MSI GeForce RTX 3080 12GB Suprim X

RTX 3080 Ti Redux

- JARRED WALTON

WITH GRAPHICS CARD shortages still plaguing the world, the fine folks at Nvidia thought what we needed was another extreme GPU priced over $1,000. Shakespeare might opine that a GPU rose by any other name would perform just as fast-or, alternatively, a 3080 Ti by a different name would cost as much.

You can easily imagine the wheels churning behind the scenes. When every GPU produced gets sold immediately, typically at massively inflated prices, why bother with lower-priced models? The RTX 3080 10GB that launched in September 2020 supposedly starts at $700, though it still routinely sells for $1,300 or more. Meanwhile, the RTX 3080 Ti starts at $1,200, but online goes for closer to $1,700. If Nvidia is getting a fair number of GA102 chips that have all 12 memory channels fully functional, but can't meet the 80 SMS (streaming multiprocessors) requirement of the 3080 Ti, why not create an in-between SKU, such as the 3080 12GB?

Nvidia claims the impetus behind the RTX 3080 12GB came from its add-in card (AIC) partners, so there's no reference 3080 12GB, only custom cards such as the MSI RTX 3080 12GB Suprim X we're using for this review. And it's quite the specimen, sporting a triple-fan, triple-slot design and tipping the scales at 1.9kg-not the heaviest graphics card we've ever seen, but no lightweight.

The baseline specs for the 3080 12GB consist of the same 1710MHz boost clock, with 70 SMs instead of the 68 on the 10GB model, but MSI cranks the boost clock up to 1845MHz for the Suprim X. The 3080 Ti has 80 SMs and a 1665MHz boost clock, with the same 12GB of GDDR6X 19Gbps memory. The net result is that MSI's 3080 12GB card has theoretical compute performance that's only three percent lower than the 3080 Ti. Due to the higher clocks, which affect texture and ROPs throughput among other things, the Suprim X even outperforms the 3080 Ti Founders Edition at times.