FEATURES
- NVIDIA Ampere Streaming Multiprocessors
- 2nd Generation RT Cores
- 3rd Generation Tensor Cores
- Powered by GeForce RTX 3080
- Integrated with 10GB GDDR6X 320-bit memory interface
- WINDFORCE 3X Cooling System with alternate spinning fans
- RGB Fusion 2.0
- Protection metal back plate
Core Clock
TBD MHz
WINDFORCE 3X
COOLING SYSTEM
The WINDFORCE 3X cooling system features 2x 90mm and 1X80mm unique blade fans, alternate spinning, 7 composite copper heat pipes, large copper plate direct touch GPU, 3D active fan and Screen cooling, which together provide high efficiency heat dissipation.
ALTERNATE SPINNING
Alternate Spinning can reduce the turbulence of adjacent fans and increase air pressure.
SMOOTH AIRFLOW
GIGABYTE turns the adjacent fans in the opposite direction, so that the airflow direction between the two fans is the same, reducing the turbulence and enhancing the airflow pressure.
3D ACTIVE FAN
The 3D Active Fan provides semi-passive cooling, and the fans will remain off when the GPU is in a low load or low power game.
UNIQUE BLADE FAN
The airflow is spilt by the triangular fan edge, and guided smoothly through the 3D stripe curve on the fan surface.
GRAPHENE NANO LUBRICANT
Graphene nano lubricant can extend the life of sleeve bearing fan by 2.1 times, close to the life of double ball bearing, and is quieter.
SCREEN COOLING
Extended heatsink design allows air flow to pass through, providing better heat dissipation.
LARGE COPPER PLATE & HEAT-PIPE
With direct contact to the GPU and VRAM, the large copper plate combines the composite heat pipes to efficiently transfer heat generated from the interior cores to the heat sink.
RGB FUSION 2.0
With 16.7M customizable color options and numerous lighting effects, you can choose lighting effects or synchronize with other AORUS devices.
PROTECTION METAL BACK PLATE
The metal back plate not only provides an aesthetical shape, but also enhances the structure of the graphics card to provide complete protection.
DUAL BIOS
Silent mode will provide a quieter experience. The mode switch requires a reboot to take effect. The default is OC mode.
EXTREME DURABILITY AND OVERCLOCKING
The graphics card uses the better power phase design to allow the MOSFET to operate at lower temperature, and over-temperature protection design and load balancing for each MOSFET, plus the Ultra Durable certified chokes and capacitors, to provide excellent performance and longer system life.
FRIENDLY PCB DESIGN
Fully automated production process ensures top quality of the circuit boards and eliminates sharp protrusions of the solder connectors seen on the conventional PCB surface. This friendly design prevents your hands from getting cut or inadvertently damaging components when making your build.
AORUS ENGINE
The cutting edge intuitive interface allows you to adjust the clock speed, voltage, fan performance and power target in real-time according to your game’s requirements.
Pros: Incredible performance out of the box with no tweaking necessary. Without any manual overclock, the stock clocks reach about 1925 MHz during 3dmark benchmarks. I had no problem putting + 140 MHz to the clocks and + 660 MHz to the memory at 100% power limit, which brought avg clocks up to about 1,987 MHz. Considering the description advertises a boost of 1,800 MHz, that's a pretty decent bump. If you register the card within thirty days of purchase, Gigabyte gives you an additional year on your warranty, so be sure to remember to do that if you do buy it. Registration took all of sixty seconds. Ideally, you never need to use the warranty, of course, but it's added value for certain. Includes dual BIOS switch. By default, one is set for silent (higher temps, lower fan speeds) operation and the other is set for OC (lower temps, higher fan speeds) operation. If you accidentally botch the card while flashing BIOS with official or custom firmware, you can simply recover by using the other bank. Should be standard on every card produced, as this could potentially save companies from having to RMA cards. It's one of those things you don't know you need until you need it. TWO HDMI 2.1 ports. You might not need the second one at this moment in time (you might not even need the first, if you're using DisplayPort), but it may be incredibly useful in the future. There are three DisplayPort 1.4a ports, as well. Incredible undervolting performance. Undervolting this card lets you get about 98% of its performance while using nearly 50W less under load, which also reduces GPU temperatures. Sure, you can throw more power at it to try and overclock for a few frames more, or you can give it a little less juice for nearly identical-to-stock performance. It might not seem like much, but those energy savings will help pay for part of the card if you plan to use it for several years and the reduced temperatures/voltage will improve its lifespan dramatically. Fan stop feature turns off the fans when the GPU is below a certain temperature. Middle fan in a tri-fan setup spins in an alternative direction to the other two, so it isn't noisy at all. Even at 100% fan speed, it's not as loud as I'd expected. Has a backplate. To be fair, so does the Gigabyte 3080 Eagle. The big differences between this card and the Eagle are the additional year on the warranty and the dual BIOS switch. This card also has higher stock boosed clocks, but I would be blown away if the Eagle could not hit 1800 MHz, the listed boost of this model. Unlike RGB Fusion, AORUS Engine seems to at least do what it claims to do. The font could use some scaling (I can't imagine how hard the numbers are to read if you're using a 4k+ res display) because the numbers are tiny, but I had no problems manually increasing clock and memory speeds before reverting back to default.
Cons: RGB Fusion absolutely refuses to run on my computer. I have uninstalled/reinstalled the AORUS Engine, App Center, and RGBFusion 2.0 dozens of times over the past day in a futile attempt to change or disable the RGB on the side of the card. When I attempt to open Fusion directly, through the AORUS Engine, or Gigabyte App Center, my computer hard locks as the program tries to poll my hardware for RGB compatibility. This also locks the demo scrolling RGB on the card, so I have to power down, unplug the PSU, dissipate the remaining electricity, and reconnect the PSU to get the RGB to begin scrolling again. That's it. My only con is the RGB software is actually impossible to use. I've gone so far as to take an extra SSD, reinstall Windows, and try the software on a fresh Windows 10 installation. Updated or not, the software simply does not work. Gigabyte, please fix it! I would love to set the RGB as a solid color or turn it off for nighttime use.
Overall Review: Replaced an EVGA 980 ti Classified with this card to power a 2560x1440@144 display and it has abolutely chewed through everything I've thrown at it. It is paired with an i7 6700k (boosted to 4.5 GHz) and 16GB DDR4 3400, all on air cooling. Microsoft Flight Sim ran at about 40 FPS on high settings previously and now is up to 50 FPS on absolutely maxed settings. Horizon Zero Dawn benchmark, maxed out, gets 116 FPS in the benchmark. Yakuza Kiwami 2 runs at about 115 FPS maxed out while cruising around Sotenbori. Quake II RTX runs at about 80 FPS with medium reflections. GPU temps have hit a max of 73C, while average is closer to 67-69C. If you have any existing VR headset, this will handle it no problem. I have a Rift S and Half-Life Alyx holds a steady 80 FPS maxed out with 2x supersampling and frame times look chef's kiss. Every game I've tried runs at 2x supersampling, actually. The Reverb G2 will put it through its paces when it releases later this year, but every other existing headset will work perfectly. The card hasn't crashed on me beyond the RGB software freezing the entire computer. 4/5 seems too low and 5/5 seems too high, primarily due to the RGB software, so I'd give this 4.5/5.