Introduction

The Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack is the company’s top graphics card based on the swanky new RTX 3080 Ti “Ampere” GPU by NVIDIA. Hot on the heels of its Computex 2021 announcement, we have with us NVIDIA’s new flagship gaming graphics card, a distinction it takes from the RTX 3080. The RTX 3090 is still around in the NVIDIA’s product stack, but it’s positioned as a TITAN-like halo product, with its 24 GB video memory benefiting certain quasi-professional applications, when paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce Studio drivers. The RTX 3080 Ti has the same mandate from NVIDIA as the RTX 3080—to offer leadership 4K UHD gaming performance with maxed out settings and raytracing.

Based on the same 8 nm “GA102” silicon as the RTX 3080, the new RTX 3080 Ti has 12 GB of memory, maxing out the 384-bit GDDR6X memory interface of the chip; while also packing more CUDA cores and other components—10,240 vs. 8,796, 320 TMUs, those many Tensor cores, 80 RT cores, and 112 ROPs. The announcement of the RTX 3080 Ti and its sibling, the RTX 3070 Ti—which we’ll review soon—may have been triggered by AMD’s unexpected return to the high-end gaming graphics segment, with its “Big Navi” Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, particularly the RX 6900 XT, and the RX 6800.

The GeForce Ampere graphics architecture debuts the 2nd generation of NVIDIA RTX, bringing real-time raytracing to gamers. It combines 3rd generation Tensor cores that accelerate AI deep-learning neural nets that DLSS leverages; 2nd generation RT cores that introduce more hardware-accelerated raytracing effects, and the new Ampere CUDA core, that significantly increases performance over the previous generation “Turing.”

The Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack features the highest factory-overclocked speeds from the company for the RTX 3080 Ti, with up to 1710 MHz boost, compared to 1665 MHz reference, a bold new cooling solution design that relies on a large triple-fan heatsink that, and aesthetic ARGB lighting elements that bring your gaming rig to life. Zotac hasn’t provided us with any pricing info yet, we’re assuming the card will end up $100 pricier than the base cards, like Founders Edition.