VERDICT
A solid step up in performance from the RTX 3080, but
you can’t buy it at the retail price so the point is moot.SHOCK
ABSORBER
+ Decent step up
from RTX 3080
+^ Ray tracing at
4K with DLSS
+ Close to
RTX 3090
performance
for less moneySTOCK
ABSORBER-^ Practically fictional
retail price
- Can’ t beat
Radeons
in Valhalla
-^ Cooler gets
very hot
-^ No stock
Meanwhile, Doom
Eternal shows how
raw shader power can
translate into super-
fast frame rates in a
well-optimised game
that scales accordingly. The RTX 3080 Ti’s average of 227fps
at 4K is a great result, and its massive 391fps average at
2,560 x 1,440, coupled with a 253fps 99th percentile frame
rate, shows you can pair this card with a 240Hz monitor and
reap the benefits. Again, though, the Radeon RX 6900 XT
was a little faster at this resolution, and not far behind the
3080 Ti at 4K.
Ray tracing
Where Nvidia has a big upper hand over AMD is ray tracing,
and the RTX 3080 Ti excelled here. Its 55fps 99th percentile
and 91fps average in Metro Exodus with High ray tracing at
2,560 x 1,440 are superb results, with the latter being 18fps
ahead of the Radeon RX 6900 XT, and 10fps in front of the
RTX 3080. Its 35fps 99th percentile result at 4K shows the
start of a struggle, but if you enable DLSS, this jumps to 47fps
with a 74fps average. If you enable DLSS, you can realistically
play games with ray tracing at 4K on this card.
Meanwhile, in Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 3080 Ti only
managed a clunky average of 26fps with Medium ray tracing
and no DLSS, although again, even the RTX 3090 only adds
2fps to this result and is equally sluggish. However, its 51fps
average and 44fps 99th percentile results at 2,560 x 1,
are workable, and well in front of the feeble 25fps 99th
percentile result from the Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Add DLSS to the equation, though, and you can play this
game at the same level of performance with Medium ray
tracing at 4K, and an average of 88fps at 2,560 x 1,440.
Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing is highly demanding, and
AMD’s GPUs can barely run it at all, but you can comfortably
use this card to run it at 2,560 x 1,440 with DLSS enabled.
Impressively, the RTX 3080 Ti’s power draw was also well
below that of the RTX 3090, with our system drawing 526W
from the mains at peak load – that’s well behind the 679W
with the RTX 3090, and only a little higher than the 494W
with the RTX 3080.
One word of warning, though, is that the RTX 3080 Ti
Founders Edition comes with the same cooler as the RTX
3080 FE, rather than the colossal cooler included with the
RTX 3090 FE, and it became extremely hot to touch during
testing. You will want to install this card in a case with plenty
of airflow to work with the card’s flow-through cooling
design. In our test rig, this cooler also made a lot more noise
at full load than the cooler on the Radeon RX 6900 XT.Conclusion
If we hadn’t had nine months of stock chaos, we’d happily
recommend the RTX 3080 Ti at £1,049 inc VAT – it would
be a high-end card that few people could afford, but it would
undercut the RTX 3090 while offering close to the same
performance. If you want to play games at 4K, this card will
do it, and with ray tracing if you enable DLSS.
In the grim reality of the actual situation, though, the RTX
3080 Ti is pointless. There’s no stock, and Nvidia could have
used these GPUs to make the £649 RTX 3080 cards that
people have been desperate to buy. While £1,700 on eBay
is cheaper than the silly prices of RTX 3090 cards, it’s still
enormously overpriced.
BEN HARDWIDGE