Hi everyone,
 
So it a shocking turn of events Amazon shipped out my XC3 Ultra finally. I snagged this one few a couple of weeks ago and Amazon has been jerking me around about when it was actually going to get here. Turns out, it's this Sunday!
 
Like everyone else I'm sure, I was just trying to get any RTX 3080 and it just occurred me to me that I know very little about this card. I actually can't find much info about it online either.
 
So hopefully I at least a few people here know a little about the card and can maybe give me some insight into how it compared to the FE since I know someone who has it and I was able to mess around with it some.
 
How is the performance compared to the FE? I would expect it to be identical or maybe slight faster because of the out of box OC.
 
How is the cooling? So I was really impressed with how quickly the FE was able to keep the GPU cool. Like, it's damn hot in SoCal right now and my buddy does not have AC. Once the fans got going the card never reached much beyond 76c.
 
How is the noise? See, the FE was able to bring down the high temps at an impressive speed but it was pretty damn loud. It's actually been a really long time since I heard a GPU be that loud before. The cooling performance was great, but the noise would definitely annoy me.
 
Anything to keep in mind? I know their is a firmware update to fix some fan issues. Do EVGA GPUs play nice with Msi Afterburner or is EVGA Precision recommended instead?
 
Thanks!

Hey there, 3080 XC3 Ultra owner here. Got a few screenshots w/ data for you. I had a FE installed for a day but didn't think to run concurrent benchmarks for comparisons (silly me). 
 
Stock 3080 XC3 Ultra w/ Unigine Heaven 4.0, 1440p Ultra preset:

 
Undervolted 3080 XC3 Ultra (Same Unigine settings as above)
1965MHz @ .9v limit, & +200mem oc:

 
Not entirely scientific data here, but just thought i'd throw up my experiences for a frame of reference. 

These cards are running hotter than the other major AIB cards, that's just the way the ICX3 cooler is performing. So can't say I'm not a little disappointed with this cooler but I'll still get one because is the only way to get one via the email queue system.

While a few might not care about 100% fan speeds I suspect the majority of us do care about noise and thermals. So it seems we have to undervolt to get lower thermals and or get their aio kit later on which adds a premium. I decided I'll get the aio kit or maybe step up if that's an option as I have had their last 3 hybrid cards so I'm used to 50-55c on load temps.

Asus and Gigabyte's are avg'ing 63c stock performance without having to undervolt. I believe the msi card can get to mid 60s by increasing the RPMs to 55% which still under 39dba. So to me that's the baseline for stock performance 63-66c.

I don't mind the fan noise so much, even at 70%. I can hear it when I set it to that manually, but I've also heard much worse. The default fan profile keeps my temps at 79-80'C and hovers around 65%ish fan, so its perfectly tolerable IMO.
 
That being said, it is a little toasty. And I am still running with the HAF X, which is the #1 case for GPU temperature going on a decade now. So there's zero room for improvement on air. Undervolting is definitely going to be the way to go.
 

vegnar

Asus and Gigabyte's are avg'ing 63c stock performance without having to undervolt. I believe the msi card can get to mid 60s by increasing the RPMs to 55% which still under 39dba. So to me that's the baseline for stock performance 63-66c.

 
I don't think that is accurate, but if it is the fans with the eVGA default profile don't even turn on until the mid-60s... so there's no way to match that without customization.

varna
Yeah. This thing is power starved right out of the box. Really strange decision on EVGA's part. 
 

lsa909
Hey there, 3080 XC3 Ultra owner here. Got a few screenshots w/ data for you. I had a FE installed for a day but didn't think to run concurrent benchmarks for comparisons (silly me). 
 
Stock 3080 XC3 Ultra w/ Unigine Heaven 4.0, 1440p Ultra preset:

 
Undervolted 3080 XC3 Ultra (Same Unigine settings as above)
1965MHz @ .9v limit, & +200mem oc:

 
Not entirely scientific data here, but just thought i'd throw up my experiences for a frame of reference. 

I tried you undervolt settings and it's working perfectly. Better performance and thermals than stock. I'm really considering a FTW step-up but I want to wait a bit to see if anything else is announced.

 How could i go about duplicating these settings as well, please?
 
Very interested in trying this out as well.
 
Thanks for sharing!

Don't bother linking to the video or anything.