---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cerberus-X Build Log 2022#3 : Overclocking RTX 4080 FE (4th December 2022)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While using my RTX 3090 FE, as there was some coil whine, GDRR6X max temperature issues, I was mainly focused to undervolt it to reach the same performance than at stock with massive reduction of symptoms.
However, with RTX 4080 FE, it is totally the contrary. While at stock settings, I'm experiencing absolutely no troubles (No coil whine, no GDDR6X limit temperature, no fan noise). Based on my pretty long GPU experience, this is my best experience ever!
As suggested by rumors, Nvidia was expecting way more power hungry Ada Lovelace (RTX 4000 series) chips. In the end, it was not the case (except maybe RTX 4090, maybe)...thus RTX 4090/80 GPU coolers & power delivery systems were sized accordingly, leading to some kind of oversizing (great temperature, no coil whine).
This is easily explaining why I managed to complete this achievement on 3DMark : RTX 4080 FE, at the stock settings, was able to finish a DirectX 12 benchmark without exceding 55°C!!! This is a normal result for GPU water-cooling, not air-cooling! Cherry on the top is the absence of Coil Whine..
(watercooling is not helping on this issue)
As you have guessed, with my RTX 4080 FE, I was mostly focused on overclocking it as its card design is clearly allowing it!
After some (many, should I say..
) trials, I found 3DMark Port Royal (Ray Tracing - Benchmark) to be the best tool to define maximum & polyvalent overclocking setup.
Here are the values I managed to reach (fully stable) :
PS : it is important to note that RTX 4080 FE boost is fluctuating significantly based on allocated vCore and/or Power limit. Thus overclocking properly an RTX 4080 is requiring a lot of trials/errors to understand its behavior.
Here is a summary of actual performance in 3DMark benchmarks (synthetic).
Depending on the type of 3D workload, the overclocking is leading to 4%-8% approx.
I wanted to illustrate in a better way overclocking performance. Thus I've recorded a video in Cyberpunk 2077, within the Afterlife, while applying & resetting the RTX 4080 FE overclocking parameters. Thus you can easily check for all parameters variation, in live!
Here is a summary of overclocking in Cyberpunk 2077 :
Overall I'm assuming my overclocking parameters is adding approximately 8% for the games I'm playing the most (involving definitely ray tracing). Not so bad, especially as this is a free overclock with no real impact on temperature or noise!
Last comment regarding DLSS3. Currently I've only "A plague Tale : Requiem" that is compatible with it (Cyberpunk 2077 with DLSS3 is still in beta as of today's date). Benefit was significant (+28%) but not as magical as it claimed to be. This technology has a lot of potential but will require more refinement like DLSS 1 vs 2.
Here is a portion of the video where I'm testing DLSS3.
Overall, gaming experience with the RTX 4080 FE is significantly improved vs the RTX 3090 FE, especially with Ray Tracing enabled. Below you will see another example of Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay, but it is also applicable on other games like Metro Exodus - enhanced version (Ray Tracing only).