The Asus ROG Strix LC RTX 3080 Ti sets a new record for out-of-box performance, helped no doubt by the abundant RGB lighting – you all know RGB makes your PC parts run faster, right? Despite only having half the VRAM of the RTX 3090, a healthy factory overclock coupled with excellent cooling makes this the fastest graphics card we’ve ever tested, at least until the next heavily factory-overclocked card shows up. This could possibly be one of the best graphics cards you could buy it right now, if you could actually buy it.
The record-breaking formula isn’t much of a secret: deliver more power and better cooling to the GPU, enabling faster clock speeds. That’s exactly what Asus has done with the ROG Strix LC line. We’ve seen the same core design before, in the ROG Strix LC RX 6800 XT specifically, but the RTX 3080 Ti model needs to step it up a notch. Asus has added a third 8-pin PEG power connector, giving a total theoretical maximum power delivery of 525W. Here are the specs, compared to the other RTX 3080 Ti cards we’ve reviewed:
| Graphics Card | RTX 3080 Ti Asus | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 Ti Zotac |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | GA102 | GA102 | GA102 |
| Process technology | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N |
| Transistors (billion) | 28.3 | 28.3 | 28.3 |
| Die size (mm^2) | 628.4 | 628.4 | 628.4 |
| Texting / CUs | 80 | 80 | 80 |
| GPU cores | 10240 | 10240 | 10240 |
| Tensor Cores | 320 | 320 | 320 |
| RT cores | 80 | 80 | 80 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 1860 (OC mode), 1830 (Game mode) | 1665 | 1710 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 19 | 19 | 19 |
| VRAM (GB) | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| VRAM bus width | 384 | 384 | 384 |
| ROPs | 112 | 112 | 112 |
| TMUs | 320 | 320 | 320 |
| TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) | 38.1 | 34.1 | 35 |
| TFLOPS FP16 (Tensor) | 152 (305) | 136 (273) | 140 (280) |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | 912 | 912 | 912 |
| TDP (watts) | 380? | 350 | 350 |
Essentially, these are all the same GPU, so the only real difference is in the clock speeds and power. Asus does not specify a TGP card, but does recommend at least an 850W power supply. Based on our testing, which we’ll discuss later, we’ve listed an estimated TDP of 380W. Enabling OC mode increased the power limit by another 10% meaning the card could potentially consume up to 420W, but in practice other limits (like clock speed) come into play, which we’ll see in the power test on page four.
In addition to increasing the clocks, Asus offers a number of other benefits. For example, you get two HDMI 2.1 ports, along with the usual gamut of three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs. While DisplayPort generally remains the preferred solution among gamers today, HDMI 2.1 technically allows for higher resolutions and bandwidths. We haven’t seen any DisplayPort 2.0 hardware yet, and HDMI 2.1 offers up to 8K 60Hz over a single cable, which should prove more than adequate for years to come.
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