It's that time of year again. New high-end graphics cards are always exciting and something to look forward to, and launching alongside the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition are a number of partners, including Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti AMP Holo Card. The name is a bit of a mouthful, so we'll call it the RTX 3080 Ti Holo from here on out.

As with all high-end GPU reviews in 2021, there is a big asterisk next to it. Availability will continue to be difficult, and card prices will likely soar well beyond the already high MSRP levels. Will the new hash rate limiter help get the card into the hands of gamers rather than miners? Let's look at this card based on its merits. The supply/demand issue is an industry-wide problem, not one that pertains to a specific card. In six months, the situation may have changed drastically.

In our review of the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, we went into detail about what's under the hood, but in a nutshell, the RTX 3080 Ti features the same GA102 that is found on the original GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 It features a new variant of the GPU.

The new GA102-225 features 10,240 CUDA cores. This compares to 10,496 for the RTX 3090 and 8,704 for the RTX 3080. It is clear that we are looking at performance close to the 3090; 12GB of VRAM is adequate for today's games, but AMD offers a 16GB card at a lower price, and the RTX 3090 has a whopping 24GB, which leaves us wanting a bit more with such an expensive card. [Of course, all the great features that the Ampere architecture is known for, such as the second-generation RT core for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, the third-generation Tensor core, and DLSS for improved frame rates, are included. With more and more games offering support for these features, they are becoming increasingly important.

The Zotac RTX 3080 Ti AMP Holo is Zotac's flagship 3080 Ti and, at least for now, offers the highest clock speed in its product line. The boost clock is 1,710 MHz, a significant improvement over the reference clock of 1,665 MHz. The memory clock, however, remains unchanged but is already quite high. At the time of this writing, the actual retail price is unknown, but Zotac reports that the card will sell for a whopping $1,699 at the Zotac US store.

Frankly, this is pretty crazy and hard to swallow since it is higher than the reference RTX 3090, so expect a scarcity price premium to already be factored in. We'll have to wait to see how it compares to the prices of other cards when it goes on sale.

The RTX 3080 Ti Holo occupies three slots and is quite long at 32 cm, but is just under 132 mm tall, which helps compatibility in slim cases. The top of the card is covered with a metallic glossy-like strip with RGB light bars. The robust metal backplate has an additional RGB light bar. If you are a fan of red, green, or blue, Zotac Holo has you covered.

Outputs consist of a standard set of three v1.4 DisplayPorts and one HDMI 2.1 port. two 8-pin PCIe power connectors provide power to the card. While these two connectors are not limiting, a third connector would be welcome at the 350W TDP level. That would give us more headroom to play with the power limit; Zotac Holo allows a 10% increase to 385W, which is quite conservative compared to the maximum limits offered by many other RTX 3080 Ti cards we have seen.

4K gaming performance

1440p gaming performance

Raytracing performance

If you are going to throw $1,699 at a card, you will want that performance. Depending on the game, it will go toe-to-toe with the Radeon RX 6900 XT and even the ultra-expensive new Navi XTXH variants. And of course, when it comes to ray tracing performance, AMD doesn't have the answer.

In Watch Dogs: Legion with RT, the Holo is well ahead of the RX 6900 XT. We look forward to testing AMD's upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution. But if you want to play the ray-tracing games that are becoming more and more widely available today, it's safe to say that the 3080 Ti is the way to go.

Zotac's IceStorm 2.0 cooler is large, as expected, but obviously some of the taller RTX 3080 Ti's offer more surface area and fans. The triple-fan design has a mode that stops when the card is idle. The main cooler also cools the memory, while a small secondary heatsink cools the VRM and adds rigidity to the card. The backplate also has thermal pads to transfer heat, which we found to be unexpectedly hot. However, this is a 350W card, so good airflow is a must.

The way Nvidia's Boost algorithm works means that the advertised boost clock can be misleading. But happily misleading: the Zotac 3080 Ti Holo has a rated boost clock of 1,710 MHz, but in our tests it clocked as high as 1,840 MHz during a prolonged run.

However, this was in a cool room with an open-air test bed. It would be a bit warmer inside the case. The card settled into a temperature range of 74°C to 76°C. The cards are audible, but not unpleasantly so. The Zotac IceStorm cooler is still quite good, although it won't match the larger coolers on the ever more expensive Partner cards.

As always, your temperature results will vary. A gamer in the Dubai desert will not necessarily get the same results as a gamer in Alaska.

As for power consumption, the cards bounced back from a 350W TDP and fluctuated between 330W and 350W. the GA102 GPU is certainly thirsty. Let's hope the next generation of cards does not exceed 400W.

Overclocking the Zotac RTX 3080 Ti Holo is almost identical to other Ampere cards. We were able to set a quick and rough overclock of +180MHz on the core, with an increase of +100mv and a maximum 10% power limit available. However, the card hits the power limit and cannot sustain the higher clock for long periods of time.

Memory fared better, with a 1,310 MHz increase that boosted bandwidth from the stock 912.4 GB/sec to 1037.6 GB/sec. This is a considerably higher figure. The resulting Time Spy Extreme score was 9284; a 5% improvement is not insignificant, but in the end it is still better to increase the power limit, crank the fan, and let Nvidia's Boost algorithm do the work.

It is very difficult to draw conclusions about the flagship 2021 graphics card. This market needs rehabilitation; the RTX 3080 Ti should have an MSRP of $1,199, but we all know that won't last. Zotac's RTX 3080 Ti Holo sells for an eye-popping $1,699 in US stores, and other manufacturers If you want a 4K-powered gaming PC, go for it, but for that amount of money you can buy a console, games, a 4K TV, and much more. those who bought the RTX 3080 for close to its original list price should definitely consider themselves very lucky They should.

However, the RTX 3080 Ti is a great graphics card. It hits 4K frames at max settings, and gamers with high refresh rate monitors will love it. value alternative to Nvidia's Founder Edition cards. OC-ready right out of the box, with a high-quality cooler, RGB enthusiasts should definitely check it out. However, it is not enough. Expect the $1,699 price to come down in the coming months. If so, the asterisk mentioned at the beginning of this article may go from planet to pebble size.