While we watch with some interest the gradual lowering of
prices in the video card market , it seemed like a good times to dust off our
test system and put under the knife one of the most interesting customizations
built around the NVIDIA GA102-200 GPU .
A graphics processor that already in the Fouders Edition has
given us pleasant food for thought returns to the field in a lush guise to have
its say on the current generation and, probably, also on the next.
Packaging, equipment and design
Being a premium solution, even the box and the equipment
fully suggest the segment to which this card belongs.
A real treasure
chest, inside which we will find the documentation, a Suprim branded soft-touch
gaming mat and the vertical support for the GPU. Tronfia, in the center of the
package, we find her. We are facing a real heavyweight in the category, the one
that we do not hesitate to call the largest RTX 3080 on the market. So here is
the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X with its 336 mm of brightness and, of course,
RGB LEDs. Today we will try to understand how much its size is justified by the
dissipation capabilities and in-game performance.
The oversized dimensions of this splendid GPU are seasoned
with a unique accuracy in the design, made of refined diagonals, metallic
materials and a masterfully brushed livery.
The 3080 Suprim X sports a finally metallic backplate ,
accompanied by a backlit MSI logo solidly with the rest of the board. Three
fans on the front, 90mm with TORX 4.0 design in the context of a Tri Frozr 2S
cooling system. There are also three power ports, all 8-pin, for a claimed
total of 370W and an MSI recommended minimum power supply of 850W for the
entire system. Like all premium solutions, even in the Suprim X we find the
switch for the double BIOS , comfortably lying next to the power supply area.
Four outputs are available, provided by three DisplayPort
1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. All of them fully support video streams with 4K
resolution at 120Hz.
Temperatures and noise
Thermal management is perhaps the crux when we go to
evaluate a so-called custom card. Among the many elements of detachment
compared to the Founders Edition, what could most affect the performance of the
card is precisely its dissipation capacity. In our review of the RTX 3080
Founders Edition we recorded widely average idle temperatures with
significantly higher in-game peaks. Certainly not a "cold" card but
it has always been within the ranges suggested by the parent company. With the
Suprim X we travel on another track .
The temperatures, while remaining perfectly in line in an
idle state or in medium-sized loads, in intensive gaming sessions never even
touched 80 degrees. We have always remained constantly anchored in the lower
part of the 70 with peaks of 78 degrees in the most agitated situations .
Values that could probably be even lower since our tests were carried out when
the heat arrived, with a stable ambient temperature of around 27 degrees.
It is a card on which we had enormous expectations from this
point of view, but our sample did not disregard them. Obviously, with these
values, the noise level was also excellent. In no case was it necessarys to
conduct special studies with open houses, but we decided to check the situation
anyway. As widely predictable, the temperatures dropped by 5 degrees in a
generalized manner but, having never even touched critical thresholds, the
system did not benefit from this operation.
Benchmark and gaming
So we come to the field test. The mastodon produced by MSI
features a factory overclock that brings the Core Clock up to 1920 MHz in
Extreme mode , compared to "only" 1710 MHz of the FE model. Will that
be enough to register a real in-game difference? Our answer, predictably, is not
always .
There are some aspects of PC Gaming that remain unchanged
and some game conditions that tend to level the performance to the point of
thinning out the differences. The CUDA Cores are 8704, corresponding to 68 SM,
all on the NVIDIA GA102-200 GPU produced on an 8 nanometer node.
NVIDIA RTX technologies are supported also and above all
thanks to the presence of 68 second generation RT Cores and 272 third
generation Tensor Cores.
The onboard memory, 10GB, travels on 320-bit Bus for 760GB /
s thanks to the adoption of the GDDR6X standard, probably the biggest
difference compared to the RTX 3070 . In the main benchmark tools, the 3080
Suprim X proved to be decidedly more agile than the FE model, while in the
1080p Gaming PC the differences flattened out enormously, as we had the
opportunity to anticipate previously. In fact, there are no substantial
differences. The oscillations are rarely wider than 2-3 frames per second in
the average framerate, so the real gain compared to the model designed by NVIDIA
in terms of performance is minimal, albeit present. Minimal differences that,
however, especially in titles like Forza Horizon 4 and Shadow of the Tomb
Raider, make it end up dangerously close to the RTX 3080 Ti.
Even in less canonical tests, such as Doom Eternal , free
from the constraints of benchmarking toolsintegrated into more traditional
titles, we were able to enjoy a solid experience but not too far from NVIDIA
standards. Always higher scores in any case, a clear imposition in the
hierarchies of the sub-family to which they belong, with never fluctuating
results and without the slightest hint of effort.
With Ray Tracing active the results were excellent ,
confirming and consolidating the target of this surprising chip on 2K at over
60 frames per second. To raise the bar of playability even more intervenes the
DLSS. In supported games, NVIDIA's neural network technology can easily achieve
even the goal of 4K gaming at 60 FPS with loss of detail unnoticeable to the
naked eye . In terms of performance, we cannot say that we have witnessed a
change of band, since the chip is exactly the same present under the body of
the Founders Edition variant.
As for all the video cards on which we have tried and will
continue to try to give you our opinion in this particular historical moment,
even with this example we are pervaded by a deep sense of uncertainty that has
accompanied us for more than a year now. Launched in November together with the
entire MSI Suprim lineup , the RTX 3080 Suprim X 10G was offered at a
recommended price of 939 Euros , a figure that is naturally far from the street
price., currently close to 1400 Euros at best. Numbers that clearly have
nothing to do with what producers and partners have planned but which cannot be
left out of the equation. Some of the scores obtained almost made us cry out to
a miracle, sometimes even reaching above the best performing chips on the card.
However, none of the benchmarks we have obtained in any way justify a surcharge
of 50% or more.
Forgetting for a moment the price factor, what MSI has done
with the 3080 Suprim X we have experienced and felt, but not heard, in thermal
management. Perhaps this is precisely what we need to focus on in order to be
able to give a real evaluation to the card, as no one expected more than what
the excellent GA102 has to offer. The Taiwanese giant has been able to tame the
beast with a sumptuous piece of hardware that will easily accompany its lucky
owners with top performance for at least a couple of generations.
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