Published: July 7, 2021 | Source: Palit | Author: Tom Logan

Palit RTX 3080 Ti Game Rock OC Review

Conclusion

It’s fair to say that the launch of the two Ti models of Nvidia Ampere cards was somewhat overshadowed by the pricing issues. Whilst the RTX 3070 Ti didn’t have enough extra power to justify any price increase, the RTX 3080 Ti is significantly more powerful than the RTX 3080, whilst still more affordable than the RTX 3090 which is very much runs close in the performance stakes.

All this mean that RTX 3080 owners can’t feel too hard done by because of the huge leap in price the Ti has over their card, whilst obviously RTX 3090 owners will be a bit chippy, but that is a permanent down side to being the earlier adopter at the premium end of any product on the planet. Buy early and buy flagship and you pay a high price for that. Now the dust has settled a little bit and there is some stock starting to appear on shelves again we don’t feel quite as grumpy about it as we did, although we’d still rather Nvidia concentrated upon releasing more of their other models than using a global shortage to launch a new card at a vastly hiked price.

The Palit Game Rock cards are very much a combination of good performing cards with outstandingly capable air coolers and ALL the RGB lighting. You might be tempted to ignore Palit because it’s not a company as famous as ASUS, MSI or Gigabyte, but if so then you’re really missing out. Not only is the cooler as good as any other on the market this side of an AIO equipped model, but if you like the heavy focus on RGB lighting there isn’t another card that is going to give you quite as much. Additionally, and probably where Palit score bonus points and will pick up some extra sales, because they aren’t charging you for the brand like some companies do, the price is still somewhat at the reasonable end of the market. Everything is relative of course, but if some other manufacturers – mentioning no names but you all know who we mean – brought out a card with this amount of design and lighting on board it would be a comfortable Â£200 more than Palit are asking.

Performance is very much in the same ballpark as the MSI SuprimX in terms of average clock speed and the results it give. Generally it’s a hair behind the faster RTX 3080 Ti’s we’ve tested but nothing that you’d notice in daily use. Even with everything turned up to the hilt you can run 4K smoothly thanks to the beefed up hardware putting the RTX 3080 Ti close to the RTX 3090 on paper and indeed in actuality. If you had a super demanding game or wanted to run on a 5K screen then it wouldn’t take much reduction of settings – just MSAA should be enough – to get anything likely to be launched in the immediate future nice and smooth too.

We know the intense RGB of the cooler shroud isn’t going to be for everyone, and if it is then running it vertically is the best way to show it off, but if you’re looking for a great performing card with excellent thermals and low power requirements the Palit RTX 3080 Ti Game Rock OC is a fantastic option and gets our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.

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