Conclusion
We have now been able to take a look at our first retail GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU-based video card from an AIB (add-in-board partner) with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G video card. The MSRP for the NVIDIA Founders Edition is $1,199. The GIGABYTE RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G we reviewed was purchased from a generous forum user for $1,195 on the Newegg Shuffle, which is unique for today’s landscape.
This means we got to evaluate a card, actually, at the MSRP it is meant to be for a change! This is good news because more than MSRP is not a good value. It is currently out of stock right now, and we cannot guarantee that it will be at that price in the future, or in the shuffle again.
Performance
When we looked at the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G we wanted to view it from the perspective of how it compared to a factory overclocked RTX 3090, and then the Radeon RX 6900 XT. We used a GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC video card, which has a factory overclock, while the GIGABYTE RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G does not. You would think this would give a large advantage to the RTX 3090, but we found that it did not.
Before overclocking, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G did come in just under the performance of the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC. Some games were extremely close between them. Once we overclocked the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G it outperformed the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 GAMING OC in every game. With and without DLSS. This helped to improve the gameplay experience and smooth performance out, especially at 4K.
Speaking of 4K, this video card shines at 4K. This is the level of gameplay you would be targeting with this video card; it can handle it well. It has a larger frame buffer than the RTX 3080 to handle it better. When you combine DLSS with 4K and Ray Tracing all of the sudden the games become very playable. Overclocked, it will even surpass the factory overclocked RTX 3090, not to mention a standard clocked RTX 3090.
Overclocking
The one downside to this particular video card was the strict limit on the power headroom. We were only able to increase the Power Target by 5%, this is in comparison to the Founders Edition which allowed us to increase by 14%. This gives the Founders Edition more headroom for overclocking. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G will hit that TDP wall much quicker. We know GDDR6X is a power hog, which means we are now limited mostly by power, and not by temperature.
We were able to overclock the GPU to +160 which brought the Boost Clock up to 1825MHz. This resulted in a 6% boost to the GPU frequency while gaming. In our testing, we also got exactly an average of 6% performance. In addition, the power went up by 6%. The GPU core may actually have more headroom in it for overclocking higher, especially with more Voltage. However, because we don’t have the power headroom it actually starts to lose performance overclocking too high.
We also think the memory has more potential for overclocking, most likely up to 21GHz. However, the power limits keep us limited to 20GHz so that we don’t compromise the GPU clock speed overclock. Overclocking it higher causes performance to decrease. This is not temperature throttling-related at all. The impressive cooler on this video card keeps the memory very cool and therefore doesn’t throttle due to temperature. This is the kind of robust cooler needed to keep the VRAM cool.
Keep in mind that this is the EAGLE version that GIGABYTE offers, it is the base SKU. There are higher-end models like the GAMING and XTREME which may have more relaxed power tables in BIOS. They may have the ability to raise the Power Target higher, we don’t know. We would love to get those models in to test them to find out.
Final Points
The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti EAGLE 12G sits at the bottom of GIGABYTE’s product stack for GeForce RTX 3080 Ti’s. However, it is not in any way shape, or form the bottom of the barrel. It has custom components from GIGABYTE, with its unique custom cooling. While it does not have a factory overclock, these other things help to maintain a stable and robust video card, with great cooling, a quiet operation, and the potential for overclocking on your own with AORUS ENGINE.
The video card performs great out-of-the-box and will give you a good 4K experience. It will allow you to play games with Ray Tracing at 1440p, and with DLSS extends that to 4K in the most demanding games. Overclocking the video card will give you a slight edge to performance, pushing it over the edge into playability at higher settings. It challenges a factory overclocked GeForce RTX 3090 for performance, and by MSRP, it is cheaper. If you can buy one at MSRP like the owner of this card has, then it’s a good deal.