gsrcrxsi
I have the impression that certain components of the board are hard wired to certain power sources and it might not be possible to shift the load from the PCIe slot to the VGA cables.
 
it definitely seems to throttle based on load from the PCIe slot only/first. total board power isnt really being factored yet since it's below the limit, but rather hitting a power limit on the slot alone. this pulls back clocks and power use to keep the slot below limits, even though it has headroom via the cables.
 
for example, when I'm running Kombustor, clocks sit around 1680-1725MHz, pulling ~335W. perf cap reason PWR, PCIe slot maxed at 66W. running Heaven 4.0 on loop, it's more or less the same, but ~310W a bit higher clocks 1680-1800ish (varies a lot more than Kombustor), and PCIe slot maxed again at 66W. 
 
but if I run Einstein@home Gamma Ray tasks, it's only pulling 285W, clocks ~1680MHz, PCIe slot maxed 66W, perfcap PWR. so you'd think that if it's only using 285W, and within thermal limits (never over 47C, watercooled) that it should allow higher clocks, but it's being limited really hard. probably something tied to the PCIe slot that's getting stressed and causing the whole card to throttle, and not able to transfer power.
 
with different loads having different soft limits on power draw, I think some loads will just get throttled more than others. I still think it might be certain components being hard wired to the slot, and when those components get stressed, it doesnt just throttle that component, it throttles the whole card.
 

I thought your RMA card resolved the problems you were having?

kram36
I thought your RMA card resolved the problems you were having?

it resolved the RGB problems, which was the RMA reason.
 
it helped the power issue a bit. it's better than before. but it still has inconsistent power draw under some loads. it's always power limited by the pcie slot, and depending on the workload, it can be limited as low as 285W. but it's really pulling the clocks back to limit the slot, and total board power being low is just a consequence of that. That's why I think some components are hard wired to the slot and the power limit is not very smart in the power limit behavior.
 
Further RMA attempts aren't worth my time having to break the water loop down again. I'm not confident that I could convince EVGA that it's RMA worthy.
 
I can only hope that EVGA gives it some attention, but they are usually silent on issues and sweep them under the rug. They've helped themselves with this by not producing many XC3 cards, and hence the number of users of XC3 cards will always be quite small so I don't have high hopes that it'll get the exposure that's needed to force EVGA to actually do something about it.

gsrcrxsi

kram36
I did a bios update to the Hybrid bios and had the same results when you changed the bios on the first card you got. It made no difference. It's not the bios, it's the card.

I agree that changing to another stock EVGA BIOS wont fix anything, as there is not any variance in the power limiting behavior of different XC3 3080ti cards. My reasoning for trying a different BIOS was only to re-instate a known good BIOS to cover the possibility that my BIOS had some kind of error or corruption. when nothing changed, that eliminated that as a possibility for me, but I still wanted to try, just for my own piece of mind.
 
I do believe there could be refinement in the power limiting behavior in the BIOS to help this situation. like not throttling the entire GPU clocks just for PCIe power, and trying to limit power on the slot only without impacting the whole card. but that would require EVGA making an effort to address it and issue a BIOS update. it seems there are more people than not seeing this kind of problem with the XC3 3080ti.

Yeah, if we could get EVGA to look into this issue, a new bios might help. The cards are not performing to their potential.
 
Now I'm rethinking the 3080 Ti XC3 Hydro Copper purchase. I don't want to be stuck with another card that doesn't perform as it should and have a terrible resale value on it when 40 series cards hit the market.

Just got email to purchase 12G-P5-3958-KR 6/3/2021 7:44:56 AM PT  Yes. This is the 3080 Ti XC3 Hybrid and I'm not going to buy it because of this issue. Not paying $1,400 for a under performing card.

kram36
I wonder if Steve at Gamers Nexus would be interested in calling EVGA out on this issue?

Many people have asked him already regarding the 3080 and 3090 cards with the same hit-and-miss problem. Not likely that he will all-of-the-sudden consider it for a 3080 Ti. This is just a thing that EVGA has failed at for the last year, and for some reason not many people want to talk about it.

I ran through a new suite of tests. all tests performed with core offset +125, memory offset +500, power limit set to 105%, and all RGB turned off. I have no fans since this is a HC card.
 
Furmark 1.26, 2560x1440, no AA: 304W average
GPUz shot https://i.imgur.com/YoLkOd8.gif
 
MSI Kombustor, 2560x1440, no AA: 330W average
GPUz shot https://i.imgur.com/bz21BkO.gif
 
3DMark Timespy (default, not Extreme, 1440p): load varies, ~310-320W most times, very short peak 345W
GPUz shot https://i.imgur.com/KZiw1WC.gif
Timespy run details https://www.3dmark.com/spy/21525507
 
3DMark Port Royal (default, 1440p): load varies, ~320W most times, very short peak 345W
GPUz shot https://i.imgur.com/DUyQ5Wj.gif
Port Royal run details https://www.3dmark.com/pr/1128278
 
3DMark DirectX Raytracing test (default): ~340-347W
GPUz shot https://i.imgur.com/Nevl9MD.gif
DXR run details https://www.3dmark.com/dxr/79360
 
One thing I noticed, when running these tests is that in cases where memory load is low, total board power seemed to be higher, and vice versa. It could be a coincidence. maybe the memory or memory controller is pulling power from the slot?
 

Average GPU clock speed for my card on Fire Strike Ultra was only 1,837MHz and that as with a healthy oc on the GPU as you can see it was 2,175MHz.
 
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/25899073 
 
The FTW3 card my nephew got from me beats the piss out of my XC3. Whish I had not sold it to him. 
 
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/25895356 

Cats4Life
Problem is that EVGA doesn't care enough to try and fix the problem. Have we had any people say that they don't have any issues with the power, or is every last card underperforming?
 
Edit: Just saw that someone earlier said that their card drew 350w out of the box. Sadly, this seems like the minority of 3080 ti xc3s.

I don't know, but I'm not risking $1,500 to find out and that's not including the $5.75 adult signature required EVGA tacks on when you go to pay for the card.
 
The card is sitting in my cart right now.
 

Cats4Life
Problem is that EVGA doesn't care enough to try and fix the problem. Have we had any people say that they don't have any issues with the power, or is every last card underperforming?
 
Edit: Just saw that someone earlier said that their card drew 350w out of the box. Sadly, this seems like the minority of 3080 ti xc3s.

I can get it up close to 350W, but only under specific test/conditions. and none of these conditions are really in my use case. but under no conditions have I been able to get it to the max 366 that it's supposed to be able to do.
 
I don't have this problem at all with any of my 2080Tis. they will hit max TDP all day and clock all the way to the limit. none of this throttling because of the PCIe slot nonsense. they all only pull like 40W from the slot anyway. that's the behavior I would expect from any card, no matter what the TDP limit is. 250W or 350W, I should be able to use all of it.

gsrcrxsi

kram36
TBH, those average GPU clock speeds on a 3080 Ti Hydro Copper card are trash.

It would do more if EVGA allowed it to pull more power from the cables smh.
 
the only one that's normal is the DXR test, closer to 2000MHz, and the only one that had normal power draw. it's not a coincidence.

You should have the best 3080 Ti XC3 bios with your card being a Hydro Copper, unless it's the same bios as a Hybrid. Why would EVGA limit a Hydro Copper card?

kram36

gsrcrxsi

kram36
TBH, those average GPU clock speeds on a 3080 Ti Hydro Copper card are trash.

It would do more if EVGA allowed it to pull more power from the cables smh.
 
the only one that's normal is the DXR test, closer to 2000MHz, and the only one that had normal power draw. it's not a coincidence.

You should have the best 3080 Ti XC3 bios with your card being a Hydro Copper, unless it's the same bios as a Hybrid. Why would EVGA limit a Hydro Copper card?

I'm under the impression that the XC3 Ultra BIOS (as far as clock and power behavior) is identical across all cards. only difference being fan and RGB. so a HC wont necessarily be better or higher clocking if it's not a thermal problem, which is never the case with these cards because of the strict power limiting.

gsrcrxsi

kram36

gsrcrxsi

kram36
TBH, those average GPU clock speeds on a 3080 Ti Hydro Copper card are trash.

It would do more if EVGA allowed it to pull more power from the cables smh.
 
the only one that's normal is the DXR test, closer to 2000MHz, and the only one that had normal power draw. it's not a coincidence.

You should have the best 3080 Ti XC3 bios with your card being a Hydro Copper, unless it's the same bios as a Hybrid. Why would EVGA limit a Hydro Copper card?

I'm under the impression that the XC3 Ultra BIOS (as far as clock and power behavior) is identical across all cards. only difference being fan and RGB. so a HC wont necessarily be better or higher clocking if it's not a thermal problem, which is never the case with these cards because of the strict power limiting.

So why would EVGA limit a Hydro Copper card?

Unbelievable. 👎

kram36
Reading through this thread 66W isn't the max for the PCIe slot though, why throttle the card there? There is something seriously wrong with these cards.

66W actually IS the limit for 12V via PCIe.

The PCIe spec allows 75W “total”, but that’s including the 9W allowed via 3.3V.

kram36
So why would EVGA limit a Hydro Copper card?

They aren’t limiting the HC more than the others from what I’ve seen. Some do better than others it seems. Nothing singling out the HC card to hold them back specifically. Just that all 3080Ti XC3 cards seem to be held back.

I like my HC card still. It fits my case, I didnt have to worry about sourcing a waterblock for my custom loop, and in the loads I’m doing, the performance is OK and still better than a 3080.