Review – Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G

In the slew of Ampere-powered RTX 30-series of graphic card reviews, we have the brand new Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G. The new Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G and there are a lot of interesting design choices that come alongside the massive performance increment.

As of now, the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G is only priced at RM 3789. Albeit slightly expensive, but it’s still an amazing value considering the performance increment when compared to the RTX 2080 Ti which is almost double the price when it’s first launched.

Specifications

Design

The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G is currently the second new addition to the ‘EAGLE’ lineup, which was first introduced back in April. The typical triple-fan design is pretty much expected for a high-end tier card, but the changes are under the shroud itself.

For the cooling fans, Gigabyte equipped the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G with its usual trademark cooling fans, where the middle fan will spin in a different direction which will provide a larger coverage to improve the cooling performance. The cooler doesn’t seem to have any overexaggerated RGB lightings on it, pretty much similar to the mainstream Gigabyte card design that we’ve seen in the past, but I’m not really a fan of the dark translucent cover on the shroud.

The card comes with a rather thick heatsink to provide the GPU with adequate cooling, which gives it a 2.5 slot thickness.  The PCB is now shorter, and that comes with an advantage where the third fan is now a direct passthrough for the heatsink fins, which further lowers down the temperature. We’ll show and talk more about the temperature later.

With the shorter PCB, some adjustments need to be made. NVIDIA’s RTX 3080 Founders Edition has moved the power socket to the edge of where the PCB, which is why the cables are coming in at a weird angle. Luckily, Gigabyte has through about this and included extensions so that the power socket is maintained at the edge of the shroud instead.

And speaking of the power socket, Gigabyte opted for a double 8-pin socket instead of using NVIDIA’s new 12-pin design. For us consumers, that means we can continue using whatever power supply that we have (given the power is sufficient, NVIDIA recommends at least 700W on the PSU) without having to plug in another adapter cable.

As for the output, the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G has a total of three DisplayPort and probably for the first time ever, two HDMI ports. Unlike the previous-gen RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA has decided to exclude USB-C for its RTX 30 series cards this time, which is a shame because it’s actually a really convenient inclusion, especially for those who use a lot of devices and gadgets with USB-C ports.

Test System Setup

For our games benchmark test, we’ve selected a number of AAA titles to run at its highest possible settings using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 31°C:

Games Benchmark

While 1080p is a piece of cake for both cards, we can see that the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G is overpowering the RTX 2080 Ti in pretty much all of the games. For games that perform similarly on both cards, they’re CPU bound for some reason, probably because of the beta driver.

The performance gap between both cards is much more significant as we move on to a higher resolution at 1440p. Other than the raw performance alone, the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G performs much better than the RTX 2080 Ti on games with ray tracing enabled, showing no signs of throughout the entire gameplay.

4K gaming has always been the toughest challenge even for a powerful GPU like the RTX 2080 Ti, but that’s no longer the issue now. NVIDIA introduced its RTX 30 series as the GPUs that are made for 4K gaming and looking at the results we have here, we can say that NVIDIA definitely nailed this one for sure. The RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G crushed the RTX 2080 Ti in pretty much all of the tests we’ve done. While there are still RTX games that weren’t able to run at an average 60FPS+, the games are much more playable with the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G as compared to the RTX 2080 Ti (we’re using the highest settings for ray tracing for the test, just so you know).

Operating Temperature

Since Gigabyte has equipped such a colossal cooler on the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G, it gave us a false impression of the GPU running really hot. After leaving the card running on FurMark stress test for 6 hours, the GPU temperature maxed only at 66°C, which is really impressive after knowing that it’s constantly drawing 330-340W power throughout the stress test. The GPU temperature drops to 43°C within minutes after we terminated the FurMark stress test.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang claimed that the RTX 30 series will be a huge leap for 4K gaming and ray tracing and we can definitely agree with that after seeing how well the GeForce RTX 3080 performs. Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3080 is the beast that can easily crush the performance of your existing card in pretty much all the existing, latest, and upcoming AAA titles, be it GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 20 series cards.

Due to the limited time I have with the card, getting the data for both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G is the best I can do for now but I believe the data we have here will still serve its purpose as the reference to show how much difference in performance between both cards. If you are previously eyeing on the RTX 2080 Ti, the RTX 3080, and soon to be available RTX 3090 is the best bet you can go for, depending on what kind of budget you have.

As for the RTX 3080 EAGLE OC 10G we have reviewed here, despite the fact that we’re not exactly a fan of the EAGLE cooler design (most of the guys in the office agrees with this), it is still a really powerful card you can buy at this time. The price of RM 3789 is definitely on the expensive side if we were to compare it with the rest, but the card itself does have quite a number of good features that are worth considering ie. excellent cooling performance, two HDMI ports, power connectors that are not in a weird direction, minimalist design.

Pros

• Excellent performance out of the box
• Greatly improved 4K and DXR performance
• Excellent build quality
• Excellent cooling performance
• Runs silently even during full load
• Come with two HDMI ports

Cons

• Launch price is slightly more expensive than others