Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme 12G review: Made for 4K

Note: This review was first published on 17 November 2021.

Sleek performer

The Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme is a beast of a card. You'll need hefty hardware to keep that GA102 GPU cool, and Gigabyte has spared no expense to do that. It's a boxy, faceted design, requiring a good 3.5 slots in your case and measuring 319mm long. You'll only want this if you have a large, spacious case, and then some to spare. 

Gigabyte's Max-covered cooling, as it's calling it, comprises two 115mm fans and one 100mm fan that spin in an alternate pattern, in order to reduce the turbulence of adjacent fans and increase air pressure. They also utilise so-called blade stack fans, where the airflow is split by a triangular fan edge and guided smoothly through the 3D stripe curve on the fan surface. The fans themselves are girded by what Gigabyte refers to as its wind claw design, and they have the appearance of sharp prongs or claws that reinforce each fan and help channel air towards the heat sink. 

The double ball-bearing fans support semi-passive cooling, so they'll remain off when the card isn't working as hard. 

A card this powerful requires an equally hefty heat sink, and Gigabyte has installed an extended heat sink that can soak up even more heat. The GPU die and VRAM components make direct contact with multiple heat pipes and a large vapour chamber to more efficiently transfer heat from the GPU to the heat sink. Finally, the heat sink fins adopt an angular and unequal fin height to help channel air through the fins and increase the contact surface. 

A cutout on the metal backplate helps provide ventilation for air to leave the card, further improving thermal performance. The backplate reinforces the card too and prevents the PCB from flexing, which is especially crucial in a card that is this big and heavy. 

One unique feature is the LCD screen built into the edge of the card. It can display information about your GPU, such as the temperature and clock speeds, in addition to custom text, pictures, and GIFs. You can also adjust the lighting effects via Gigabyte's RGB Fusion 2.0 software. In a whimsical twist, the LCD display supports something called Chibi Time as well. It's a little falcon that lives in the screen and grows up the more time you spend with your graphics card. It eats, sleeps, and flies around, kind of like a little Tamagotchi inside your card. There's not much use for it, but it sure is cute.

A dual BIOS switch on the edge lets you switch between the default OC mode and Silent mode without using the software. In OC mode, the boost clock goes up to 1,830MHz, up from a more modest 1,665MHz reference clock.

According to Gigabyte, it has redesigned the PCB with improved materials and top-grade circuitry for more stable operation. For instance, the card uses a better power phase design that supposedly allows the MOSFETs to operate at a lower temperature, in addition to built-in over-temperature protections and load balancing for each MOSFET. There is also a special PCB coating that confers dust, moisture, and corrosion resistance, which guards against corrosion in humid environments, among other things. 

Round the back, you'll find a plethora of output options, including three HDMI and three DisplayPort connectors for a whopping total of six connectors. Finally, the card required three 8-pin PCIe connectors for power, so bear in mind that that's an additional cable you'll have to contend with.

Test setup

Here are the specifications of our test rig:

• AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU
• MSI MEG X570 Godlike
• Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit
• ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ 4K Gaming Monitor

We'll be comparing the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme against the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Suprim X, and their Founders Edition counterpart.

The following synthetic benchmarks and games were run, with the games chosen from a wide range of genres to give a better indication of performance across different segments:

• 3DMark
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War: Three Kingdoms (Battle)
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Metro: Exodus
• Watch Dogs: Legion

3DMark

3DMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

The Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti doesn't exhibit any significant differences with the other competing cards here, and most results are within a few percentage points of each other. 

1080p Benchmarks (Max Settings)

In real-world benchmarks however, the Gigabyte card seemed to underperform in select titles. This was most pronounced in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, where it was around 12% slower than the ASUS card. 

1440p Benchmarks (Max Settings)

The Gigabyte card continued to trail slightly at 1440p as well, although the differences were less pronounced. It also managed to edge ahead of the ASUS card in Watch Dogs: Legion. 

4K Benchmarks (Max Settings)

Performance evens out at 4K, with the Gigabyte card even taking the lead in most titles. In Watch Dogs: Legion, it edged ahead to a 9% advantage. 

Ray Tracing Benchmarks (4K, Max Settings)

With ray tracing turned on at 4K, all the cards were mostly neck-and-neck with each other. However, the Gigabyte model managed to squeeze out the slimmest of leads in both titles. 

Temperature and power

Temperature numbers were disappointing, and despite the large and hefty cooler, the Gigabyte card still ran hotter than the ASUS and MSI models. It's not a game-changing difference, but when performance numbers are this close, thermal performance matters a lot more.  

Conclusion

The Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme is going up against some serious competition. While it flags at 1080p, it regains its footing at 4K, which is the resolution that anyone who is willing to pay for a card like this probably plays at. Unfortunately, cooling performance is just about average, running slightly hotter than even the Founders Edition model. At S$2,730, it is a significant investment that you'll want to weigh carefully. It's a great card, but the fact remains that the competition is simply putting out better numbers. For the price, you might want to consider shelling out a little more for the ASUS model instead. 

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