Let there be more light in the EVGA logos on the top and end of the FTW3 Ultra.

Next to the fan header, you’ll find an ARGB header that you can plug into your motherboard to tie it together with your graphics card’s chosen lighting.īoth features can be controlled via EVGA’s clean, easy-to-use Precision X1 software, which also provides access to iCX monitoring, an on-screen display that shows vitals during gaming, and overclocking controls-including an easy-peasy OC Scanner tool for modest one-click overclocking tied to your specific GPU’s particular capabilities. Cards like the similarly high-end Asus ROG Strix have offered this before, and it proves especially handy if you use your card to control a front case fan pointed directly at the GPU. You can plug one of your case’s PWM fans into it and have the fan be intelligently controlled by the graphics card’s temperature directly, rather than by your motherboard. If you push things too far and things go bad, it’s very nice to be able to flip a switch and have another BIOS you can safely boot into.įan and ARGB headers on the end of the EVGA FTW3 Ultra.ĮVGA also equipped the FTW3 Ultra with a PWM fan header on the end of the card. A dual-BIOS switch is really a killer feature for overclockers, though. We test with the stock BIOS, but the secondary “OC” BIOS increases fan speeds to reduce temperatures and give Nvidia’s GPU Boost feature more thermal headroom to hit higher clocks (potentially-your luck in the silicon lottery always determines how far a GPU can go).

There’s also a dual-BIOS switch on the edge of the card. EVGA justifies the FTW3 Ultra’s premium by slapping on extra features you won’t find on those other cards.ĭon’t forget about the higher power limit and iCX sensors, which can prove helpful while overclocking. The unique coolers on the RTX 3080 Founders Edition and MSI Gaming X Trio work pretty darn well too, though, and they’re cheaper. It tames even the power-hungry RTX 3080 GPU with ease and remains utterly silent even during hot and heavy gaming sessions. That’s a lot of marketing-speak and technical talk, but bottom line? This cooler flat-out works. EVGA says it redesigned the heatsink to allow air to move more freely throughout, then matched that with cut-outs in the custom PCB and aluminum backplate to let air flow through the card (perhaps in a nod to the Founders Edition’s unique flow-through design). It’s infused with “180-degree” semi-circular heatpipes that EVGA says increases contact area by 65 percent, and bolstered by a large, unified copper block helping to keep both the GPU and memory cool. EVGA slapped an absolutely massive heatsink on this triple-slot card. There’s indeed plenty of metal for that air to cool. Paired with the 10GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory, the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra winds up just a hair faster than the Founders Edition in games, but really, all three of these cards deliver essentially the same out-of-the-box performance. Like the MSI Gaming X Trio, EVGA factory-overclocks the FTW3 Ultra to 1.8GHz out of the box, a 90MHz increase over the Founders Edition’s reference specs. Display connectors: 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4.Here’s a high-level look at what’s inside the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra:

The special sauce for custom cards lies in their specialized cooling design and extra features. Check out our GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review for a deeper look at what’s new in Ampere. EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra specs, features, and designīased on raw under-the-hood specs, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra is largely similar to the Nvidia Founders Edition and essentially identical to the MSI Gaming X Trio, because they’re all based on the same “GA102” RTX 3080 chip using the new “Ampere” GPU architecture. The $810 GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra also relies on heavy metal to run just as cool and even quieter than MSI’s card, but then it loads up on extravagant, overclocking-friendly extras like a dual-BIOS switch, sensors embedded throughout the board to provide temperature insight for all sorts of board components, built-in fan and RGB headers, and more. The MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio went with a beefy three-slot cooler to run much cooler and quieter than Nvidia’s FE, for $60 more.

3080 power consumption