Today we are going to review the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING (ROG-STRIX-RTX3080TI-O12G-GAMING) video card.  In ASUS’s GeForce RTX 3080 Ti video card lineup, the ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING sits in the middle, flanked by the TUF RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING right below it, and the ROG STRIX LC RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING right above it. 

The ASUS ROG STRIX models are ASUS’s best enthusiast-class video card builds they offer.  The ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti is a bigger video card, with more power connectors, and chart-topping thermal performance, versus the TUF.  The ROG STRIX also has a higher factory boost clock than the TUF. The MSRP is not listed on ASUS’s website, but as you can see the TUF version, which sits below it, starts at $1,549.99, therefore the ROG STRIX will have an MSRP well above that price tag.  This is not a cheap video card, but in today’s review, we’ll see how it performs.      

GeForce RTX 3080 Ti

Before we look at the ASUS ROG STRIX, let’s go over the base specs on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.  The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has an MSRP of $1,199 and was launched in June of 2021.  It’s based on SAMSUNG 8nm manufacturing process and NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture.  The GPU is based on GA102-225 and has 10,240 CUDA Cores, 112 ROPs, 320 TMUs, 80 Ray Tracing Cores (2nd Gen), and 320 Tensor Cores (3rd Gen).  It runs at a Boost Clock of 1665MHz with 12GB of GDDR6X memory at 19GHz on a 384-bit memory bus providing 912GB/s bandwidth.  TDP is 350W.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card box front

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card box back

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card box label

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card front view sitting on desk

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING back view sitting on desk

The ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is a huge gaming card, huge.  It measures 12.53 inches in length, 5.51 inches in width, and 2.27 inches in height.  This is considered a 2.9 Slot video card.  It’s a thick boy.  By comparison, the Founders Edition GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is 11.22 inches long, 4.4 inches wide, and is a 2 Slot design.  The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is long and wide, it will have trouble fitting in cases that don’t have ample room between the side panel and components sticking over the edge.  Make sure you have extra girth there. 

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING top side view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING top side view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING top front view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING top back view

This video card is also heavy, and power-hungry.  This video card uniquely requires 3x 8-pin PCIe Power Connectors to run, and no splitting cables either, it needs dedicated cables.  The recommended PSU is 850W for this video card.  In terms of interfaces, you get 3x DisplayPort 1.4a and 2x HDMI 2.1 ports and supports HDCP.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING back side view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING back side view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING back front view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING back back view

For all this power, what you get is a factory overclock Boost Clock of 1815MHz (Gaming Clock) on the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card.  For reference, the Founders Edition is clocked at 1665MHz.  That is a 9% factory overclock boost clock.  With NVIDIA GPU Boost, the frequency will also run over that clock speed.  There is an optional “OC” clock that can be enabled when you install ASUS GPU Tweak II, and that will take the factory overclock up to 1845MHz for a very easy software overclock with one push of a button. 

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of fan

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of fans

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of i/o bracket

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of label

This video card also sports a dual-BIOS, but the only difference in the Performance and Quiet position is the fan profile.  The clock speeds are the same in both BIOS positions.  The card ships in performance mode, which has the fans at a higher fan profile to keep the card the coolest.

The ASUS ROG STRIX model means ASUS has decked this video card out with the best PCB configuration and the cooling solution they have.  The PCB utilizes ASUS Super Alloy Power II with premium alloy chokes, solid polymer capacitors, and an array of high-current power stages. 

The heatsink is a massive heatsink that uses MAXCONTACT which flattens the heat spreader for better contact with the die.  The heat spreader draws heat into the heat pipes through a large 2.9-slot footprint fin stack for extra coverage area.  It uses a triple-fan axial-tech fan design with more fins and surface area than the last-gen. 

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of dual-bios switch

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of power connectors

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING closeup of pass through cooling

The blade count has been increased on all three fans with 13 on the center fan and 11 on the auxiliary fans.  The barrier ring on the side fan has been slimmed down to allow for more lateral intake and provide better airflow through the cooling array.  The center fan’s extra blades and full height ring provided boosted static pressure.  The center fan rotational direction is reversed to reduce air turbulence.  The fans also shut off completely below 50c.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card top view installed in computer

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING side view of video card installed in computer

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card rgb lit up front view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING rgb lit up front view

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card top view with rgb

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card top view with argb running

The ROG STRIX has a new shroud aesthetics that has textured accents in a greyscale colorway blend seamlessly.  There is a full backplate and pass-through cooling.  The video card also supports ARGB lighting and overclocking with ASUS GPU Tweak II.

Please read our GPU Test Bench and Benchmarking Refresher for an explanation on our test system, procedures and goals.  Note that we have upgraded our CPU to a Ryzen 7 5800X in the system.  More information on our GPU testing can be found here.  Check out our KIT page where you can see all the components in our test system configuration for reviewing video cards.

System Setup Table

System Setup

We are using the motherboard’s current default BIOS settings on the latest official release BIOS.  We have enabled PCI-Express Resizable BAR in the motherboard BIOS.  This means we are utilizing Resizable BAR on NVIDIA GPUs and AMD Smart Access Memory on AMD GPUs in all of our testing.  We have enabled DOCP in the BIOS for the memory.

We are using a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro with the latest Windows Updates, and drivers installed including the latest chipset drivers from AMD.  We are using the “Best Performance” power profile in Windows Settings.  VBS is DISABLED and Game Mode is ENABLED.

Default

Before we find the highest stable overclock, we need to find out what the default GPU clock speed of the video card is first.  With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs today, the GPU frequency is dynamic.  NVIDIA has GPU Boost, and AMD has its Game Clock and Boost Clock quoted frequencies.  Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically.  We need to find out what it actually runs at, so we can compare the benefit of overclocking.

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 GPU-Z sensor data to look at GPU temperature, Voltage, and Power.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Default GPU Frequency

According to ASUS, the factory overclock GPU Boost Clock should be running at 1815MHz on the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING in default GAMING mode. We have the green bar above showing 1815MHz. When playing games, the actual NVIDIA GPU Boost on this video card rises up pretty high to start, but then quickly settles to under 1860MHz. It measures between 1830-1860MHz while gaming, average mostly around 1845MHz while gaming, which is higher than the 1815MHz factory overclock.

Overclocked

To overclock the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card we are using the manufacturer-provided overclocking software which in this case is ASUS GPU Tweak II version 2.3.9.0.  This is our highest stable overclock shown below.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING ASUS GPU Tweak II Overclock

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING ASUS GPU Tweak II Overclock

In GPU Tweak II we were able to set the Power Target on this video card up +12 or 112% from the default 100%. This is higher than we were able to set the Founders Card, for comparison. We were able to turn on all three fans to 100% for overclock testing. Our maximum GPU Boost Clock was 1930MHz or +115 over the default clock speed. On the memory we managed to overclock it up to 20.5GHz from the default 19GHz. This is higher than we were able to overclock the Founders Edition memory.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Overclocked GPU Frequency Graph

The resulting overclock at 1930MHz is shown above in comparison to the default clock speed the card ships at. You can see that by default we were at 1845MHz on average, and now with the overclock we are up around 1930MHz on average. That’s about a 5% clock speed increase from the default. But if you think about it compared to the reference clock of 1665MHz, that’s quite an increase. We are ultimately held back by the power limits, not the cooler or anything else. Overclocking this video card makes the power jump quite high, and the GDDR6X plays a big part in that.

We are going to focus on 4K gameplay performance with the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card.  We will include DLSS and FSR performance on the same graph in the games that are supported.  We will use DLSS on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR on AMD GPUs in games that support both technologies.  Ray Tracing performance will be shown on a separate page. 

For video card comparisons we are using an ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition video card and an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT video card.

Dying Light 2

Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine.  The game supports both DLSS and FSR upscaling technologies.  We are running the game in DX12, and with ASYNC Compute turned on in the game.  We will set the graphics options at the highest settings below Ray Tracing.  For our benchmark, we are using a custom manual run-through at the end of the game hopping between many rooftops, as well as free-roaming on the ground running among the zombies, a forested area, and downtown city scenes in the daylight.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Dying Light 2

In Dying Light 2 at 4K with the highest graphics settings, except Ray Tracing, the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING provides a playable 56FPS in the game and just beats the RTX 3080 Ti. Turning on DLSS brings that performance up quite a bit to 82FPS, a 47% performance increase. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 5% to almost 60FPS at 4K, which is impressive. DLSS further helps performance overclocked at nearly 87FPS. The ASUS RTX 3080 Ti is 12% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. FSR helps the 6900 XT to make it playable, but the ASUS RTX 3080 Ti with DLSS still beats it.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction was released on PC in January of 2022.  This game uses the Ubisoft Anvil gaming engine and supports DLSS as well as multiple TAA methods and a High Detail Texture Pack.  We are running the game at the highest possible graphics settings, set at a fixed 100% resolution.  We will test with TAA, TAA 2X, and DLSS where supported.  We are using the built-in benchmark.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction

In this first graph, we are running the game at the highest in-game settings at 4K plus TAA and DLSS compared. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING performs very well providing over 100FPS of gameplay performance. The higher clock speeds on the factory overclocked model prove to be slightly faster in this game compared to the Founders Edition. Using DLSS improves performance by 47% and we get very high framerates of 150FPS+ performance. Overclocking the video card has improved performance by 6% and with DLSS is now over 160FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is 25% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT in this game.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction

In this second Rainbow Six Extraction graph we have turned on TAA 2X, which drastically reduces performance, but really puts the cards to the test on performance. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING still comes in very strong, delivering 60FPS at 4K. Overclocking provides 5% more performance. The ASUS ROG STRIX 3080 Ti is 36% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, which struggles a lot more.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 was released on PC in November of 2021 and it uses the ForzaTech game engine. For our evaluation, we raise the in-game graphic settings beyond the “Extreme” preset to the maximum game settings. In addition to the “Extreme” preset, we raise SSAO Quality to Ultra, Reflection Quality to Extreme, SSR Quality to Ultra.  We also disable MSAA and use FXAA. We test AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) performance from the Resolution Scaling option. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Forza Horizon 5

In Forza Horizon 5 at 4K, the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is very playable at 78FPS, which does beat the Founders Edition slightly. Turning on CAS improves performance by 13%. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 4% but with CAS is now over 90FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti is 11% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT.

Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 was released in October of 2021 and uses the Dunia Engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and turned on. We utilize the “Ultra” graphics preset which sets all options to the highest game settings. This game supports FSR upscaling.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 performs very well at 4K on the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING, we get 85FPS here at the highest settings, without RT. Turning on FSR further improves performance by 32% bringing performance to 112FPS. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 5% and with FSR is now at 117FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is on par with AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT performance in this game, without RT they are nearly identical.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December of 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 1.52 for our testing and perform a long manual run-through driving in the game’s open world. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings.  This game supports DLSS and FSR.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is unplayable on every video card here at 4K running at “Ultra” settings. You will have to lower the graphics settings, or, use DLSS. With DLSS enabled the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING improves performance by 49% and is now mostly playable at 50FPS. Overclocking the video card gives us a few more percent of performance. Beyond turning on faster levels of DLSS, the only other way to improve performance here may be turning down the graphics settings from “Ultra” to “High” on these video cards for playing at 4K, and even then you’ll still probably want to use DLSS or FSR.

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion was released on the PC in October of 2020 and uses the Disrupt game engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and enabled for testing. We use the built-in graphics preset of “Ultra” for testing. This game supports DLSS upscaling.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Watch Dogs Legion

In Watch Dogs Legion the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is playable at 64FPS with the highest in-game settings. To further performance though, turning on DLSS improves performance by 33% and the game is very smooth at 85FPS. Overclocking the video card improves performance by 8% and with DLSS is at 90FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is 8% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT, and with DLSS it’s 44% faster.

We are going to focus on Ray Tracing 4K gameplay performance with the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card.  We will include DLSS and FSR performance on the same graph in the games that are supported.  We will use DLSS on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR on AMD GPUs in games that support both technologies.

For video card comparisons we are using an ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition video card and an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT video card.

Dying Light 2

Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine.  The game supports both DLSS and FSR upscaling technologies.  This game supports Ray Tracing for various environmental effects including Ray Traced Soft Shadows, Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion, Ray Traced Global Illumination, and Ray Traced Reflections.  We are running the game in DX12, and with ASYNC Compute turned on in the game.  We will set the graphics options at the highest settings with Ray Tracing.  For our benchmark, we are using a custom manual run-through at the end of the game hopping between many rooftops, as well as free-roaming on the ground running among the zombies, a forested area, and downtown city scenes in the daylight.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Dying Light 2 Ray Tracing

Turning on the highest level of Ray Tracing with everything on pretty much tanks all the video cards here at 4K, they aren’t near playable, but the Radeon RX 6900 XT is the slowest by a lot. This is where DLSS can come in, a bit. Turning on DLSS brings performance up by 73% on the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING to 50FPS, which is just a very impressive performance increase. However, the game is still a little choppy in many places, as the minimum framerate becomes an issue. Overclocking helps slightly, but not enough really. What you will find is that to really run all the Ray Tracing in this game you are going to want to play at 1440p, no higher, even on the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING.

Far Cry 6

Far Cry 6 was released in October of 2021 and uses the Dunia Engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and turned on. We utilize the “Ultra” graphics preset which sets all options to the highest game settings. This game supports Ray Tracing via two DXR settings, one for Reflections and the other for Shadows.  This game supports FSR upscaling.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Far Cry 6 Ray Tracing

Far Cry 6 is an entirely different story, it plays very well at 4K with all the DXR Ray Tracing turned on. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card allows a playable gameplay experience at 72FPS with everything turned on. If you still want even more performance enabling FSR improves performance by 31% and brings it to 94FPS. Overclocking even helps more in this game with DXR enabled, it improves performance by 6%. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti is slightly faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT with RT on, it’s 4% faster.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December of 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 1.52 for our testing and perform a long manual run-through driving in the game’s open world. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings.  We use the Ray Tracing Graphics Preset of: Low, or Medium or Ultra.  This game supports DLSS and FSR.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing

Cyberpunk 2077 was too slow at 4K with Ray Tracing to benchmark, so instead we have dropped the resolution down to 1440p for Ray Tracing testing. At 1440p the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is not playable, but once we turn on DLSS the game is very playable at near 70FPS, that’s a 59% performance improvement. Overclocking does help, but it’s still not enough to make the game playable without DLSS. Ray Tracing is just that demanding. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti is 74% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT.

Watch Dogs Legion

Watch Dogs Legion was released on the PC in October of 2020 and uses the Disrupt game engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and enabled for testing. We use the built-in graphics preset of “Ultra” for testing. We utilize the preset quality option for Ray Tracing.  This game supports DLSS upscaling.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Watch Dogs Ray Tracing

Watch Dogs Legion is another game that is not playable at 4K with Ray Tracing enabled. However, turn on DLSS and the game is playable. On the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING DLSS improves performance by 57%. Overclocking helps a few FPS, but not enough to overcome the burden of Ray Tracing, but with DLSS, it’s near 60FPS. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING is 52% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT.

To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data.  We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results.  We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data.  For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Power

The ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING does consume more board and GPU power draw than a Founders Edition. The higher factory overclock and TDP makes it consume over 400W of board power, which is a lot, just out-of-the-box. That’s about 15% more power to the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING with 3x 8-pin PCI-Express Power Connectors required. Overclocking only accelerates that power draw even more, now at 451W board power with the overclock applied on both GPU and memory. That’s another 10% more power for what was only a 5-6% performance increase in games. This is a very power-hungry video card, so make sure you have ample Wattage and no faulty PSU cables.

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING Temperature

The ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card does very well in maintaining thermals at a low sound floor. It kept the GPU and Hot Spot cooler than the Founders Edition by about 4 degrees cooler, and the best part is the fans were not spinning all that fast meaning noise wasn’t an issue. When we overclocked the video card we ran the fans at 100% and even with the highest overclock, and power increase, the temperatures remained the same.

GPU-Z

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING GPUz Default

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING GPUz Default Sensor Data

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING GPUz Overclocked

ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING GPUz Overclocked Sensor Data

The first two GPU-Z screenshots are at default, the last two screenshots show the video card overclocked.

Today we took a look at ASUS’s latest ROG STRIX high-end video card, the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card. The ASUS ROG STRIX brand is built for enthusiasts, and this video card definitely proved that fact. This video card is large, don’t underestimate its size, make sure you have proper clearance in your case, length-wise and width as well. It’s a thick boy, and there’s just no way around that.

However, with all that girth comes a solid construction with robust cooling and quiet operation. All that metal underneath the shroud keeps the GPU very cool and the fans spinning at a respectable RPM. This GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU will be kept cool, and that means higher consistent NVIDIA GPU Boost clocks for you. Plus, it all comes in an appealing aesthetic with ARGB.

But it is power-hungry, boy is it power-hungry. You will want three dedicated 8-pin connectors for this video card, and it will consume over 400W, that’s just the fact of it. Overclock it and you’ll see that skyrocket to 450W. Just keep that in mind if you are considering this for your build.

Performance

The ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card was the top of the pack in performance in all our gaming performance. It did edge out the Founders Edition slightly in most games, but it wasn’t ground-breaking in performance improvement over the Founders Edition.

If there is one part of this that is underwhelming, it was this bit, that even with the higher 1815MHz factory overclock it was only just a few percent faster than the Founders Edition video card. The factory overclock didn’t add as much to performance as one would like. It did provide a few FPS here and there, but nothing that would make a real gameplay difference.

Otherwise, compared to the competition, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING gave it a good beating in almost all games. In Dying Light 2 the ASUS ROG STRIX 3080 Ti was 12% faster, in Rainbow Six Extraction it was 25% and 36% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti was 11% faster in Forza Horizon 5, but identical to the 6900 XT in Far Cry 6. The ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti was also faster in Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion.

When we turned on Ray Tracing we also found the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING to be faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT in every game. In Dying Light 2 the difference was pretty massive, same for Cyberpunk 2077. Far Cry 6 was a lot closer, but the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti was still 4% faster. Watch Dogs was 52% faster.

One major advantage the ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING has is that it can run DLSS and FSR. In games that support DLSS, it can run DLSS and we used it in our review and those games saw massive performance increases. In games that just support FSR it can also run FSR, and thus receives a performance benefit as well. The Radeon RX 6900 XT receives a big benefit with FSR also, but it cannot run DLSS in games that just have DLSS and no FSR support. DLSS was the key to the ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING performing much better at 4K or allowing Ray Tracing at 1440p.

Overclocking

The ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti O12G GAMING video card overclocked very easily. We used ASUS GPU Tweak II and were able to raise the Power Target higher than we were on the Founders Edition video card. We then bumped up the GPU Clock and Memory as high as possible. We got ours up to 1930MHz GPU Boost and 20.5GHz memory overclock. The neat thing is, we did not need 100% fan speeds, this overclock was stable at automatic fan speeds, and the video card still remained very quiet. That’s a big benefit of it.

In terms of performance advantage from overclocking, we did get around 5-6% better performance. However, it also required 50W more power for that small percentage gain. The uplift from overclocking just doesn’t seem worth it considering the large power demand to get that extra few percent which overall did not affect the gameplay experience. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is really at its limits here, and you are probably better off just not overclocking at all to maintain the integrity of your video card longer.

By FYIPC

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