nVidia 3080 opinions & discussion

[Sneakytiger]

i'm holding off till about novenber time when the ti and super editions will most likely be released.

[albert]

I cancelled my order. I felt things were moving too slow in terms of delivery and too fast in terms of AMD.

[TeaLeaf]

Component problems are emerging as users are discovering what is causing the crash to desktop problem being seen.  AIB partners seem to have swapped out some of the important 'more expensive' MLCC components on the reference design and put in cheaper (and noisier) POSCAPs.  Reference Design uses 5 x POSCAP + 1 x MLCC.   Some 3080's have 4 x POSCAP + 2 x MLCC.   The problem cards seem to be the ones running 6 x POSCAP and zero MLCC.  The really nasty side is that if you have really good cooling, the GPU Boost kicks in more, so the interference gets worse and the GPU crashes more.   So if you watercool your GPU then you're in the worst situation of all (ignoring LN2 etc).

The really interesting article explaining the problem is here:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/what-real-what-can-be-investigative-within-the-crashes-and-instabilities-of-the-force-rtx-3080-andrtx-3090/

For those who want the simplified version, the article spawned the below JayzTwoCents video.
[video=youtube;x6bUUEEe-X8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bUUEEe-X8[/video]

Perhaps only buy one with the 6 x MLCC's andd no POSCAP's.   Or wait until they all change out the cheap components for a minimum of 2 x MLCC's.

[Mikep1212]

I'd love to get one on the bench and test the difference between Tantalum and ceramic capacitors. says more about the silicon than it does the other components.

[albert]

Perhaps only buy one with the 6 x MLCC's andd no POSCAP's.   Or wait until they all change out the cheap components for a minimum of 2 x MLCC's.

From the Jay video, the founders cards (80 and 90) had 2 x MLCCs and 4 x POSCAP. MSI had the same as the founders (top end MSI), EVGA and iColour (or whatever that was) had 6 x POSCAP.

So what's the liklihood of actually ever seeing a 6 x MLCC card?

[albert]

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/evga-nvidia-rtx-3080-capacitor-caused-crashes

EVGA denying responsibility. Claiming they fixed all 6 POSCAP version post launch. Pre-launch samples had the bad config still.

[sulky_uk]

If you still haven't received your 3080 or 3090 it might be worth watching this and then deciding if you need to cancel and switch brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bUUEEe-X8

it seems that some companies skimped on the power delivery and in the 6 array delivery system used either 5 POSCAPS and 1 MLCC group (cheaper) or 6 POCAPS and 0 MLCC groups (cheapest). For info the nvidia FE cards have 2 MLCC groups , the RTX 3080 ASUS TUF Gaming OC has 6 MLCC groups

EVGA release statement confirming why they didn't release their cards on the release date as they found the issue on theirs. https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/evga-nvidia-rtx-3080-capacitor-caused-crashes

more info here

 https://videocardz.com/newz/manufacturers-respond-to-geforce-rtx-3080-3090-crash-to-desktop-issues


Link to cards POCCAP and MLCC Group counts (with sources), remember 5 or 6 POSCAPS is bad and 2 or more MLCC Groups  is good

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/izmi1k/ampere_poscapmlcc_counts/


ref article (English text, German video)

[albert]

The other thread has discussion on this already mate.

[sulky_uk]

I looked for similar "titled" threads but didn't see any, so posted this. So the moral of the story is maybe  a new thread should have been started when  that thread started discussing this issue. I didnt see those comments  so thought it hadnt been discussed. At least people can see it easier now

[uni]

I wrote out an entire post before and it seems to have disappeared.

Anyone considering a 3080 is probably better off waiting until AMD show their hand on Oct 28th. Things point to the card being close to the 3080 in terms of performance (I've see some suggestions it may perform better) and with 16gb vram compared to the 10gb on the 3080. What this likely means is when AMD announce something Nvidia will have something to counter them and there have been so many leaks from AIBs pointing to the Ti/Super variants of these cards. Certainly seems from the leaks so far a 20gb variant of the 3080 card is in the pipelin and will likely be their counter to whatever AMD announce.

I'd be quite mad if I managed to get a 3080 and in a short space of time a 20gb variant came out. It's going to happen, Nvidia do this all the time.

[TeaLeaf]

(when referring to MLCC below, one MLCC refers to 'a block of 10 MLCCs being arranged in the same area that a single POSCAP covers'.  You need ten of the smaller MLCC caps to get the total capacity needed and equivalent to the single POSCAP)

Video shows EVGA had one MLCC, not none.  EVGA says they use two MLCC.   Some review samples had none!    Digging further, it seems that the EVGA FTW3 uses two MLCC, the EVGA XC3 uses one MLCC.

Gigabyte uses zero MLCC.
Colorful/iGAIN uses zero MLCC.
Reference Design (from the published BoM) uses one MLCC.
EVGA XC3 uses one MLCC.
Founder's Edition has two MLCC
EVGA FTW3 uses one MLCC.
MSI uses two MLCC.
ASUS TUF uses six MLCC.

So what's the liklihood of actually ever seeing a 6 x MLCC card?

From what they said, there is a 100% chance we will see a 3080 with six MLCC as ASUS TUF already does (according to the video).  What makes it more interesting is that if you go to somewhere like Scan or Overclockers, the pictures of the ASUS TUF show six POSCAPs, so perhaps these were very early review samples?

As has been suggested, wait for the AMD launch, if for no other reason than more VRAM.   I seem to recall that there is already a game out there that wants you to have 16GB VRAM.   /looks at his 2GB VRAM GPU and gulps :blush:

[Chaosphere]

Never buy GPUs within the first few months of launch, its just daft. Let the kinks get ironed out and supply kick in, at least.

As others have said... AMD, 20GB... just wait, you've managed with whatever set up you have for this long, another month or two won't hurt.

That or... 3090 buy buy buy yes yes many frames, good value. Wow.*

:flirty:

*Happy to accept donor 3090s for Christmas. Not a problem.

[TeaLeaf]

Sulky's thread merged.  
OP thread title slightly amended.

[uni]

The 3090 honestly seems a bit of a disapointment, it's around 10-15% faster gaming wise for 2x the price. It was marketed as a Titan card but they have'nt unlocked some features that available on the previous Titan card so in 1 or 2 benchamrks it's something like 30% slower which is just insane. That and it takes upwards of 400w in some instances you need a small power plant for the thing.

Seems Nvidia went with that Samsung 8nm chip which by all accounts it a bit gash and just threw watts at the thing to get the results you see now.

[Mikep1212]

yeah, as i said earlier in the thread I'm not impressed with this new Samsung Silicon.

Seems to be very unstable and is being run right on the edge to get anything like a decent bench.