The Asus card takes things a step or two further over the FE cards with more robust power delivery and Super Alloy II hardware, a higher power limit, and of course the monster cooling solution tasked to tame over 320W worth of power. The new cooler did a great job at keeping the card cool and being quiet while doing so. The card even has two 4-pin fan headers on the end for additional chassis cooling needs. Before we get started, it’s important to point out that NVIDIA’s fan-on-each-side design will be exclusive to its Founders Edition cards. This means the cards you read about today had to use an alternative design. In most cases, this has been the 3-fan design, a tried and tested method for GPU cooling. To bolster the specialized roles of the center and auxiliary fans, the rotational direction of the center fan is reversed. This reduces air turbulence inside the cooling array for another boost to overall thermal performance. The fans also shut off completely when card power consumption is low and the GPU temperature falls beneath 50 Celsius, keeping noise levels down when the system is under a light load.

Asus uses an application called GPU Tweak II to control their graphics cards. Like other similar applications, you’re able to control a slew of functionality from the interface. This includes core and memory speeds, power limit and voltage, fan control, and more. The interface is simple and easy to use if looking a bit dated compared to other applications (MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision X1). It is simple and easy to use – just how we like it. Compared to the FE card, the Gaming X Trio is able to provide anywhere between 2-4% more frames. Although this number might not seem significant, when you consider that, in theory, these cards are supposed to perform equally, you get a much clearer picture.The fan noise and heating department did show improvements, but that was about all. However, if you have proper case ventilation, you shouldn’t be too concerned about this. Our Thoughts Unlike the previously discussed ASUS RTX 3080 ROG Strix OC, this card doesn’t have a physical BIOS switch option. This might not be necessary, as the cards with this option perform pretty much the same regardless of the switch. Super Alloy Power II includes premium alloy chokes, solid polymer capacitors, and an array of high-current power stages. The EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080 graphics card is one of the best choices out there if you’re not looking to splash the cash for the RTX 3090.

In our synthetic tests, the Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 OC performs well falling in line nicely between the MSI RTX 3090 GXT and a Founder’s Edition RTX 2080 Ti. In Time Spy and Unigine Superpostion, we saw ~20% performance increase from the 2080 Ti to our 3080 while Fire Strike (Extreme) was a bit higher, around 22%. The Port Royal test showed the largest increase approaching 25%. Gaming Benchmarks

Our Axial-tech fan design is optimized for a new, larger heatsink that features more fins and surface area than last gen. The blade count is increased on all three fans, with 13 on the center fan and 11 on the auxiliary fans. The barrier ring on the side fans is slimmed down to allow for more lateral intake and to provide better airflow through the cooling array. The center fan’s extra blades and full-height ring provide boosted static pressure to blast air directly onto the GPU heat spreader. EVGA’s ICX technology has been its signature since the GTX 10 series and has been improved with each iteration. The three fans are able to automatically and individually adjust their RPM based on those ICX sensors and thus have more precise control over the heat. Zotac used its IceStorm 2.0 cooler for this card, and this is probably the reason why its version performs better in the cooling department. The 3-fan design, along with a new heat pipe layout, have outperformed the FE card. Given how NVIDIA touted its new fan design, this is a massive win for Zotac. Our Thoughts This limited edition of the ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 3080 features a completely white colorway on top of all the generational improvements to the ROG Strix series. Now’s your chance to build a high-end white-themed gaming rig with the latest in graphics technology. However, the results of benchmarks vary, not only from the other hardware components but also from the benchmarking tool, so take them with a grain of salt.

For the most part, the gaming benchmarks show our RTX 3080 running behind the mighty RTX 3090 and well ahead of the RTX 2080 Ti. Far Cry New Dawn and a couple of other titles were closer than many would imagine but this is due to the “low” resolution and the fact that these games are mostly CPU limited. As the resolution goes up and the balance shifts more to the GPU we’ll see performance fall more along the lines that we expected. That said, the 3080 isn’t really meant for 1080p gaming, save for those looking to drive a 240 Hz monitor. 2560×1440 and 4K UHD ResultsFirstly, we have to talk about the quietness of this card. Among the third-party RTX 3080 cards, which are generally already pretty quiet, the Gaming X Trio is noticeably the quietest. It doesn’t increase RPM until necessary, and, as a result, the fans are nearly silent and can only be heard when you press your ear to the case. Below are the higher resolution results starting with 2560×1440 and the gaining in popularity 3840×2160 (4K UHD). These resolutions prove to be a bit of a stretch for some cards, but an Ampere-based RTX 3080 had no issues running either setting. Even so, Trinity is very similar to the Founders Edition, both in terms of price and power requirement. Axial-tech fan design has been tuned up with more fan blades and a reversed rotational direction for the center fan.

For gaming benchmarks, we have updated our testing suite to bring more modern titles into the mix. Gone are Battlefield V, F1 2018, Far Cry 5, AOTS:e, and World of Tanks, which were replaced with Metro Exodus, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, F1 2020, and Far Cry: New Dawn. We kept The Division 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The games should provide a good view of the overall performance of the card. Many of these are DX12 games. 1080p (1920×1080) Results The first thing you’ll notice about the RTX 3080 ROG Strix OC is its size. It’s absolutely massive, and you could easily mistake it for an RTX 3090. The usual 3-fan design and the physical BIOS switch on the card itself are present, with ‘Performance’ and ‘Quiet’ modes available. It’s worth saying that there isn’t much difference between these two modes in terms of performance, but the different sound levels will be much more noticeable. ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 3080 V2 White OC Edition 10GB GDDR6X with LHR offers a buffed-up design that delivers chart-topping thermal performance.

Board Design

Top-shelf capacitors, chokes, and MOSFETs are selected to effortlessly deliver hundreds of watts at a millisecond’s notice. The Super Allot Power II parts are soldered to the PCB using our advanced Auto-Extreme automated manufacturing process. Smooth joints on the rear of the PCB and the elimination of human errors ensures each graphics card meets our rigorous specifications. The rear of the ROG Strix graphics card sports two PWM FanConnect headers that provide additional DIY flexibility. Chassis fans can be directly attached to the GPU and tuned with a curve that is based on CPU or GPU temperature, providing extra intake or exhaust for demanding 3D tasks. In comparison to the previous generation’s ROG Strix card, which was pretty big in its own right, this model is significantly larger. This might have been expected due to the RTX 3080’s massive performance upgrade. Needless to say, it’s bigger than the Founders Edition, but it’s worth pointing out that, although it technically only needs two slots, this is a 3-slot card. In terms of size, it is not as large as the other AIB cards, but it still can’t be called small. It will still have the now-familiar overhang in the ATX cases.