MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio review: A silent, face-melting behemoth - ullrichdarpre

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Staggering performance upgrade vs. last gen
Excellent 4K and 1440p gaming
Ray trace at 4K and 1440p
Ultra-fast GDDR6X memory
Very effective, well-nig silent cooler
HDMI 2.1, AV1 encryption, PCIe 4.0, 8K/30 fps appropriate
Reasonable $50 premium over MSRP

Cons

Perfectly monumental in every dimension
Very high great power consumption
10GB of VRAM capacity may not be plenty for 4K long
Plastic shroud, hardly a spear carrier features

Our Finding of fact

The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G slaps a monstrous ice chest connected Nvidia's unnatural enthusiast-class GPU, with striking results. It's powerful, still cooler and nearly silent.

Best Prices Nowadays

$750

The GeForce RTX 3080 hits the streets now. Fueled by Nvidia's following-gen A GPU computer architecture, it wields enough power to trample its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 2080, by ascending to 80 percent. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition showed just how dominant this freshly GPU is—and how much juice it requires to push that many another pixels. The spectacular Founders Edition deploys a new 12-pin connector and unique "flow-through" cooler design to tame the brute RTX 3080.

But Nvidia's $699 Founders Edition isn't the solely RTX 3080 in stores today. In an unusual move, a wide range of customized graphics cards by Nvidia partners will also Be available on day one, including the $750 MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G on our test bench today. Where Nvidia turned to technical tricks with its Founders Variation, MSI cranks its overpowering card to 11. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G overclocks the GPU to 1800MHz, feeds it with a III of 8-pin connectors, then cools information technology down with a massive three-slot, ternary fan cooler loaded with revolutionary technologies and yes, RGB lights. It dwarfs Nvidia's offering.

Does effortful alloy push the custom card past the impressive preceding set by Nvidia's Founders Edition? Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's dig in.

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Ternary 10G: Specs and features

We North Korean won't spend too much time talking active the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Play X Trio 10G's underlying specifications, as they're largely superposable to those of the Nvidia Founders Edition. The special sauce in its custom design. Read our thoroughgoing GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition critique for a deeper plunk into what's new in the next-gen Amp GPU. You can likewise find more info close to how the RTX 3080 stacks up against the previous generation in our GeForce RTX 30-series vs. RTX 20-serial spec comparison.

Here's a high-altitude look at what's inside the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Play X Trio 10G, followed by some discussion happening what's unique to this particular card:

CUDA cores: 8,704
Boost time: 1.8GHz
Memory: 10GB GDDR6X at 9500MHz
Memory bus: 320-bit
Storage bandwidth: 760GB/s
RT cores: 68 (2nd-gen)
Tensor cores: 384 (3rd-gen)
NVLink SLI: No
PCIe: Gen 4
HDMI: 2.1
HDCP: 2.3
Display connectors: 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4
Power: 3x 8-pin
Recommended power supply: 750W

The only major difference at the GPU level is the clock speed, and even that is minor. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G comes overclocked at 1,800MHz hike speeds, a mild bump from the RTX 3080's stock 1,710MHz specification. The 10GB of knifelike-edge GDDR6X memory comes clocked at reference speeds, only those are ultra-libertine. The describ of this card is interesting though: by slapping "10G" onto the end, MSI's branding might be lending credence to rumors of a 20GB RTX 3080 waiting in the wings.

Another significant change comes in power rescue. Nvidia's RTX 3080 FE needs a pair of 8-pin power connectors, which and then strip into an adapter for the company's proprietary 12-pin adapter. That leaves the Founders Variation card with stint leeway for its 320-watt add together get on power rating–the 2 8-pin connectors can draw 150W, while the PCIe 4.0 slot itself supplies some other 75W. MSI reinforced many power budget items into the Gaming X Triad, outfitting it with a trio of standard 8-pin connections.

Uncomparable, two, three 8-pin power connectors.

Unfortunately—and oddly—MSI's card doesn't let overclockers push atomic number 3 hard as Nvidia's card at a software level. While the Founders Edition lets you increase its power limit by 15 percent in overclocking software (like MSI's awesome Afterburner, which is being updated to tolerate the RTX 30-series), the Gaming X Trio only lets you crank the node improving an extra five percent. We haven't had often time to tinker with overclocking yet, American Samoa we focus on out-of-the-boxful functioning at PCWorld. With the experient RTX 20-series GPUs those power limits had a much bigger effect on overclocking performance than bu upping clock speeds.

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Terzetto 10G cooler design

Merely the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G's biggest differences salt away its design. Where Nvidia used a stinky telescoped PCB with a unique cooling solution, MSI sticks to a traditional board layout for its custom PCB. IT's righteous really outsized, unlike the Founders Variant's standard two-slot design.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition (left) next to MSI's Gaming X III (honourable)

Seriously: It's hard to overstate how massive this card is. The Play X Ternion is roughly 13 inches long, ternion slots thick, and so wide that I can't screw its bracket into the case by hand—my fingers can't reach. Instead, I had to secure the bill of fare using a fine screwdriver. Information technology's so hefty, MSI includes a tinny support bracket in the corner that you can love in underneath the Gaming X Trio to help hold it up.

MSI too devoted a luck of technology attending to reinforcing the Gaming X 3's body structure. IT improved a "rigid metal anti-bending strap" into the half of the board that holds the GPU itself, exclusively to help everything stop strong. Likewise, the whole backplate is made from graphene composite plant rather than traditional plastic or metal. MSI's press material touts graphene as being 100 times stronger than steel, and says the backplate is 4 times stronger than a plastic backplate, patc too being 20 times better at fire u dissipation.

The MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio's backplate uses a graphene composite.

All that reinforcement holds risen an impressive chilling solution, which MSI dubs "Tri Frozr 2." The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gambling X Trio 10G embeds a trio of swooping Torx 4.0 stalk fans in its (formative) shroud. MSI claims the redesigned blades engender 20 percent more atmospheric pressure than the last-gen Torx 3.0 fans at the same 35-decibel randomness stratum. Advisable eventually, they shut off altogether when not under load, so the menu remains silent patc you're browsing your desktop.

Those fans push free-flying through a giant heatsink. The fins include tiny "deflectors" premeditated to add notwithstandin more surface area for cooling, as well as guide the next air in specific directions. Rather than sticking to hard edges for the fins, MSI equipped the Gaming X Trio with "Beckon-sinuate 2.0" fins, which helps to reduce noise levels, the keep company says. Information technology's got not one, not two, but five heatpipes snaking throughout, besides.

That's much of fins! The black metal between the heat sink and the fins on the left go with of the card is the metal "anti-bending strap."

You can see the heatsink "deflectors" 'tween the passion pipe studs.

That's not all. The MSI Gaming X Trio features precision-machined core pipes over the GPU itself to maximize the contact between the RTX 3080 chip and its heatsink. The company as wel uses "an abundance of thermal pads" over the board's components, and created the PCB with 2 ounces of thickened copper to help with inflame dissipation and reliability. MSI took stairs to protect against the higher power demands of the RTX 3080 as well, building additional fuses into the PCB.

Sure, that's a great deal of merchandising lingo, but hither in the real world, altogether that shove works. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G stays cooler than Nvidia's Founders Version under load, and while you might see this large art card in your case, I never once heard its fans ended my CPU liquid-cooler Beaver State case fans, even when stressed to the max.

Speaking of seeing the lineup, the Gaming X Trio includes a thin RGB light strip along the edge of the menu, accent lights in the shroud, and the MSI logotype unofficially of the card likewise illuminates. You tin can tweak them using MSI's "Mystic Light" RGB controls via the company's Dragon Center keep in line app.

MSI is besides upgrading its fantastic Afterburner overclocking and GPU monitoring app to support the RTX 30-series. This includes the "OC Scanner" tool, which scans your artwork card across a variety of voltages to hold an automatic overclock tailored to your specific GPU's capabilities. I was able to play with the upgraded version of Afterburner a bit chip before this embargo lift. While the OC Scanner worked as advertised, the echt-world results weren't game-changing.

Port report: The MSI Gaming X Trio matches the Nvidia Founders Edition's 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a loadout.

The automatic overclocking adds only 42MHz to the card's core clock speeds, and 200MHz to its computer storage time speeds. In practice, the performance uplift was negligible, adding about three frames per ordinal to gaming performance results at 4K solution. Not three pct; three frames. Nvidia's machinelike overclocking API is renowned for staying middle-class, so you might Be competent to squeeze more succus out of the card manually. Still, it's not an auspicious start for people hoping Ampere will Army of the Righteou you push overclocks to blistering new levels. The lack of a dual-BIOS switch may also irk overclockers.

Fortunately, the RTX 3080 is implausibly fast as-is. Onto the benchmarks.

Next page: Our mental test system, gaming benchmarks begin

Our test system

Our votive art card test organisation is a couple years old, but packed with some of the quickest complementary components available to put any potential performance bottlenecks squarely on the GPU. Most of the hardware was provided by the manufacturers, but we purchased the ice chest and storage ourselves.

Intel Core i7-8700K processor ($300 on Amazon) overclocked to 5GHz all cores
EVGA CLC 240 nonopening-loop liquid ice chest ($105 on Amazon)
Asus Maximus X Sub motherboard
64GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4/2933 ($355 on Amazon)
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 power supplying ($352 on Amazon)
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB case, with front and acme panels separate and an extra rear devotee installed for improved airflow
2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs ($70 each on Amazon)

The overclocked 5GHz Core i7-8700K performs as well as the stock Core i9-10900K in games. For more info on why we're stick a PCIe 3.0 organization with an Intel chip rather than an AMD Ryzen system with PCIe 4.0 to take potential advantage of the RTX 3080's PCIe 4.0 connector, read our GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review. (In a nutshell, Nvidia says fast chips make a bigger dispute than PCIe 4.0 in performance.)

We're comparing the $750 MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G against Nvidia's $700 GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Version, of feed. We've also included results for a bunch of prior-gen Founders Variant cards: Nvidia's $800 GeForce RTX 2080, $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti, and the old $700 GTX 1080. (MSRP prices for the 1080 and 2080 started at $100 less, merely Nvidia charged a agio for the FE models.) Because soh many owners of the $700 GTX 1080 Te decided to skip over the lackluster carrying into action increase in the likewise priced RTX 2080, we're also including the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC2 in our roundup. Our GTX 1080 Atomic number 2 Founders Edition died years ago, the only Nvidia GPU ever to expire in our hands. AMD has never offered a Radeon GPU that competes at this level, with the Radeon VII falling slightly stern the RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Cordyline terminalis.

We test a variety show of games spanning various engines, genres, and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Each game is reliable exploitation its in-game benchmark at the highest possible graphics presets unless otherwise famous, with VSync, frame charge per unit caps, period of time ray tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, along with any other vendor-specific technologies corresponding FidelityFX. We've also enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to labour these cards to their limits. We run for each one bench mark at least three times and list the average result for each test. We tested the experienced cards using Nvidia's publicly available 452.06 Halting Ready number one wood, and the RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio and Founders Edition models using a 452.16 driver provided Old to reviewers.

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Play X Trio gaming benchmarks

With its modest overclock, the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Three 10G comes out onwards of Nvidia's Founders Edition, but just scarcely. In and of itself, we're simply going to present these graphs with marginal comment until our final analysis at the end of this review. For Sir Thomas More in-depth comparisons around how the RTX 3080 stacks up versus preceding-gen graphics cards, or a deeper check out once again, check out our original Nvidia RTX 3080 FE recap.

These RTX 3080 card game are monsters at 4K and 1440p, and they're fast adequate that you tush enable ray tracing and DLSS while still playing at those idealistic resolutions.

Horizon Zero Get through

Yep, Sony exclusives are hitting the PC now. Apparent horizon Zero Dawn hit Steam with some performance issues, but the most egregious ones have been mostly cleared upward thanks to calculating work from the developers, and the brave topped the sales charts for weeks after its release. Information technology also seems to respond somewhat to PCIe 4.0 scaling, which bequeath cause this an engrossing inclusion when we shift to a PCIe 4.0-based system in the ulterior.

Horizon Zero Dawn runs on Guerrilla Games' Decima locomotive, the same engine that powers Destruction Stranding. Ambient Occlusion can placid offer iffy results if set to Immoderate, thus we test with that place setting at Medium. Every other visual option is maxed out.

Gears Tactic

Gears Tactics puts it own brutal, fast spin on the XCOM-like musical style. This Unreal Locomotive engine 4-powered game was stacked from the ground up for DirectX 12, and we love beingness able to work a tactics-fashio game into our benchmarking retinue. Better yet, the game comes with a plethora of art options for PC snobs. Thomas More games should devote much caressive like to explaining what flipping completely these visual knobs mean. You lav't use the presets to benchmark Gears Tactics, as information technology intelligently scales to bring off best on your installed ironware, meaning that "Immoderate" connected one graphics card can load different settings than "Ultra" on a weaker circuit board. We manually set all options to their highest possible settings.

Fun fact: The GeForce RTX 3080 Atomic number 26 is the solitary art card that doesn't generate a "Your GPU can't handle this" warning when enabling Sheeny Reflections, and only the 3080 and the RTX 2080 Ti lack that warning for Planate Reflections. Told you these cards are monsters.

Metro Hejira

One of the best games of 2019, Metro Exodus is extraordinary of the unsurpassed-looking games around, too. The latest version of the 4A Engine provides incredibly luscious, radical-detailed visuals, with one of the most stunning real-time ray tracing implementations released yet. We test in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS hors de combat for our basic benchmarks.

Future Page: Benchmarks continue

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is dorsum! Gear case's game defaults to DX12, so we do as well. It gives us a glimpse at the ultra-popular Unsubstantial Engine 4's performance in a traditionalistic shooter.

Crazy Brigade

Strange Brigade is a conjunct third-person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through hordes of mythological enemies. It's a technological showcase, built around the future-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the power to toggle in series compute along and off. It uses Rebellion's custom Azure engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Total War: Troy

The current game in the favorite Summate War saga, Ilion was donated away free for its primary 24 hours connected the Epic Games Store, moving over 7.5 million copies earlier information technology went connected proper sale. Total War: Troy is built using a modified version of the Total Warfare: Warhammer 2 engine, and this DX11 title looks stunning for a ferment-based scheme halt.

F1 2020

The latest in a long line of successful racing games,F1 2020 is a stone to test, supplying a wide array of some in writing and benchmarking options, making it a much more reliable (and fun) option that theForzaserial. It's built connected the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-silky Ego game engine, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia's DLSS technology. We test two laps on the Australia flow from, with sort out skies on and DLSS murder.

Shadow of the Grave Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and information technology's absolutelygorgeous. Square Enix optimized this game for DX12, and recommends DX11 only you'ray using older computer hardware or Windows 7, so we test with DX12.Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses an increased version of the Institution engine that also hopped-upRise of the Tomb Raider and includes nonobligatory very-time irradiatio tracing and DLSS features.

GTA V

This DX11 game that ISN't actually a modality barn-burner like the (somewhat wonky) Red Dead Redemption 2, but still tops the Steam clean charts twenty-four hours in and day out, so we deem information technology more than worthy of testing. RDR2 will melt your graphics card, sure, merely GTA V remains sol popular years after launching that upgraded versions of it will be available on the next-genesis consoles. That's staying power.

We try outIdealistic Theft Automobile V with all options turned to Very High, all Forward-looking Graphics options except extended shadows enabled, and FXAA.GTA Vruns on the RAGE engine and has received substantial updates since its initial launch.

Next page: Rainbox Six Besieging, great power and thermal benchmarks

Rainbow Six Siege

Like GTA V, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege still dominates the Steam charts years after its launch, and it'll constitute acquiring a visual raise for the next-gen consoles. The developers have poured a ton of work into the game's AnvilNext engine over the old age, in time rolling proscribed a Vulkan version of the spunky that we use to test. Aside default, the game lowers the render scaling to increment frame rates, but we set it to 100 percent to benchmark connatural rendering performance on graphics cards. Even still, frame up rates soar.

Power draw, thermals, and noise

We test power draw by looping theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes aft we've benchmarked everything else. We note the highest reading on our Isaac Watts Up Affirmative meter, which measures the power consumption of our entire test system. The first part of the backwash, where all competitive cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the almost demanding portion.

This ISN't a worst-case test; we murder the Core i7 8700K's overclock and specifically choose a GPU-bound game running at a GPU-bound resolution to gauge performance when the artwork posting is sweating hard. If you're playing a game that also hammers the CPU, you could see higher overall system power draws. We saw over 500W of whole-system top executive draw in some scenarios. Deliberate yourself warned.

The RTX 3080 cards draw substantially more power than their predecessors did—even the $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti. Information technology's worth it for this spirit level of performance, in our opinion. MSI's Gaming X Trio sips just somewhat much the Founders Variant mannequin, which makes sense considering its slight overclock, RGB lighting, and three spinning fans.

We test thermals by leaving GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power draw test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end.

Here's spell wholly the heavy metallic-looking and churrigueresco fans on the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G shine. While Nvidia's graphics card manages to stay put cool sufficient and significantly quieter than its Founders Edition predecessors, MSI's custom RTX 3080 runs even chillier. It's almost silent evening low sonorous load. You can hear it a bit, but in practice, the semiliquid CPU tank and suit fans in our test system easily drown it out. This is an exceptional showing past MSI's thermal engineers.

Next page: Should you buy the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio?

Should you buy the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gambling X Trine 10G?

The MSI Gambling X 3 is a terrific option if you're looking a high-end, hard customized GeForce RTX 3080.

Break so far, the price isn't outrageous, every bit MSI charges a specified $50 superior for its substantial cooling solution and customizable RGB lights. The company even tosses a free support bracket into the corner to help go on it from sagging in your scheme. Custom card game with heavy-responsibility cooling solutions corresponding this can sometimes toll $100 or more finished GPU's baseline cost, though MSI's carte lacks luxurious extras such dual-BIOS switches or controllers for your case fans. The Gaming X Trio feels like a comparative bargain. Well, as more than as a $750 graphics carte can feel like a bargain.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G offers previously unknown levels of 4K and 1440p gaming functioning, trouncing the previous-gen RTX 2080 by functioning to 80 percent in some games, and the previous-gen $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship by 25 to 30 percent. IT's so fast, you posterior play shaft of light derived games with DLSS enabled at 1440p and even 4K resolution, eradicating the solving compromises mandatory when activating the keen-edge lighting effects on RTX 20-serial publication cards. And it does sol while running air-conditioned and effectively silent.

The Gaming X Tierce rocks. It should be at the overstep of your list if you're looking at for a impost RTX 3080. However,don't betray for any RTX 3080 if you're gaming at 1080p with exteroception settings cranked. This card is so fast that most games become wholly Central processing unit- or engine-bound at that resolution, negating its large carrying out vantage.

MSI's goliath isn't a slam-dunk ended Nvidia's own RTX 3080 Founders Variation, though, for the most part connected account of its size. Like we said originally: This is a gargantuan graphics card in every possible dimension. You'll need a lot of way in your case to squeeze IT in, and a trio of 8-pin power connectors to operate it. Nvidia's Founders Variation manages to squeeze into a Thomas More acceptable two-slot design thanks to its shortish, usance PCB and unequaled "flow-through" cooling project. Nvidia also graced its Founders Edition with a more premium-looking wrap-around metal artistic, versus the Gambling X Trio's sharply "gamer" vibe and formative winding-sheet.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Variant (left) future to MSI's Gaming X Trio (in good order)

Nvidia set a very high block off with the RTX 3080 Founders Edition. It's not as cool nor As quiet as MSI's offer, but it's cool and quiet enough—and Nvidia priced its card at the RTX 3080's $699 baseline MSRP. The Gaming X Trio's extra girth didn't translate into noticeably higher skeleton rates either. MSI's bill of fare comes with a 900MHz overclock that doesn't effectively move the goad versus the Founders Edition's lineage performance, and attempting to mechanically overclock the GPU using MSI's Afterburner software package simply eked out another 42MHz. The Gaming X Triad's trio of top executive connectors fling more headroom if you do plan connected overclocking your RTX 3080, though.

Bottom line: These are both remarkably designed, tremendously ruling graphics cards. You'd be laughing with either one and only. Smaller size Beaver State better cooling? Pick your poison, and enjoy the blisteringly meteoric frame rates either agency.

Like-minded Nvidia's Founders Edition, the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G well earns our Editors' Pick award. While complete pricing for RTX 3080 partner cards have yet to be revealed as I pen this, I suspect few sullen-metal flagships wish make do to match its $750 price point.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393487/msi-geforce-rtx-3080-gaming-x-trio-review.html

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