTX 3090. What’s impressive about that, in our review, was that we were using a factory overclocked GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC to compare with, and it was as fast if not faster, at times than that.

By overclocking the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition we have found that it moves even further ahead of the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition performance. If you thought it wasn’t enough of a bump at default when it is overclocked we are now seeing a much larger advantage. So much so that it outperforms our factory overclocked GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC video card in every game.

When you compare by MSRP, that says something since the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE is $300 less by MSRP compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 FE MSRP of $1,499. Any custom-built factory-overclocked GeForce RTX 3090, like the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC will carry a premium over the Founders Edition. Therefore the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition will be that much less expensive compared with that.

Overclocking is the ticket the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FE needed to make it appealing over a GeForce RTX 3080 FE, and there is headroom in it after all, and we can’t wait to see what custom cards can do with better cooling.

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Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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