The new NVIDIA cards are finally here, and we are really excited to be unboxing this ASUS RTX3080 TUF Gaming. This is the cheaper of the two ASUS cards at this level and likely the one they will sell more of.
Let’s check out what’s in the box: here we find the card itself, speed setup manual, tuf certificate and collection card.
The front of the card displays a very robust industrial look with all-aluminum shroud and minimalistic accents.
In this case I would even dare to say that the back is more attention grabbing – the slick looking GPU bracket being the focal point of it all. It’s functional purpose is to provide a more even mounting pressure between the GPU die and the heat spreader. This generation of TUF Gaming GPU’s has enhanced surface smoothness of the heatspreader, providing better contact with the die and therefore improving the thermal transfer.
There is also this vent at the far end of the board, it is designed to allow the hot air to come from the front of the card and be directed to the chassis exhaust.
The card features a few overclock options: first is gaming mode with boost clocks reaching 1785MHz and second is an overclock mode with boosts hitting 1815MHz. I wonder how much further we can push this later on. We will be testing this in our other videos so make sure to check them out.
Like many ASUS cards, it has a dual bios switch where you can choose either performance at the expense of noise levels or drop down the performance to make it much more quiet. Ultimately this allows you to tweak fan profiles without the need of the software.
Talking about cooling, this card features 3 fan design with a middle fan spinning the opposite way. According to Asus research this reversed direction central fan has been optimised for reduced turbulence. They have also included a fan stop mode that kicks in and silences the card when the GPU temps fall below 55 degrees, as a content creator it is very much appreciated.
Space wise it will take up 2.7 slots with most of the footprint being stacked with fins for better heat dissipation. The I/O bracket is made of stainless steel for improved durability and longevity, it has two HDMI 2.1 Ports, 3 Display 1.4a ports and it can support up to 4 displays connected simultaneously.
On the side there are two 8 pin power connections and of course RGB TUF Gaming logo that you can control using Armory Crate software and sync them up with the rest of your components.
When it comes to specs, this card will definitely have a punch with 8704 Cuda cores, 10GB GDDR6X memory running at 19 Gigabit speed on a 320-bit bus.
NVIDIA 3000 series is now running over PCIE Gen 4, other features include DLSS, Improved Ray Tracing, HDCP 2.3 and up to 8k display resolution.
There have been a lot of bold claims about performance for these cards and we will surely provide you with the answers – make sure to check out the next article or watch our full review video.
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