Picking the right 3080 card & manufacturer ?

[C20]

People have been advising to downclock your card by ~50 Mhz to avoid the crashing issues if you're experiencing them, but I've missed a few days of reports on it so I'm not sure if that's still the advice being given out. It's early days, and the manufacturer's and NVIDIA will find a solution. There's a solid chance that the smartest folks of the community are already working on BIOS updates and workarounds for the issue to prevent customers needing to RMA.

If it's not fixable with drivers and BIOS updates, AIB's will likely offer an optional recall to replace the affected cards (6x POSCAP) with a 20 MLCC+4 POSCAP versions. I would also expect they'll attempt to recover some of the costs from NVIDIA, though I wouldn't expect much success.

These sorts of issues are things that could be avoided if AIB's had been given time to actually get their products tested. From what we've heard, NVIDIA gave them very little time to get cards to market, so testing was brief. Add in the fact that NVIDIA didn't bother to provide them with drivers until the very last minute, it didn't bode well for being a flawless release.

It's one of those issues you can't predict. Not a single engineer would have been able to say that the POSCAP's would have been insufficient for the expected clock speeds. As far as can see on the paper, everything looks to be in spec. It is only through testing, revising, and retesting that the outcome would have been known.

I just wish they would hurry the fuck up and get more stock back in stores.
Hoping they have stock before SL releases.

Batches being sent to each retailer are 10-50 units each time, being sent every 3-6 working days, varying from country to country and retailer to retailer. In some cases, these unit numbers are spread across all AIB's, and in other cases, those batches are from specific AIB's. You might get a mix of 5 Asus cards, 3 EVGA cards and 8 MSI cards, or you could get 16 Asus cards of different models in their range. In some rare circumstances, there's reports of retailers getting the same brand and model for the entire batch (e.g. 16x MSI Ventus).

Pre-orders for the 3080 across the entire world are still being processed, so if you're not already on the preorder list, expect a lead time of around 5 weeks minimum before you should expect any to appear in stock and purchasable (based on statements from retailers in the UK such as Scan, who stopped all orders once they hit their availability estimates for the 6 weeks after release). Even then, you'll still have to be very quick.

Batches are being shipped every day, but they're not sent to every retailer every day, as a trickle of 2-3 cards per day doesn't fulfill a sufficient bulk of preorders at most retailers and ends up costing more in shipping than it would be worth.

Manufacturing capacity has already been increased significantly since release day, but there's room for more. Once there's sufficient stock on hand at retailers and in warehouses, it'll ramp down. That's standard practice, but it does mean you're going to be waiting a while.

On a sidenote regarding availability, I've had a big gripe with the entitlement of people. Everyone knew this was a huge release, but a lot of people went in absolutely expecting that they'd get a card before anyone else. I've seen people arguing on Twitter about "paying money and having no idea when they'll get their product and how that's against the law and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah", and I just wanna tell 'em to stop acting like the sterotyped Karen.

[Azerox]

I just wish they would hurry the fuck up and get more stock back in stores.
Hoping they have stock before SL releases.

My only concern right now, lmao.

[Mirishka]

I got a '3080 cards back in stock!' email at 6:10 the other night, literally right as I refreshed it. Clicked the link, site wouldn't load due to traffic, 2 minutes later the cards were sold out again.

Thanks Best Buy! /sarcasticthumbsup

[thilicen]

I got a '3080 cards back in stock!' email at 6:10 the other night, literally right as I refreshed it. Clicked the link, site wouldn't load due to traffic, 2 minutes later the cards were sold out again.

Thanks Best Buy! /sarcasticthumbsup

Not really sure how that's Best Buy's fault, you expected them to save one for you?

[Mirishka]

Not really sure how that's Best Buy's fault, you expected them to save one for you?

Reading comprehension is hard.

[jacktheking]

Looks like new driver has fixed crashes and many users reporting it fixed issues for them.

[Scifix]

My only concern right now, lmao.

I know that around here (Norway) they arent really expected to be back in stock until at least November, so i just stopped having any hopes

[kukkamies]

The 6800 XT is supposed to be very similar to the 3080 in terms of rasterization performance. The 6900XT will handily beat it.

The leaks are pointing more towards 3070 performance to me... The top tier 6900 XT is so far at 22.5 TFLOPS while 3080 is at 29.8 TFLOPS. Not even close to it in raw calculations. Might beat 3070 in some games, lose in others.
Hope the price will be cheaper and better availability at least.

[vulfrika]

jaycetwocents had a good video on it recently. Basically, some manufactures cheaped out on proper resistor arrays on the card.
The cards have six resistor arrays. The reference card have 5 cheap arrays and one expensive array. Some of the manufactures have 6 cheap arrays, other have 1 expensive but overtuned the card (so it should have had at least 3 expensive arrays) and others again have 6 expensive arrays.

[Temp name]

The leaks are pointing more towards 3070 performance to me... The top tier 6900 XT is so far at 22.5 TFLOPS while 3080 is at 29.8 TFLOPS. Not even close to it in raw calculations. Might beat 3070 in some games, lose in others.
Hope the price will be cheaper and better availability at least.

FLOPs is an awful way of gauging gaming performance, just FYI.
A vega 7 and 1080ti have about the same performance in gaming, but a vega 7 clocks in at 13.44TFLOPS at FP32, while a 1080ti "only" does about 11.34 at FP32.


If that holds up, then AMDs 22TFLOPs should equal ~19TFLOPS on Nvidias side if you only care about gaming, but with new process nodes on both sides, it's impossible to say really.

- - - Updated - - -

jaycetwocents had a good video on it recently. Basically, some manufactures cheaped out on proper resistor arrays on the card.
The cards have six resistor arrays. The reference card have 5 cheap arrays and one expensive array. Some of the manufactures have 6 cheap arrays, other have 1 expensive but overtuned the card (so it should have had at least 3 expensive arrays) and others again have 6 expensive arrays.

Der8aur just released a video about it as well. He only gained ~20mhz swapping out 2 "Poscaps" for MLCC arrays. (They technically aren't POSCAPs, but SMD aluminium polymer caps.. I think)

It's possible that the crashes are caused by just slightly exceeding the spec of what they can do, but that's more on Nvidia for not giving AIBs enough time to test their BIOS's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud6NrbJllzk

[Mars_Trueskills]

FE and TUF cards which all use MLCC both experience the crashes.

I think it's a bit premature to blame the capacitors as the issue, but let's see..

[Echeyakee]

My main concern with AMD is that they had less then stellar track record when it comes to drivers and support. 6900 XT might as well be 2 times better than 3090, but without decent drivers it won't matter.

[Azerox]

I know that around here (Norway) they arent really expected to be back in stock until at least November, so i just stopped having any hopes

I got a pretty early order on a ventus 3x, 28 in line.
Hunting the FE now but that shit is atm more rare then Sha mount.
Lets just hope the big boats from Asia arrive soon.

[Temp name]

I got a pretty early order on a ventus 3x, 28 in line.
Hunting the FE now but that shit is atm more rare then Sha mount.
Lets just hope the big boats from Asia arrive soon.

FE is gone. We might get 1 or 2 shipments more, but I doubt you'll have good luck getting one. Your best bet is just not being picky with AIBs, and picking whatever you can get your hands on.

[Melchior]

I decided not to bother trying to compete with bots and just preordered an ASUS Strix card.

I might end up waiting a while, but at least it's guaranteed. I'm waiting a while for other new components to get released to build the rest of my new PC anyways. If it happens to come before then, I can still make great use of it when it comes.

As for why ASUS, I have had many years of positive experience between their motherboards, monitors, and video cards. I have had mixed experiences with most other brands. The only other brand that's making 3080s that I have not had any negative experience with in the past is EVGA.

[Sylv_]

Yeah, show me the proof.

- - - Updated - - -



I need a new card in the next 4 weeks. Almost feels like I’m being backed into the evga step up corner.

Well, then you need to get the card with 2 of the good resistors, and don't overclock. Underclock! 50mhz less, power 95~+/-.

[Temp name]

You can OC fine with a 2/4 setting its completely stable as reviews show day in day out. There is absolutely no further benefit from full MLCC when even 1/5 stabilizes the cards.

Even 0 MLCC arrays make for stable cards nowadays..
But as Der8aur showed in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud6NrbJllzk) you can get a slight performance bump with more MLCC arrays, since power is more stable

[Strawberry]

I bought MSI 2080Ti Gaming X Trio for cheap. €600. With nearly 2 years warranty left. Works like a charm, +125mhz core and +1000mhz memory. Will try the 400W bios on it.
Might just keep it and wait for refresh.

But if you want to be picky about 3080, Go for Asus Tuf. It's faster than the more expensive MSI 3080 Gaming X Trio while being quieter and cooler.
Not sure if Strix is worth the €200 higher price sticker here in Sweden, but I read it's closing on RTX 3090 performance.

[Temp name]

MLCC have certain "vulnerabilities" do you think it makes a difference if theres more MLCC? Like im thinking TUF is full MLCC which in my mind "exposes" the GPU to statistically more chances of something going wrong.

There's more chance of one of the caps being bad, but also less risk that a bad one will do any damage. MLCCs are (generally) more expensive, but they can store and release their stored charge more quickly, since it's smaller.

I bought MSI 2080Ti Gaming X Trio for cheap. €600. With nearly 2 years warranty left. Works like a charm, +125mhz core and +1000mhz memory. Will try the 400W bios on it.
Might just keep it and wait for refresh.

But if you want to be picky about 3080, Go for Asus Tuf. It's faster than the more expensive MSI 3080 Gaming X Trio while being quieter and cooler.
Not sure if Strix is worth the €200 higher price sticker here in Sweden, but I read it's closing on RTX 3090 performance.

That's a lot of extra money for a strix. I probably wouldn't do it for a 3080 personally.
A 3080 is what.. 800 euro? You'd need 25% more performance from the Strix (or for it to be significantly quieter, and value that enough) for it to be worth it

[Hellobolis]

From what I'm hearing there's quite a big difference between cards because the built-in NVIDIA boost software can make cards with lower quality components crash.

So my question is... does anyone know which are which so far? What cards or manufacturers are confirmed good and which are crashing?

The matter is quoted on both Tomshardware PC Gamer and elsewhere, but I'm not allowed to post links yet apparently

the tldr of the review i glanced at was basically: there aren't any significant performance differences, but the worst one was 12 dB louder than the best one so that's worth looking into.

considering how supply is atm i wouldn't worry overly much about the initial issues some of these cards have, good chance they will be solved by the time it's your turn to receive a card (aka probably next year).