The Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER Gaming OC:
Architecture:
Our example of the day is part of Gigabyte’s “Gaming OC” series, which we recently tested with the RTX 4070 SUPER Gaming OC model. Gigabyte has evolved this series over the years, optimizing cooling and integrating a rather original RGB backlighting system.
This RTX 4080 SUPER has 10240 CUDA cores, just over 5% more than the RTX 4080, which has 9728. It features TSMC’s 4 nm manufacturing process , with a TGP of 320 watts. Memory-wise, there’s no change, as we’re sticking with 16 GB of 256-bit GDDR6X memory, which translates into a bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s.
The Gaming OC bundle:
So what’s in the box? It’s easy to identify the Gigabyte color code, with black and orange. What’s striking, compared to the other two Gaming OC models we’ve just tested, is the size of the box. It opens to the side to reveal the Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER Gaming OC. No doubt the graphics card will be more imposing than the other two models.
Once the box has been opened, we find a small box containing the adapter for the card’s power supply. This is a 16-pin (12 4) adapter to two 150w 3-pins (450w total). This adapter is necessary for those who don’t have a power supply with a 16-pin port or the adapter specific to their power supply. There’s also a support for the graphics card, to prevent it from bending when inserted in your motherboard.
Cooling :
A bigger card means a bigger cooling system. While visually identical to what we encountered on the RTX 4070 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER models, it has been given a bodybuilding treatment! Dimensions are 342 x 150 x 75 mm, and the card will occupy three slots on your motherboard. This model is part of the Gigabyte “Gaming OC” series. In other words, the card has already been factory overclocked to the base boost frequency specified by NVIDIA. Aesthetically, the card plays on sobriety with touches of black, anthracite and dark gray. This is a model that will match many motherboards.
This is a custom board, i.e. with its own cooling system. It is labelled “Windforce 3x” and features three 100 mm fans. Gigabyte uses its patented Alternate Spinning technology on this board. The principle is quite simple, and involves the three fans rotating in opposite directions to avoid turbulence.
The nine fan blades are slightly curved to optimize air flow. Our sample is equipped with ” 3D Active Fan ” technology to leave the fans idle if the GPU temperature doesn’t require them.
The black plastic casing completely encloses the PCB, with a high-quality finish. The fairly neutral aesthetic should suit many users. Two BIOSes are also present, a Silent mode and an OC mode. By default and for our tests, we’ll be using OC mode. As you can also see, the PCB is shorter than the heatsink, and the backplate has a cut-out at the rear to allow air to pass through it and optimize cooling of the various components.
Yes, a little backlighting :
Quite a bit of backlighting with the outline of each fan and the Gigabyte logo on the top edge of the board, controllable via RGB Fusion 2.0 software. The backlighting effect is quite surprising, since it’s not what we’re used to seeing. There are no less than 9 RGB effects that can be set via the in-house software.
Connectors :
The new 16-pin mini-connectors are used to power the card. As mentioned above, NVIDIA includes in its bundle an adapter that allows three 8-pin connectors to be plugged in.
Finally, the board’s video outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 port.
