Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack - Review 2022
The first Nvidia "partner card" RTX 3080 Ti we've tested, Zotac'southward GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack graphics card ($1,699 MSRP) finer mirrors the chipmaker'south recently released GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition ($1,199) in performance. But its considerably larger size and colossal price will give everyone in today's Wild Due west gaming card marketplace pause, even at a time when it's hard to shock GPU buyers. Like the Founders Edition, the HoloBlack suffers from a fundamental problem: catchy justification for the money. In both price and power, information technology's gross overkill for almost gamers, only the Zotac carte has half the VRAM of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 and no back up for dual-card NVLink (the successor to SLI). Pair that with a listing price higher than fifty-fifty the RTX 3090 Founders Edition's, and it doesn't make perfect sense for content creators, either.
Then again, nil makes perfect sense in this constrained, distorted GPU market. If yous're desperate and you lot tin discover it at or shut to MSRP, the HoloBlack is an exceptionally fast GPU and, heed you lot, we'll miss it a ton when our sample leaves our PC case later on this review. But for most paying customers? Gamers should actually hunt for a RTX 3080 instead. It has a drastically cheaper starting price, simply delivers "close enough" functioning in almost every title we exam. And pro content creators should seek out an RTX 3090 over any RTX 3080 Ti variants.
(Editors' note: This review was written i week later on Zotac'southward launch of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack. An Nvidia RTX 3090 Founders Edition, with a base toll of $1,399, was going for an average of $iii,000 on eBay at presstime. Given the HoloBlack'south $1,699 sticker, we expected information technology to top that (despite having one-half the video memory), but plant it selling for effectually $two,200. Even the scalpers had to cistron in the mega-premium Zotac puts on this carte du jour versus more ordinary RTX 3080 Ti GPUs!)
The HoloBlack Specs: What Does $500 More Get Yous?
The Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack is 1 of many overclocked third-party GeForce RTX 3080 Ti cards on the market. In our original review of the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, we noted how a few central features of the step-upward GeForce RTX 3090, including NVLink and 24GB rather than 12GB of VRAM, were missing from what could otherwise be considered a near-identical menu.
How identical? Allow'southward dig into the details and discover out...
The HoloBlack demands an actress $500 to attain an overclock that's within range of what nosotros were able to comfortably achieve on our own when we tested the original RTX 3080 Ti.
Normally, this spec-breakout department would be longer...but that's it for the differences. You pay $500 more than for an added 45MHz and a dissimilar card-housing blueprint. Let'southward keep moving right forth.
The HoloBlack Design: RGB Animal for the Bucks
The Zotac is a 2.5-slot, 12.v-inch-long leviathan of a card, especially when compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, which is just ii slots wide and 11.2 inches long. That's no surprise: Nvidia's own RTX thirty Series Founders Edition GPUs have famously been both smaller and quieter than anything third-party manufacturers have released this year, due in no small-scale part to the company's proprietary shrunken printed circuit lath (PCB).
The triple-fan design of the HoloBlack card echoes that of previous Zotac GPUs. However, the subtle addition of a "holographic" rainbow sheen across the shroud, combined with the effect of an LED strip attached to see-through plastic, illuminates the Zotac logo and makes this card very much its own fauna. Information technology'due south an RGB party of a carte and would wait especially cool mounted vertically, if yous tin can ensure your case has the required clearance between the thick carte du jour and the drinking glass.
Cute as the card may exist, no amount of added LEDs are going to justify a $500 college MSRP. If you lot're tempted to low-cal them in green, Zotac lets users control their Spectra 2.0 lighting at the same time they overclock their cards, if they so cull, via the visitor's Firestorm app.
Then at that place'south the ability-commitment aspect. The carte du jour shares its pin requirements with the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, enervating 2 8-pivot PSU connectors. However, dissimilar the Founders card, these power-supply leads aren't fed into Nvidia's special, single 12-pin connector. The card has the ii 8-pin sockets on its own edge.
As for the port selection on the rear plane, the price increase isn't enough to bring dorsum the VirtualLink port commonly establish on GeForce RTX 20 Series cards. That connector is absent, every bit it has been on every RTX thirty Series carte we've tested. VirtualLink appears to exist nigh toast.
You exercise, even so, get the basics: iii DisplayPort ane.4b ports, a single HDMI 2.1 output, and lots of ventilation cutaways for airflow through the backplane.
Testing the HoloBlack: A Few Wins, But at What Cost?
Moving on to our benchmarking sessions, PC Labs ran the Zotac card through a serial of DirectX xi- and 12-based constructed and real-world benchmarks. Our 2022 test rig is equipped with an Intel Core i9-10900K processor, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 memory, a solid-land boot drive, and a PCI Express 3.0 (non 4.0) Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi) Z490 motherboard.
All cards below were retested on this platform with their latest drivers to ensure an even playing field. Given our tests with the Core i9-10900K and recent AMD Ryzen 9 processors, this rig is the best reasonable configuration at the moment to cut the CPU out of the equation for frame rates. (Read more than about how we exam graphics cards.)
For our testing, we focused some of our effort on esports with games similar Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Rainbow Six: Siege. We too ran the card through the rest of our standard benchmark regimen, which tests a GPU'south abilities to handle a host of AAA games at peak image quality settings, likewise as how information technology rides during synthetic benchmarks that stress the card in a multifariousness of ways.
Recollect that almost all our tests (apart from the esports titles) are run at the highest possible quality presets or settings. If you want your card to make the most of a college-hertz gaming monitor, it could exist possible with a combination of lower settings. Not but that, only many of these titles (including Expiry Stranding, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and F1 2022) have support for both DLSS and FidelityFX CAS with Upscaling integrated directly into the game. This tin hateful boosts of up to 40% college frame rates, depending on the setting and the bill of fare you're playing with.
Now, onward to our examination results. If you want to narrow the results below to a specific resolution (such as the resolution of the monitor yous plan to game on), click the other two resolution dots in the nautical chart legends to suppress them and run across your unmarried set of results more conspicuously. Our mix of AAA titles includes recent ones such as Red Dead Redemption two and F1 2022, every bit well as some older but notwithstanding reliable benchmarker's tools such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry 5.
Testing Results: Constructed Benchmarks
Synthetic benchmarks tin be skilful predictors of real-globe gaming performance. UL's 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra is still a go-to approximation of the load levied past mainstream 4K gaming. We're looking here only at the test's Graphics Subscore, not the Overall Score, to isolate GPU performance. Meanwhile, we also ran 3DMark'south Time Spy Extreme, which is a adept specific test of how well a carte du jour volition exercise in DirectX 12 games at 4K resolution. Finally, there's Port Royal, which is strictly a exam for RTX cards correct at present, measuring how well they handle ray-tracing tasks. (Hence the blank results for the AMD cards on that test.) As well here are a scattering of GPU-dispatch tests (Furmark, LuxMark); more details on those at the "how we test" link to a higher place.
At the kind of price Zotac is request for this card, you'd expect information technology to at to the lowest degree try to continue up with the RTX 3090 in content creation (equally opposed to pure graphics) tests. Merely in synthetic runs like LuxMark that showcase how choosing an RTX 3080 Ti over an RTX 3090 could impact your render times, the effect of the halved VRAM is axiomatic.
Testing Results: Recent AAA Games
Now, on to the real-world gaming stuff, using assorted titles' congenital-in benchmarks. For the AAA games, we typically used the highest in-game preset and DirectX 12 if bachelor. For the multiplayer-focused and esports titles (such as CS:Get and Rainbow 6) coming upward in the next chart grouping later this, we dialed detail settings downwardly slightly to maximize frame rates. Nosotros'll talk more well-nigh that there.
If you're hell-aptitude on beingness the fastest gamer in your neighborhood, and then aye, technically, the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack is one of the fastest gaming GPUs we've tested. It takes the championship from the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Suprim X 24G, a card which, every bit an RTX 3090, costs only $50 more than than Zotac's RTX 3080 Ti at MSRP.
The HoloBlack doesn't e'er beat that card, nor does it manage annihilation close to a blowout versus the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition at 4K. Worse, we weren't fifty-fifty able to tape our RTX Shadow of the Tomb Raider results, as the AMP crashed during every attempt. Both cards reliably pump out frames in a higher place the 60fps floor for nearly gamers; anything in a higher place that starts blending into the realm of loftier-refresh 4K gaming monitors, which are still rare birds as far equally mainstream gaming goes.
There's a very, very small usage case for a card with this kind of power, and even Nvidia's RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition barely does enough to justify its $1,199 MSRP. Tack another $500 onto that? You'd better be doing a heck of a lot more than than running four.iv% faster in Assassin'due south Creed: Odyssey at 4K.
Testing Results: Multiplayer Games
As mentioned, while most of PC Labs' game tests max out image settings to push button cards to their limits, multiplayer gaming is all about maintaining the best residuum between graphical fidelity and frame rate. With that in listen, we've kept CS:GO, Rainbow Half dozen: Siege, and Final Fantasy XIV tuned to the best combination of visual improvements (higher anti-aliasing and lower shadows, for example), while still trying to keep 1080p frame rates above 144fps.
Why 144fps? That's a coveted target for highly competitive esports gamers who have 144Hz or 165Hz gaming monitors. For more casual players with ordinary 60Hz screens, a solid 80fps or 90fps at your target resolution, with some overhead to let for dips under 60fps, is fine. Of course, nosotros are talking virtually a $1,500-plus card here, so nosotros're starting out in deep overkill territory before we even kickoff testing...
Wow: Look at those records ready in Rainbow Six: Siege and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive! But don't be fooled: Browse just a flake further downwards, and you'll see cards like the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition getting scores that are nearly every bit good, except at 4K resolution.
But no one in the esports arena without a limitless hardware budget should be because competing at 4K anyhow, and those frame rates don't thing when the 4K panels with such refresh rates but don't exist. And then the 4K wins are moot for these types of games. Actually, the frame rates are way in a higher place current panel technology at 1080p, likewise.
Testing Results: Legacy AAA Titles
Again, using a booster rocket to speed up your Honda Civic, allow'southward see how the Zotac bill of fare does with older AAA games that are no longer the almost graphically demanding. Nosotros ran some quick tests on some oldies-but-goodies, including Tomb Raider (2013), the original Sleeping Dogs, and the still-well-optimized Bioshock: Infinite.
Surprise! (Not!) The $1,699 HoloBlack blows out legacy tests manner beyond where information technology's comfortable to even call up about. No, you shouldn't spend this much to play Sleeping Dogs. We tin can't terminate y'all, of course, but come up on, leave these cards for those of us who need the ability!
Overclocking and Thermals: Cool, But Clocked to the Max
When nosotros ran a 10-minute stress test in 3DMark Port Royal, the Zotac HoloBlack bill of fare peaked at a temperature of 73 degrees C. That's really quite skillful for a card of this power level, and equally with the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, we imagine the reduced strains of half the VRAM of the RTX 3090 are helping continue things cool.
Every bit is the case with most tertiary-party RTX 30 Series cards (and nearly every series before that), the Zotac does its task of collecting heat along the backplate and dispersing it out the backward-facing vents as expected.
Since the menu is overclocked from reference out of the box, we weren't expecting much when using our go-to EVGA Precision X1 utility for some light overclocking. After some tuning, I was able to achieve a stable clock of 1,860MHz or 150MHz over the baseline. But nosotros reached the signal of macerated returns most immediately, where applying an overclock actually made the bill of fare perform worse overall, not ameliorate. You should consider the out-of-the-box functioning as more than or less your peak.
Verdict: Holo Victories
In a few select instances during our testing, the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP HoloBlack proved one of the fastest GPUs we've ever tested at particular game and resolution combinations. In some 4K runs, it even managed to top the RTX 3090. But all of that horsepower ultimately gets you performance only about xv% faster than the RTX 3080, while costing more 40% extra for what amounts to a mild overclock (one that doesn't even exceed what nosotros we achieved with our RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition during standard tests).
In short, it'southward hard to discover a reason autonomously from aesthetics to justify this card's behemothic MSRP, never listen what the aftermarket will inflate information technology to. If you take $1,399, fight for an RTX 3090 at list price. If you have $699, struggle to land an RTX 3080. We know we're playing in a semi-fantasy world mentioning MSRP at all, but just multiply by your local scalper'south rates and you'll come to the same conclusion: $1,699 for a slightly overclocked RTX 3080 Ti, an already-too-pricey bill of fare for most situations, is but besides much.
Indeed, Zotac may accept 1-upped the GPU scalpers this time. The HoloBlack's MSRP has so much padding over the Founders Edition that the scalpers may not be able to justify their usual margin. But even at list toll, the HoloBlack is a stretch for all but the most well-heeled shoppers, fifty-fifty with its photo-finish wins in some gaming tests.
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/graphics-cards/44253/zotac-geforce-rtx-3080-ti-amp-holoblack
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