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

Overview

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

Sleek performer

The Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Xtreme is a animal of a poster. You ‘ll need goodly hardware to keep that GA102 GPU cool, and Gigabyte has spared no expense to do that. It ‘s a boxlike, faceted design, requiring a effective 3.5 slots in your subject and measuring 319mm long. You ‘ll lone want this if you have a bombastic, broad sheath, 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 interchange model, in order to reduce the turbulence of adjacent fans and increase air out press. They besides utilise alleged blade push-down list fans, where the airflow is split by a triangular winnow edge and guided smoothly through the 3D stripe wind on the fan coat. 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 sports fan and help channel air travel towards the heat sink.

The double ball-bearing fans support semi-passive cool, so they ‘ll remain off when the card is n’t working deoxyadenosine monophosphate hard .
A menu this mighty requires an equally hefty inflame sink, and Gigabyte has installed an extend hotness dip that can soak up tied more inflame. The GPU die and VRAM components make direct contact with multiple heat pipes and a big vapor chamber to more efficiently transfer heat from the GPU to the heat bury. ultimately, the heat sinkhole fins adopt an angular and inadequate fin acme to help channel air out through the fins and increase the contact open .

A cutout on the alloy backplate helps provide ventilation for atmosphere to leave the card, far improving thermal performance. The backplate reinforces the poster besides and prevents the PCB from flexing, which is specially crucial in a card that is this big and heavy.

One unique sport is the LCD shield built into the edge of the batting order. It can display information about your GPU, such as the temperature and clock speeds, in addition to custom textbook, pictures, and GIFs. You can besides adjust the lighting effects via Gigabyte ‘s RGB Fusion 2.0 software. In a capricious bend, 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 fourth dimension you spend with your graphics card. It eats, sleeps, and flies around, kind of like a little Tamagotchi inside your poster. There ‘s not much use for it, but it certain is cute .

A dual BIOS interchange 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, improving from a more modest 1,665MHz reference book clock.

According to Gigabyte, it has redesigned the PCB with improved materials and high-grade circuitry for more stable operation. For case, the poster uses a better ability phase design that purportedly allows the MOSFETs to operate at a lower temperature, in summation to built-in over-temperature protections and load reconciliation for each MOSFET. There is besides a special PCB coat that confers dust, moisture, and corrosion underground, which guards against corrosion in humid environments, among other things .

Round the back, you ‘ll find a overplus of output options, including three HDMI and three DisplayPort connectors for a whack full of six connectors. finally, the circuit board required three 8-pin PCIe connectors for exponent, so have a bun in the oven in mind that that ‘s an extra cable you ‘ll have to contend with .