KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12GB Desktop Graphics Card Review: A Better RTX 3080 thanks to more VRAM and more Shaders?

Nvidia’s RTX 3000-series encompasses graphics cards spanning almost the entire gaming spectrum, from mid-range all the way up to high-end. New models are added regularly, such as for example the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB. After the RTX 3080’s initial release back in September of 2020 many called for more VRAM as the original card came with just 10 GB.

While this was perfectly fine for most games at the time many gamers were worried about their GPU’s future capabilities with yet to be released future games. The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is Nvidia’s response to these repeated requests for more VRAM as it comes with 2 GB more than the original card. It also features a wider memory bus interface without which it would have had to feature a whopping 20 GB of RAM instead.

This model appeared regularly in rumor mills but has yet failed to materialize. For this review, we received a GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB by KFA2. This particular model is based on the GA102 chip with a total of 8,960 shaders, which should improve performance and help to close or at least narrow the gap to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti .

In addition, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB comes with a rather voluminous cooler designed to dissipate the card’s 350 W of heat reliably and quickly. Keep in mind that its triple-slot design takes up a lot of space and might not fit your case. The fancy RGB lights help to illuminate and highlight its three 92 mm fans and the “What’s Your Game” slogan printed on the card.

Prices for this card start at around 970 Euros in Europe and around $1,200 in the United States. Considering current supply chain issues, we find this to be an acceptable price for a high-end graphics card. Prices have also dropped slightly in the last couple of weeks, which is a promising sign.

Out test system for this card is based on AMD’s current platform. It features an Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero WiFi mainboard, an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X to ensure proper and plentiful CPU performance, an Alphacool Eisbear 360 AiO cooler, and 32 GB of RAM provided by G. Skill.

The system outputs its video signal to an Acer Predator XB321HK monitor, which is fully UHD-capable. We would like to thank AMD for providing us with this test platform. The following system was used to run the benchmarks below: Our KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB review unit’s boost clock speeds were only slightly above Nvidia’s specifications.

However, we should add that the specified 1,740 MHz boost were consistently surpassed in almost every single test we ran. This model supports a power target increase of up to nine percent resulting in a total maximum power consumption of 380 W. In our synthetic benchmarks, we find the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB right where we thought we would: in between the GeForce RTX 3080 and the GeForce RTX 3090 .

Keep in mind that this particular performance gain is courtesy of the card’s additional shader units and less of its extra VRAM. When compared to its AMD-based competitors the KFA2 RTX 3080 SG 12 GB performed about as fast as an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT . Our gaming benchmarks were completed very well overall without any issues.

All benchmarked games can be enjoyed smoothly in 2160p and maximum details with only some games failing to reach an average of 60 FPS. Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 this new 12 GB card performed between 10 and 15 % faster, which means the KFA2 RTX 3080 SG 12 GB is not only faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT but almost within striking distance of AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT . Thanks to its very high performance the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB is practically made for high-resolution gaming in high details.

If you only play in 1080p a GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB might not be the right choice for you. If, however, you want your GPU to last for many a year this top-of-the-line model might just be. The RTX 3080 definitely benefits immensely from having access to 12 GB of VRAM, and it should have been released like this from the beginning.

Nevertheless, its competitors offer more with up to 16 GB of VRAM, and Nvidia’s own prohibitively expensive RTX 3090 features up to 24 GB of VRAM. This, however, does not necessarily result in higher performance, as can be seen below. While the RTX 3090 did perform slightly faster than our RTX 3080 12 GB review model the differences between the two do not justify the RTX 3090’s higher price.

12 GB of VRAM are a good compromise and nowhere near as limiting as previous models. In fact, they are more than plenty, as our The Witcher 3 (1080p, Ultra) recorded frame rates showed. While we did encounter two minor frame drops they were not at all dramatic and, more importantly, not at all noticeable.

In other words, they had no tangible effect on the gaming experience, and the benchmark concluded with an average of 151 FPS. In our render tests, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB performed very well against its own in-house competitors. It came within striking distance of the much more expensive Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 , which was only 7 % faster in our performance ranking.

Having said that Nvidia GPUs cannot compete against AMD’s RDNA2-generation of GPUs, which outperformed its competitors handily every time. Keep in mind that your individual workload will heavily influence overall compute performance, and you should thus take a look at each individual test when choosing a GPU for general purpose GPU computing. Emissions are a mixed bag overall.

On the one hand, the KFA2’s cooler is well made and managed to keep the GeForce RTX 3080 GPU cool reliably and quietly. In fact, we could barely hear the fans from within a closed case. At 1,920 rpm its three 92 mm fans manage to move enough air through the cooling fins to keep the GA102 chip at 75 °C and the VRAM at a slightly higher 86 °C under load.

On the other hand, the graphics card’s power consumption under load was immense. It peaked at a whopping 350 W, which is comparable to that of a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 FE . The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Suprim X managed to beat that and required an even higher 420 W.

When gaming, we recorded an average power consumption of 518 W. Please note that KFA2 includes an additional optional 80 mm fan, which can be mounted at the top of the card to provide extra cooling for the heat pipes along the rear of the card. Should you opt to install this fan you need to ensure proper spacing between the GPU and the RAM slots.

Our particular test system was incompatible to this setup, and we were thus unable to mount the optional fan. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is the RTX 3080 chip that many have asked for since the chip was first introduced, and it took Nvidia 1. 5 years to listen and realize that there was in fact a market for a 12 GB variant of its RTX 3080.

Only time will tell whether or not it came too late considering that the next generation of GPUs, the RTX 4000-series, is supposedly ready to launch anytime soon. Accordingly, current high-end GPUs are a hard sale, especially that most gamers that wanted an RTX 3000-series GPU already bought one and upgrades within the 3000-series are not necessarily advisable and worth it. The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB performed very well overall in our benchmarks.

However, this was only true for its raw performance. It consistently outperformed a regular GeForce RTX 3080 and performed slightly worse than a GeForce RTX 3090. Its power consumption, on the other hand, was enormous.

We should note though that this is not KFA2’s fault as other board partners will produce similar designs with identical power consumption. We liked the graphics card’s cooler, although you have to keep in mind that this triple-slot design takes up a significant amount of space and may not be compatible with your mainboard. The KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB is a better GeForce RTX 3080 and features reliable cooling and great RGB lights.

If you are in the market for a new GPU the KFA2 GeForce RTX 3080 SG 12 GB might be worth a closer look as it is the better choice over the regular RTX 3080 thanks to its 12 GB of VRAM. Prices start at around $1,200 right now, and comparable cards made by Gigabyte , Zotac , Asus , or MSI are not any cheaper. More benchmarks and test results for the RTX 3080 12 GB can be found on our GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB page .

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