MSI Livestream "
MSI RTX 3080: The New Performance King"
on September 17, 2020
This stream provides a closer look at the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING X TRIO model (and VENTUS).
Question: Why does the 350W power limit exist and will it be removed in the future?
Pieter: You can see what it's capable of doing now, but,
ehm, will it be removed? I, I don't,
eh, expect so, no,
ehm, these cards are, are designed this way and as you can see, I mean even with a higher power cap,
eh,
like,
eh, I'm, I'm not sure if it's completely used in the,
eh, numbers that we saw, from,
eh, I think the, the overclocked numbers,
eh, I'm not sure if we can go back to the slide, but, it would be interesting to know but I, I don't think, that, you know, even if we put the, up,
eh, if that would directly, give you more power and even if it did,
eh, it would, you would, you would only be talking about a couple of percentages,
ehm.
Peter: Yeah indeed.
Pieter: And, and, and the, the number of, the amount of power that would be used to achieve those extra percentages is disproportionate, so what you would get is a card that's going to get a lot hotter, and a lot louder, really fast, while giving you performance you are unlikely to notice,
eh, performance increase you are unlikely to notice, so really you're looking at kind of like this, the, the, the apex,
eh, situation here that these cards are already, tuned to, to, the, the optimum situation basically where we can still keep em cool, and they can still give you as much performance as,
eh, as,
eh, squeeze out of the card and out of the GPU, as you can get within these parameters, without really blowing the roof off in terms of power usage.
Peter: Yeah, it's also bit of a safety feature.
Pieter: Yes!
Peter: It's, if we do an unlimited slider, there's always somebody who set it to unlimited, and blows up his card, and then he's crying, so yeah.
Pieter: Then then, then the GPU dies.
Peter: Yeah.
Pieter: And that's not a good thing, we are not in the business of harming GPUs here.
Peter: No no no, we want the people be happy and play games.
Pieter: Eh, so they're saying 3 times 8 pin connectors are a waste?
Ehm, interesting question!
Peter: Eh, not really, in theory, yes, maybe,
eh, because, one eight pin power connector can do 150 watts, times two, and
eh, like 66 watts 12V from the PCI Express slot.
Pieter: So you're up to..
Peter: 366, so, in theory you can do like,
eh, two pin,
eh, two power connectors.
Pieter: Eh, which our Ventus for example uses.
Peter: Yeah but that's not, it's not,
eh, 340 watt cards, this is a 320 card, a bit more safety margin, but it's really difficult to balance all the power of all the connectors exactly, so you could say this pin can do exactly 150 watts and the other one 150 and the slot 66, it doesn't work that way, so it's more,
eh, bit of a safety feature to not overload any cables, and not overload your PCI Express slot, I think in some tests I saw PCI Express slot only delivers about like, 50 watts?
Pieter: Something like that.
Peter: More through the cables, actually that's preferable, I think.
Pieter: Well most of the bulk will be drawn through the cables anyway and some very low GPUs, sometimes you will notice it will actually not have any of the six or eight pins, because the, the power draw of the GPU will then be, I don't know, somewhere under 60 for example, 60 watts or 50 watts, and then it can actually draw power from the motherboard from the PCIe slot, to, do the job.
____
Absolute insanity going on here. "
Premium/Performance King"
Gaming X Trio with a custom designed PCB featuring
16 possible power stages for the GPU and up to
525W power limit thanks to the
3x8-Pin connectors.. and what do they do? They equip it with
13 power stages for the GPU and a maximum power limit of..
350..
Founders Edition which is up to
$150 cheaper, runs
15 power stages (2 more) for the GPU and a maximum power limit of
370 (20 higher)!
Even better,
ASUS TUF OC was more than
$100 less than Gaming X Trio in Scandinavia today on release day, and runs full
16 power stages for the GPU and a maximum power limit of
375W (which is max 2x8-Pin spec). On top of this incredible PCB, it has two additional features:
Dual BIOS and an extra
HDMI 2.1 connector, as a bonus it's
23mm shorter, nothing short of an amazing card!
So, Gaming X Trio, 13 power stages for the GPU, 350W max power limit, no Dual BIOS, one of the longest 3080s and all of it at a sweet
premium price. How about.. no?
They did the exact same mistake on 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio, 330W maximum power limit on 2x8-Pin + 1x6-Pin (450W would be within spec).They simply had issues with every single one of their Ti cards, Lightning had a myriad of issues, Ventus cooler was awful, Duke also had a horribly low power limit (290) just like the Gaming X Trio, far under FE.
We also learned today, EVGA FTW3 Ultra comes with a 375W default and 420W maximum power limit (+12% slider), which also features 3x8-Pin connectors, even though it's not as much as we wanted (450-475), it's .. 70 Watt higher (20%) than Gaming X Trio, FTW3 Ultra is €899 on Caseking.de right now and Gaming X Trio is €839, 7% higher price but 20% higher power limit, also insanely stronger and cooler VRM with up to 19 power stages for the GPU. They're not even comparable.
Avoid MSI at all costs!
