Thorough Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti testing in Unreal Engine shows it to be more of a hot and loud brass RTX 3090 than a cool and quiet titanium RTX 3080

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti aims to fill the considerable gap between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. Pricewise, it is closer to the latter card at US$1,199 MSRP (3080: US$699; 3090: US$1,499) but in terms of VRAM amount it is much nearer to the non “titanium” variant with 12 GB to offer users (3080: 10 GB; 3090: 24 GB). Puget Systems has put the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti through a battery of Unreal Engine 4.26 tests, and while it produced favorable performance results as a whole, there were concerns about its heat and noise emissions and its stability.

In each of the measured benchmarks, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti unsurprisingly sat in between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, as would be expected. However, the RTX 3080 Ti produced results that were mostly closer to those of the top-end SKU. For instance, in the overall performance analysis, the latest Ampere-based card delivered a score of 1,785 points, leaving it +8.51% ahead of the RTX 3080 and near to the RTX 3090, which managed a mere +3.47% advantage over the RTX 3080 Ti. But as the source points out, the considerable difference in VRAM amount leaves the newer card struggling a bit in more memory-intensive tasks.

There are problems to point out here for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti too. The practically “brass” (tough, but not quite as strong as titanium in specific strength) version of the 3090 has a smaller cooler, leading to higher heat and noise emissions; in fact Puget states this “makes it both louder and hotter than any other RTX 3000 series card”. On top of that, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti was involved in various system crashes, pointing to the need for a new driver. The card could appeal to gamers who want something akin to RTX 3090 performance with a similar core count (10,240 vs. 10,496 for the 3090 (3080: 8,704)) but at a cheaper price point.

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