I’m a long time fan of Zotac, as they typically design their hardware to really stand out from the crowd. From ultra-compact PCs to outlandish gaming systems. Then they have their graphics cards, which are always very competitive when it comes to price, but also their flagship models have often proved to be some of the best out there. Today, however, we’re looking at the RTX 3080 Trinity, it’s an MSRP card from Zotac, which is to say somewhat similar to a founders/base model in terms of specifications and price.
ZOTAC GAMING RTX 3080 Trinity Graphics Card
Of course, Zotac still wants to offer you as much value as possible. While the card is similarly priced to the Nvidia Founder’s cards, it has a custom triple fan cooler on it from Zotac, a custom backplate, RGB lighting and more to tempt you into a purchase. At the heart of it though, it’s still an RTX 3080, which we know to (at least for now) be the fastest gaming GPU on the market.
Features
- 2nd Gen Ray Tracing Cores
- 3rd Gen Tensor Cores
- SPECTRA 2.0 RGB Lighting
- IceStorm 2.0 Advanced Cooling
- Active Fan Control with FREEZE Fan Stop
- Metal Frontplate and RGB LED Backplate
- FireStorm Utility (Download HERE)
- VR Ready
What Zotac Had to Say
“Get Amplified with the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX™ 30 Series based on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture. Built with enhanced RT Cores and Tensor Cores, new streaming multiprocessors, and superfast GDDR6X memory, the ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity gives rise to amplified gaming with ultra graphics fidelity.” – Zotac
The new firmware changes everything. It deserves another review. It’s now one of the fastest out there.
What kind of new firmware?
When I first got the Zotac 3090 it was fine. Then suddenly new Nvidia drivers came out and every game was CTD. Spent quite a few days looking into why this was happening and came across a new firmware update for Zotac, totally by accident. The ‘readme’ that came with the firmware didn’t mention clock fixes or anything of the sort. I installed it anyway and it was like someone had turned a switch on, NO MORE CTD’s, and none since. This was roughly 6 weeks ago or slightly more. I am now hitting 2150Mhz, sometimes more, with an overclock, with a temp of max 71C. This new firmware has turned my 3090 into a beast with averages higher than Strix OC. I have all the clocks, temps, power etc logged for anyone that is interested. I do have VERY good cooling in my PC case though.
The firmware came with the latest version of Firestorm. Soon as I ran Firestorm, it asked me to update the cards firmware. 🙂
Oh. Does it makes the card perform better or worse?
Some measures less perf. than FE, some has really nice boost clocks with okay temps.
A hell of a lot faster than FE. I have +800 on the mem and + 150 on the core. It’s boosting at 2145Mhz at many times during gameplay with Far Cry New Dawn, on rare occasions it’s hitting 2200Mhz with an AVG of 110FPS Max Settings 4K. I have placed two 80mm fans on the backplate, pushing air away from it and my max temps are 57c. You can literally touch the backplate and it’s cool, the fans really work well this way. Blowing air onto the backplate reduces temps but only a little. Much better to have the fans pulling air away from the BP. If you need the log file to GPU Z, I will be happy to send to you as evidence. Roughly 6 weeks worth of logs. Spent weeks trying different methods of cooling and costing quite a bit and have gone from 71c to 57c. I have now purchased faster fans but yet to try them but will let you know the outcome. I am expecting roughly 50c. I have to build a metal frame for them etc so they look nice also.