The third 8pin is really a six pin PCB design-wise, which was made an 8pin after design to appear competitive. It is a major complaint with EVGA's FTW3, but cannot be rectified in a warranty preserving manner.

mpoffo

schulmaster
The third 8pin is really a six pin PCB design-wise, which was made an 8pin after design to appear competitive. It is a major complaint with EVGA's FTW3, but cannot be rectified in a warranty preserving manner.

I am assuming this is true of the 3090 FTW3 as well.  I never saw this before.  That is why my 3rd 8-pin can never go above 95-100W on my board.  Was this confirmed somewhere?  I am sort of late to the party since I just obtained by card a month ago.

Yes, only the KingPin is implemented correctly. 

https://forums.evga.com/EVGA-is-aware-of-the-power-balancing-issues-and-430w-cap-m3227786.aspx
This is a post on the issue, and a screenshot from Jacob on Twitter stating an update on the matter was imminent. As far as I am aware, no such update has come.

I can confirm that with the gimped #3 PCI-E plug (pulling 1/2 of the other 2 plugs), even with the XOC 450W BIOS you wont see more than 400W...only the Cards whereby the PCI-E #3 Slot is puling proper power (as in close to the same as #1 and #2) are they ablwe to achieve 450W.
 
A number of complaints of the same with 3090 FTW3 Ultras, although Evga is offerning an RMA for those Cards. I queried Evga regarding the same issue with the 3080 FTW3 Cards and they didnt get back to cme.

rjbarker
I can confirm that with the gimped #3 PCI-E plug (pulling 1/2 of the other 2 plugs), even with the XOC 450W BIOS you wont see more than 400W...only the Cards whereby the PCI-E #3 Slot is puling proper power (as in close to the same as #1 and #2) are they ablwe to achieve 450W.
 
A number of complaints of the same with 3090 FTW3 Ultras, although Evga is offerning an RMA for those Cards. I queried Evga regarding the same issue with the 3080 FTW3 Cards and they didnt get back to cme.

Is it a physical limitation of the card? Why is that?
 
My card is not even hitting 390 watts with power target at 105.

Disappointing to see this is still an issue. I was in your same shoes back in January when I got my 3080 ftw3 and power draw wouldnt go over 380-390w on a 450w bios...

EVGA is lucky I got my card at a cheap MSRP or I would be pissed off. Probably won't go EVGA again unless price is much cheaper than competition. Should have gone strix or aorus .

Just done some tests with XOC Bios on week old 3080 FTW3 Hybrid and it can't go over 400 Watts because of handicapped power draw on PCI-E #3 slot. 
Is it a common design flaw on ALL 3080 FTW3 or it varies by copies and what can be done about it, RMA?

Drwaffles
I've bought 2 x FTW3 Ultra 3080's and both did this.. Honestly at this stage I'll never buy EVGA again; especially given they've been so quiet on the issue.

I pre-ordered before reviews based on the quality of my 970, 980ti, and 1080Hybrid boards from EVGA.. This generation it seems they've put an accountant in charge of design, and stripped basically all the quality components from their permium series cards.. 
I expected this from a XC3 card... NOT from the FTW3 Ultra.. Not good enough guys.. Disgusting, greedy money grubbing behaviour.

If it weren't for the availibiliity issues I would have refunded my card already and bought an ASUS Tuff or Strix.
At least they use quality PCB components on their high end models and don't pass a product off as high end while stripping it to the bare minimum.

Either way.. For those that want a workaround I found that the MSI Suprim X 3080 bios has a bit more headroom.. 
Although the power limit is technically lower, it under-reports the power draw and I don't hit powerlimit anywhere near as often.
Been using it on one of my cards for months now without issue.

That's really disappointing. I'm having this issue too with a 3080 FTW3 Ultra which I put a Hybrid cooler on expecting to crank the wattage to 450, it's stuck at 390 and I seem to have lost the silicon lottery since it can't even go over 2000MHz and hitches considerably when it hits the power limit. By contrast my 2070 Super FE which I bought on release years ago has been excellent for its class, reaching 260W and performing way above 2070S expectations. I had an EVGA 970 SSC before that card but never again with EVGA I guess. Thanks for the suggestion with the Suprim X BIOS, I'll try that. It is the Suprim X "SILENT" BIOS correct?

andross182
 
As for everyone that is threatening to go to a different AIB...I mean, EVGA was the only one who even attempted to get cards in the hands of gamers so...have fun with that.

Well I got mine from buying an entire custom build from NZXT, not from the queue system, so that doesn't really apply to me. I chose the EVGA expecting 450W.

MartinUK
It appears this may well be a feature, as opposed to a bug. Seems that at some point, even for the 3080 FTW3, EVGA switched from the UP9511 voltage controller to the same Onsemi NCP81610 used in the 3090 FTW3 1.0 cards and the 3080Ti. (The power stages also changed from AOZ power stages to Onsemi, same as the 3080Ti)
 
The controller is mentioned in this 3080 FTW3 review from March:
 
with a picture of it on the board:
 
 
It seems that along with this switch they tightened up the power balancing to reduce the PCI-E slot draw, and to limit the 8-pin #3 power draw, which stops the cards from being able to pull more than 400w, but also presumably stops them dying randomly (since that was the fix for the 3090's to stop them dying).
 
It makes sense they switched to use the same components on all the boards, for manufacturing/sourcing reasons. 50w is a pretty heavy price to pay, but I suppose its better than your card blowing up.

i can get 407w on this card iirc, is it really a hard limit of 400w?
 
edit: just finished some benchmarking with f1 2021 ultra settings ray tracing & taa.
 
I can see max pull of 419w in HWINOFO64

Drwaffles
I've bought 2 x FTW3 Ultra 3080's and both did this.. Honestly at this stage I'll never buy EVGA again; especially given they've been so quiet on the issue.

I pre-ordered before reviews based on the quality of my 970, 980ti, and 1080Hybrid boards from EVGA.. This generation it seems they've put an accountant in charge of design, and stripped basically all the quality components from their permium series cards.. 
I expected this from a XC3 card... NOT from the FTW3 Ultra.. Not good enough guys.. Disgusting, greedy money grubbing behaviour.

If it weren't for the availibiliity issues I would have refunded my card already and bought an ASUS Tuff or Strix.
At least they use quality PCB components on their high end models and don't pass a product off as high end while stripping it to the bare minimum.

Either way.. For those that want a workaround I found that the MSI Suprim X 3080 bios has a bit more headroom.. 
Although the power limit is technically lower, it under-reports the power draw and I don't hit powerlimit anywhere near as often.
Been using it on one of my cards for months now without issue.

Hello, can you point at which exact BIOS are you using, and how much power are you capable of draw now (if you were capped to ~400w with EVGA bios) please?

Pro4tlzz
 
i can get 407w on this card iirc, is it really a hard limit of 400w?
 

Me too, and a lot of people, other older models are pulling 450w with the exact same bios, so looks like a HW issue.

neteng101
 
Thanks for posting that - its the first confirmation I've seen that the 3080 FTW3 got revised as well.  Which IMO is silent acknowledgement by EVGA that the early 3080/3090 FTW3s were ALL faulty.  Without a full PCB redesign, they tried to address the most glaring issues but obviously never got the FTW3 to be a proper 3x8-pin power design.

 
No problem, was happy to spot that review myself, its a slightly nicer thought that it was a decision made by EVGA rather than some kind of fault, or some mistake. Although I'd still like my 50w.
 
 

FedericoUY
Hello, can you point at which exact BIOS are you using, and how much power are you capable of draw now (if you were capped to ~400w with EVGA bios) please?
 

I assume he is referring to the BIOS he links to in this post:
https://forums.evga.com/FindPost/3218480

Pro4tlzz

MartinUK
It appears this may well be a feature, as opposed to a bug. Seems that at some point, even for the 3080 FTW3, EVGA switched from the UP9511 voltage controller to the same Onsemi NCP81610 used in the 3090 FTW3 1.0 cards and the 3080Ti. (The power stages also changed from AOZ power stages to Onsemi, same as the 3080Ti)
 
The controller is mentioned in this 3080 FTW3 review from March:
 
with a picture of it on the board:
 
 
It seems that along with this switch they tightened up the power balancing to reduce the PCI-E slot draw, and to limit the 8-pin #3 power draw, which stops the cards from being able to pull more than 400w, but also presumably stops them dying randomly (since that was the fix for the 3090's to stop them dying).
 
It makes sense they switched to use the same components on all the boards, for manufacturing/sourcing reasons. 50w is a pretty heavy price to pay, but I suppose its better than your card blowing up.

i can get 407w on this card iirc, is it really a hard limit of 400w?
 
edit: just finished some benchmarking with f1 2021 ultra settings ray tracing & taa.
 
I can see max pull of 419w in HWINOFO64

I get 419 with a 3090 ftw3 ultra...

Hello guys, I have made some important discoveries with my 3080 Ti and I want to share them with you.

Power draw isn't everything and it's not something you guys should compare because I have discovered that a portion of power is saved for and if fully dedicated to the RGB, fans and extra accessories you can attach.

What you guys need to do is compare one another's runs, graph it in excel and compare AVERAGE VOLTAGE.

Just because you are looking at "board power draw" doesn't tell you how much power is actually going into rendering and other things.

If you are truly drawing less power than someone else, then that means you're voltages should be less than theirs.

I recommend running TimeSpy Extreme Test #2. Log the run with GPU-Z, extract the log, get it up into excel and get the "average voltage."

Compare your average voltage to someone else's. Of they're truly drawing 30-50W higher than you, then their voltages should be higher than yours die to throttling from power limits.

Here, please see w copy of my research below.

I did some research and I have some findings. Thanks to Faux123 who shared his GPU-Z run of Timespy Extreme

Observations

• My setup differs from Faux123 who is running both of his PWM 120mm fans off of his GPU, I am not.
• For my setup, I have my fans drawing power directly from the PSU and controlled by my motherboard
• Faux123 results:
  • Fan 1: 100% (4.5W)
  • Fan 2: 100% (15.6W)
  • Average Power Draw 444W
  • Average voltage 0.969V
• My results:
  • Fan 1: 33% (0.4W)
  • Fan 2: 0% (running off of motherboard)
  • Average Power Draw 412W
  • Average voltage 0.972V
• Running Fan 1 at 33% consumed 0.4W
• Running Fan 1 at 100% consumed 4.5W

Conclusions

The difference in power draw is due to the fans. If I ran the fans off of the GPU and ran both fans at 100%, I would have approximately 20W of more power draw. What is evident is our voltages. If we were both power limited to the GPU itself and if my card was really drawing 36W less then I would have a lower average voltage. But our voltages are close to the same. 
 
What this means is that that the RTX 3080 Ti consumes around 400W for rendering. The remaining 30-50W is saved for other things such as:

• Shroud fan
• AIO 120mm fans
• GPU fan for non-hybrid, 
• Case fans  from PWM port
• RGB light bar
• External RGB strips

Well i just watercooled my 3080 ftw3 ultra so heres my time spy extreme GPU-Z log if you want to have a look :P https://filebin.net/uf8hnw06msn60r98

With zero things running "off the card" (RGB/etc is all external now), 450w bios, +130 Core +1600 mem, 100% volt and power target slider on a 1000w PSU holding 12.1v to all rails under full load, my power draw seemingly tops out at 400ish watts.

Regardless as to whether or not its true that some wattage is kept in reserve (of course it has to come from somewhere), the fact that theres plenty of other 3080 ftw3's specifically out there pulling near equal wattage from all 3 PCI-e 8pins across the entire load spectrum (not just under full load where fans would be at a higher speed, but at idle/light usage/etc too, they're all fairly equal), means theres definitely a "Balance" issue and theres definitely more than enough headroom across all the power rails to dish out 450w to the GPU AND! power some RGB and fans (i mean....3x150w 8pins is 450w....theres your gpu budget there, then theres upward of 75w of spec power from the PCI slot also.....).

Sure they may have had the idea to keep a little off the 3rd 8pin to power accessories but it'd have to be a major oversight to go as far as to gimp the potential of the cards for such a low value "feature" 

I'm definitely going to look into running that other Bios (Now that i dont need fan control and i dont need RGB control, sure i'll loose ICX but tbh i never look at them anyway) for more power budget, or possibly just shunting the 3rd line to hopefully pull a bit more power out of it (though if i can get a hold of a decent clamp amp meter, it'd be interesting to check the 3 lines and see whats drawing what, whether the 3rd is being under reported, or the 1st/2nd being over reported (and shunting them properly would bring them back inline) or if its all reported correctly and we're really just boned with this analog controller

Yea, its not really a problem. Just people (myself included) are a bit disappointed they cannot hit the 450w they expected. When its pulling 400w it performs every bit as well as any other 3080 that is also pulling 400w. Its just that its not quite as fast as a card that is pulling 450w.
 
Since the early batches of 3080 FTWs could hit 450w then people with more recent ones feel like they are missing something. Originally there was some speculation that this behaviour was indicative of a faulty card (which would be bad), but it appears that its just related to some recent design/component changes with the newer batches, so it least its not anything to worry about.