MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Review – The New Gaming Flagship

So, it is pronounced as “tie” / “ty” and not “tee-eye”. But I prefer the latter, it sounds better than “tie”. Anyway, today we are going to check out MSI’s latest flagship gaming graphics card – the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X. MSI has three RTX 3080 Ti variants, the SUPRIM, Gaming Trio, and Ventus 3X. All of these variants feature a good to excellent cooling performance. But the SUPRIM has all the bells and whistles MSI can think of to slap on their GPU. So, let’s check out how NVIDIA’s latest RTX 3080 Ti GPU performs, in the form of MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X, in our review below.

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X 10G Graphics Card Review

Just like the MSI RTX 3080 SUPRIM X 10G we reviewed, the new RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X has the same set of features, aesthetics and cooler design. You can’t tell which is which without looking at the box or the small sticker label at the back.

The RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X features the company’s Tri Frozr 2S cooling solution. It is similar to the Tri Frozr 2 cooling solution used on the Gaming X Trio variant but slightly larger or “chunkier” than the Frozr 2. It also features three Torx Fan 4.0 fans that cool the large aluminum heatsink.

Seven heat pipes transfer the heat from the cold plate to the aluminum fins. Each aluminum fins have “deflectors” and “Wave-curved 2.0” fin edges that help guide air and reduce airflow harmonics that may result in additional noise. Its memory modules are passively cooled with its close-quarter heat pipe and dedicated heatsink.

The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X also features dual BIOS, where you can choose from “Gaming mode” or “Silent mode”. Both modes have the same clock speeds but the Silent mode has a less aggressive fan profile. During my test, I find that this graphics card is very silent. Just use the Gaming mode to get slightly better performance.

There is also an “Extreme mode” that increases the boost clock speed to 1845 MHz. But you will have to use MSI’s Center app to enable it. NVIDIA’s latest RTX 30 series GPUs have excellent GPU boost technology. It will (automatically) boost higher. Sometimes even close to 2,000MHz or sometimes above; provided that it has enough cooling and power. There’s really no need to manually overclock the GPU, or apply any overclocking mode.

Below are additional features of the RTX 3080 Ti and after that its specifications.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Features

• Programmable Shader: Double the 32-bit floating point (FP32) performance per clock compared to the previous generation Turing GPUs. Factoring in more CUDA Cores and the higher clock speed of RTX 3080 Ti yields 34 Shader TFLOPS for 3080 Ti compared to 14 TFLOPS for RTX 2080 Ti, or more than 2x FP32 for RTX 3080 Ti.
• Second-gen RT Cores: New dedicated RT Cores deliver 2x the throughput of the previous generation, plus concurrent ray tracing and shading and compute, with 67 RT-TFLOPS of processing power.
• Third-gen Tensor Cores: New Tensor Core automatically identifies and removes less important DNN weights and the new hardware processes the sparse network at twice the rate of Turing – 273 Tensor-TFLOPS with sparsity compared to Turing’s 114 TFLOPS.
• NVIDIA Broadcast for AI-powered Video and Voice: Turn any room into a home studio with AI – taking your live streams and video chats to the next level with AI-powered audio and video effects like noise removal, virtual background, and webcam auto frame.
• NVIDIA Reflex: Low Latency Technology: Acquire targets faster, react quicker, and increase aim precision through a revolutionary suite of new GeForce and G-SYNC technologies to optimize and measure system latency in competitive games.
• AI-Powered Video and Voice – NVIDIA Broadcast: You can now transform any room into a home broadcast studio—taking your live streams and video chats to the next level with AI-powered audio noise removal, virtual background effects, and webcam auto frame.
• NVIDIA Studio: RTX-Accelerated Content Creation: RTX 30 Series brings faster rendering and AI performance, more graphics memory, and exclusive NVIDIA AI tools such as Omniverse Machinima to help you finish creative projects in record time.

MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Specifications

Packaging and Closer Look

The SUPRIM series came with a white retail box and a refreshing/clean box art. Inside the box, you get a graphics card mount/holder, an MSI SUPRIM mouse pad, some reading materials, and the card itself.

Like I said earlier, the RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X looks exactly similar to the RTX 3080 SUPRIM. Aesthetically speaking, it features an industrial look with a gunmetal color and aluminum finish. The graphics card itself is big and quite heavy. It measures 336mm (13.2″) in length, 140mm (5.5″) in width, and 61mm (2.4″) in height. It occupies three PCI slots and weighs around 1.9kg. So, you do need to use the graphics card support to prevent sag.

You can see the usual suspects on the output area; it has three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI port. According to MSI, the HDMI port supports 4K@120Hz as specified in HDMI 2.1. The dual BIOS switch is located near the PCIe power connectors. By default, it is set to Silent mode; so, be sure to check it and set it to Gaming mode if you want a slightly better gaming performance.

The SUPRIM X is somewhat a power-hungry graphics card, requiring three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It has a higher power target and limit compared to other RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards. MSI recommends at least a 750W PSU. But if you have a lot of components installed or connected to the system, I’d recommend going 850W or above just to be on the safe side.

MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Test Setup

For our graphics card reviews, I’m using a Z490 motherboard powered with an Intel Core i7-10700K. It is paired with a DDR4-4000 memory. Below are the rest of the specifications of the system:

For this test, I used the NVIDIA driver version 466.54. The graphics card was tested in three resolutions – 1920×1080 FHD, 2560×1440 WQHD, and 3840×2160 4K UHD.

For synthetic benchmarks, I used 3DMark’s benchmark suite. I also used the following games to test the graphics card: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Gears 5, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Division 2, The Witcher 3, and Watch Dogs Legion.

Finally, I also included some ray tracing with DLSS benchmarks. The games are Call of Duty Cold War and Cyberpunk 2077. Below is the GPU-Z screenshot of the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X 12G.

MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Noise and Temperature

Like most modern-day graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SURPIM X has a fan stop feature, called “Zero Frozr”. It runs dead silent during idle to light load situations since fans are not spinning. As you can see from the screenshot above, its idle temperature hovers around 50° Celsius. Depending on the GPU load and/or environment, the temperature could go up or down.

For the full load temperature test, I ran FurMark for almost 15 minutes. The MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X’s temperature settled at around 69° Celsius, with a fan speed of around 1800RPM or 57% of its capacity. Fans are silent and it is almost inaudible, especially if used inside a closed case system.

When silent mode is enabled, the fans become less aggressive and the temperature may go slightly higher. Nevertheless, the graphics card remains very silent and almost inaudible at all times. Now, let’s see how this graphics card performs below.

MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Benchmarks

For the synthetic benchmark results, I used 3DMark’s graphics benchmark tests. On the left-hand side are graphics scores, while on the right-hand side are the average frames per second (FPS). Below are the results I got for the MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X (gaming mode):

I don’t have another RTX 3080 Ti to compare the SUPRIM X with. But based on my review of the RTX 3080 SUPRIM X, the SUPRIM series typically performs slightly faster compared to other reference-based graphics cards. I also don’t have an RTX 3090, but since the RTX 3080 Ti is basically a strip-down RTX 3090 with less memory, I think their performance is quite similar.

The MSI RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X performs around 10% to 15% faster than the RTX 3080 SUPRIM. That’s just a small performance increase if you take into consideration that the RTX 3080 Ti is around 70% more expensive than the RTX 3080 (using the original NVIDIA MSRP). The RTX 3090 isn’t a value graphics card, and the same can be said with the RTX 3080 Ti.

Okay, now let’s check out how it performs in games.

1080p Game Benchmark Results

1080p is not the target resolution of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. I strongly suggest that you do not buy an RTX 3080 (Ti) if you only use a 1920×1080 monitor. There is a bottleneck going on here, and I see during my tests that the GPU is not fully utilized. Meaning, I don’t get 95%-100% GPU load in this resolution. Sometimes I see it going 98% load, but most of the time it’s just 80% and below. As a result, there is some performance left on the table. Below are the results:

MSI’s RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X is in the lead even though it is bottlenecked by the resolution. However, on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Witcher 3, and Watch Dogs Legion you can see that the GPU is bottlenecked. Even, some of the 1% lows on some titles have no to very little difference. Again, I would not recommend that you get an RTX 3080 Ti if you have a 1920×1080 monitor.

1440p Game Benchmark Results

Moving to a 2560×1440 resolution, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti has more room to stretch its legs. Most of the time, I see the GPU load reach around 95%-99%. Although there are times and scenarios where the GPU load only runs at around 80%++.

Honestly, I think the RTX 3060 Ti or the RTX 3070 is the more bang for buck GPU for 1440p gaming resolution. But for graphics-intensive games, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti can certainly push those frames. Below are the results.

Again, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3, and Watch Dogs Legions seem to be slightly bottlenecked; and it looks like the RTX 3080 Ti is somewhat not maximized. The driver I am using, which is currently the only driver that will work with the RTX 3080 Ti, may affect it as well. If this is just a driver issue, I hope a better driver would be released to maximize the GPU’s full potential.

However, looking at other game titles like Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Gears 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World, and Red Dead Redemption 2; the RTX 3080 Ti SUMPRIM X offers at least around 15% (+/-) improvement from the RTX 3080 SUPRIM X.

2160p Game Benchmarks Results

The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 are designed for 4K UHD gaming. During my tests, at this resolution, I can see the GPU load is constantly at around 96%-100%. This means that the RTX 3080 Ti is working hard to push those frames. Below are the results:

No doubt that the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is a 4K gaming-capable graphics card. Even with ultra graphics or the highest graphics settings, it was able to drive all game titles above 60fps in 3480×2160 resolution. At 4K resolution, the RTX 3080 Ti offers around 13%, on average, performance increase from the RTX 3080. This is based on the results I got.

Ray Tracing + DLSS Benchmark Results

Now let’s check out some ray-tracing performance. For this, I tested the RTX 3080 Ti with Call of Duty Cold War (Fracture Jaw) and Cyberpunk 2077 (Little China). On the left-hand side, you can see results with RT and DLSS disabled. While on the right-hand side, RT and DLSS are enabled and are set to ultra and quality respectively. Below are the results:

Based on the results I got, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti is fully capable of dealing with ray-tracing with DLSS games. There is still some performance penalty since ray-tracing is a very graphics-intensive workload. DLSS is there to help mitigate the loss on frame rate.

Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 is truly a graphics-intensive game. At 4K resolution, the RTX 3080 Ti was not able to reach 60 fps on average in this game title. It could reach an average of 60 fps, but you will have to tone down the graphics settings or use performance DLSS to achieve a 60 fps average.

Price and Availability

NVIDIA’s “new flagship gaming GPU”, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti will become available starting June 3. The pricing starts at $1,199, which is similar to the RTX 2080 Ti FE‘s price when it was first released. I don’t have the exact MSRP for the RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X, but I’m pretty sure it would be priced higher than NVIDIA’s.

Unfortunately, due to the supply issue and the current situation we are in, I highly doubt these cards will be selling at (near) MSRP. Not to mention, supply is still an issue.

Check GeForce RTX 3080 Ti latest pricing and availability:
RTX 3080 Ti on Amazon.com here

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X Review Conclusion

The Pros…

MSI’s GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X series is an excellent graphics card. I think the SUPRIM series is an excellent design; offering superior cooling solution, performance, and it is simply an exquisite graphics card that screams premium. I couldn’t find any fault in the design or its cooling capabilities. The only downside I can think of is this is one big and heavy graphics card. And depending on the chassis or casing you use, you may need to double-check the clearance.

Based on the results I got, it offers an average of 49% increase from its predecessor, the RTX 2080 Ti, in synthetic benchmarks. And at 1440p resolution, it offers around 38% increase, on average, from the RTX 2080 Ti. That’s is a substantial increase in performance given that the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti have the same MSRP.

The Cons…

However, if we compare the RTX 3080 Ti vs the RTX 3080, the difference is not that huge. It only offers around a 15% increase on average from the RTX 3080. Considering that the RTX 3080 was released for $699, the RTX 3080 Ti is a very expensive GPU; similar to the RTX 3090.

Just like the RTX 3090, the RTX 3080 Ti is not a value-oriented product. It’s NVIDIA’s top-of-the-line and as expected from a “top-of-the-line” / “flagship” product, it is usually on the expensive side.

Another thing, I’m pretty sure these RTX 3080 Ti cards will not be sold at around $1,200 retail price. Given the current situation and shortage, I think it would be very difficult to get one. And if ever you’d managed to spot one, I doubt it will be priced near $1,200 USD.

Finally…

All things considered, the RTX 3080 has a better value compared to the RTX 3080 Ti. And if you’re gaming at 1440p, the RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 3070 is the sweet spot. Still, the RTX 3080 Ti is undeniably a solid card for 4K gaming.

If money is no issue or no object for you, and if you are upgrading from an RTX 2080 Ti or a (much) older GPU; I think the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ti SUPRIM X is an excellent graphics card. You simply can’t go wrong with it. This is a great graphics card, especially for 4K UHD gaming.