How Much Does It Cost?
Of course, we understand that there will be stock and supply issues in general around this launch. However, we do have some pricing information and the Palit RTX 3080 GameRock. the Nvidia MSRP cards come in at just £649.99, but that’s purely the entry-level cards (1710MHz Boost). The GameRock is a much faster card with a custom cooler (1755MHz Boost, so that’ll be around £759.99 and if you want the GameRock OC (1860MHz Boost) which is even faster, that’ll be around £799.99.
Overview
Palit has a really interesting card here, there’s no doubt about that. However, if I’m completely honest, I think it looks bloody awful, it’s really not to my taste at all. Would I put one in my PC? Most likely not, I love a bit of RGB and I mean a bit. This is a LOT of RGB and I don’t want to wear sunglasses at my desk just to play ESO…
Then again… it does kind of grow on you and I must admit I am tempted to build a PC with this as the crowning jewel of ARGB madness. If you paired this with the G.SKILL Trident Royal and SilverStone Ice Gem series AIO, which both have that crystal look to them too it would look pretty nuts. I like a sleek and clean looking system, but if you did want to go glitzy, this GPU should be top of your list.
Power
I hate it when a product is all aesthetics and no performance. However, that’s not the case here, as Palit knows how to make a competitive graphics card! Straight away we saw impressive performance in our benchmarks, and those modest factory overclocks helped push it ahead of a few other RTX 3080 models. It’s not quite the fastest RTX 3080 or the slowest, but honestly, they all perform quite close to each other and cost about the same. There’s no such thing as a slow RTX 3080, that’s for damn sure.
We’re still not 100% what the issue was caused by at 1080 in Wildlands, but we’ll let you know if we find a fix.
Build Quality
It’s much better than I thought actually. The crystal stuff is more like an insert on the front of the card rather than part of the core structure. The card its self is incredibly robust, with a thick metal backplate, so it’s not going to sag and bend. There is a large heatsink, and good ventilation around it to ensure the triple fan configuration can shift heat with ease. The fans are good quality, running fairly quiet when things get going, but the card is completely silent until it gets hot anyway.
Should I Buy One?
It’s clearly a card that isn’t for everyone, but that’s actually the best thing about it. It’s nice to see a brand taking a risk like this and doing something different from the competition. I hope more brands do the same in the future, as most cards are beginning to look the same. If you want to stand out from the crowd and have a PC that literally outshines the competition, the Palit RTX 3080 GameRock is where you start!
