Published: October 18, 2020 | Source: Palit | Author: Tom Logan

Palit RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 GameRock OC Review

Conclusion

There is no doubt at all that the Nvidia Ampere cards provide you with massive performance. So far we’ve reviewed a few of both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 and never been anything but gob-smacked about the high frames per second you can achieve in every title, in every resolution and regardless of detail settings. If you are the type of gamer who spends a lot of time on Nexusmods you’ll be aware that there are loads of graphical upgrades available for certain titles, and they nearly all come with a frame rate hit as all large texture mods will. Not so on the Ampere GPUs. Allegedly Crysis Remastered is the kind of title that just can’t be run on maximum settings on any current hardware, but the RTX 3090 eats it alive and the RTX 3080 is above 60 FPS at all but 4K, where it’s just a shade beneath.

Palit cards might not be the brand that spring instantly to mind when considering a new purchase, but they definitely should. Yes the font might still remind us of nothing more than the ancient Guitar Hero series, which is a tiny bit naff, but in every other regard they are behemoths. The performance, particularly on these factory overclocked models, is nothing short of staggering. The RTX 3090 model in particular tops our graphs in way more tests than it doesn’t, whilst the RTX 3080 GameRock is deep in the middle of the pack. Such is the consistency of the Nvidia GA102 GPU that it’s impossible to produce a bad card that has it as the beating heart.

What really stands out, both literally and figuratively, is the aethetics. Most of the Ampere cards that we’ve seen so far are a more staid and serious approach to the formula, whereas Palit have gone entirely the other way and produced a card which takes the RGB idea and expands it to new heights. The shroud on the GameRock is the same crystalline aesthetic as you might be familiar with on the G.Skill TridentZ Royal except here, stretched across the whole of the cooler shroud, it dispenses with the notion that the top half of your case is where all the lighting action happens. As you can see from the picture that’s graced the top of the pages of today’s review, but also the photo of our test rig on page three, the Palit GameRock makes the bottom half of your system just as brightly lit as the top. Perhaps more so.

Looks and performance are one thing, but the GameRock cooler also does an excellent job of keeping the two cards cool at low noise levels. Cooler cards mean more thermal headroom for either the Nvidia GPU Boost to do it’s thing, or for your overclocking efforts should you find the factory overclock not pushing things far enough for your liking. With 24 PCIe power pins both cards can draw more than enough power to sate your overclocking efforts.

Both the Palit RTX 3080 GameRock OC and RTX 3090 GameRock OC look spectacular with the unique shroud bringing jaw-dropping lighting to the party to go along with the outstanding performance that you can get from these factory overclocked models. Cool, quiet, gorgeous and blisteringly fast, the Palit GameRock win our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

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