Official Zotac rep underfire on Reddit with regards to the 1 - 3 % lower performance..

[justwondering]

Worth a read, I pre-ordered the RTX 3080 trinity...

Not good to read it runs slower than the FE card.. Although the review say it can overclock by around 4 to 5 percent... Making it just slightly faster than a FE at stock.

The rep also states, that Zotac have reduced performance by design, so to make their other cards look more impressive..... Not good.

"It's by design - it's also a way to seperate our higher end models from the basic Trinity models"

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZOTAC/comm...b18-11ea-84c6-0e11989c86eb&utm_content=footer

 

[justwondering]

As buildzoid said, this is the worst 3080 card, jank power delivery for even the 3070^^

Yep, definitely, should have pre-ordered a Asus..

Hopefully a new bios will fix the situation... But hmmm not a good start.

Best comment on the thread.

"Gamer's Nexus is going to rip you guys a new one for this crap."

 

[justwondering]

I've got this card on pre-order, in the meantime if a better card comes along I'll try for that.

Agreed, same idea here... I was not happy when I read the review, the Zotac sounds like a hot potato... 5 year warranty or not, no one likes owning a gimped product... Sounds like it is bottom of the stack... Not good.

Wow the official Zotac rep reply.

Z_staff
Official Rep :ZGaming:
1d

It's by design - it's also a way to seperate our higher end models from the basic Trinity models.

 

[justwondering]

In fact after watching some of that video I'm pretty much certain I don't want that Zotac anymore.

Agreed, I shall follow the thread on Reddit, as they might fix the issue, but Asus tuf imho for me, hopefully not tough luck.

 

[justwondering]

Yeah, but really how much of a difference is there? Don't get me wrong, I would also be annoyed if I had ordered one only to find out it isn't even reference but considering the performance people are still going to get, it could be worse.

But worse than an FE card... And by design too! That is plenty to upset any owner...to purposely do that is bad...

 

[justwondering]

I dont disagree and I think pricing has a lot to do with it - there are (were, I guess lol) other models available for the same price that were better built. It would make the trinity hard to justify for me. I don't think I'd want to buy such a power hungry card that is purposely worse built than the FE. That doesn't sit right with me.

Agreed, bad and unfair for the consumer.

 

[justwondering]

It's weird. There are several videos showing the Zotac outperform the FE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzffj_vK5Qk&ab_channel=TheSpyHood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY5owidolac

They just pump YouTubes out with no real proof that they are real benchmarks... They get paid each time someone watches too... Take those benchmarks with a pinch of salt.

 

[justwondering]

5 year warranty more than makes up for 1% loss compared to FE on these cards. Remember this is not the AMP edition.

I plan on undervolting my TUF OC when it shows up to keep the room temps down.

1 to 3 percent, no company should nerf a card to make their other cards in the range look better... Very bad practice, that will hit resale value too on the 2nd user market, the Zotac will be classed as the one to avoid.

 

[justwondering]

The TUF PCB just screams quality.
Makes the Zotac PCB look like a Fisherprice kids toy.

Night and day difference, the Zotac looks like a home electronics project kit.

 

[justwondering]

Tech Powerup are saying it's a good card -

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3080-trinity/

I'll watch Buildzoid's video later. I find his videos very hard going as he takes 30+ mintues for a 5 minute review.

Ideally though, I hope Steve from Gamer's Nexus tests a Zotac, as I would say his word is golden.. If he said avoid, then I would recommend avoiding the Zotac.

But what about all these negative points from the review... Which it turns out, are by design, so Zotac nerfed the card.

• Runs into power limit all the time
• Our sample ran slightly slower than the Founders Edition, with higher power draw
• No factory overclock
• Overclocking more complicated due to power limit
• Manual power limit adjustment range smaller than Founders Edition

 

[justwondering]

Gamers Nexus have been black listed from Zotec for previous reviews, so they haven't been supplied a card for review purposes.

Yeah true, I guess Steve speaks the truth, but It might not stop him borrowing a Zotac 3080.... Would make for Interesting viewing.

 

[justwondering]

It looks Zotac are having a slight change of opinion.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZOTAC/comments/iwuwjc/looks_like_websites_are_starting_to_report_the/

"We thought it was due to product segmentation - which is why we said it was by design in our now famous post. ZOTAC will segment its series for example like the 20 series with Amp and Amp Extreme, usually they are faster and higher tier cards with binned GPUs. Everyone is pretty familiar with that as most graphic card manufacturers do this. However this issue is more of a performance consistancy issue when compared to FE, based on early feedback. Best we can do is provide user feedback to ZOTAC HQ and make them aware of this situation and hope we can provide an answer or a solution if the problem remains consistent."

 

[justwondering]

Kick in the teeth to everyone who has one or had one on pre order.

If they cancel could be weeks / months of more time waiting for another brand and also the risk of having to pay more.

Plus if you order a card from OcUK, they have removed the Watchdog free game offer, as they said they had been limited to 1000 codes, but hopefully with more codes coming....

 

[justwondering]

No... I've got this card in release day from a competitor, initially that's what was thought but you cant take the power delivery slider up to a massive 105% lol but then is slightly faster than FE, And what's more impressive and surprised me is a friend suggested to me to try the new Nvidia metrics and OC tuner built into the new geforce experience and it's tuned my Zotac +90mhz, That new software from from Nvidia is great, it finds the best voltage curve as it's testing the overclock and it's working, not had a single crash in SOTTR

Have you tried a custom fan curve to keep the card under 73 degrees heat? As I read it starts to throttle at 73 degrees, but with a better fan curve, they found the card would boost much higher...

 

[justwondering]

Yes at around 70% curve it's in the mid 60s, put it this way it's easy to get under 70, Max temp with this card vysnc off is 75c SOTTR, it has got good cooler potential for sure.

What kind of boost are you getting with the temps in the mid 60s?

 

[justwondering]

Well technically no because I've had a +95 and +94 MHz increase with Nvidias built in tuner but can't remember if that was with the results I posted will check again.

If possible, how about a couple of benchmarks heaven etc, at stock with standard fan curve and perhaps with the OC and the custom fan curve?

 

[justwondering]

Yes I can do it, will post when I have results

Brilliant thank you.

 

[justwondering]

Well that's strange lol quick heaven results Extreme preset 1080p Score 5299 temp 69 75% fan speed can't remember rpm, it was over 2000 rpm 1890 - 1920 boost 105 power target

And this is where it gets strange stock 75c, 1627 rpm 1785 - 1860 boost, score 5317 wtf

Doesn't make sense it was using about 15-20 w more power too lol.

The only thing I can think of is these cards gain ground at 4k they are definitely not 1080p or even 1440p cards for that matter as we've seen in benchmarks, I'll retest when I get time in 1440p don't think heaven goes to 4k

Thank you for testing, but true enough with the 1080p thoughts.

 

[justwondering]

The power limit makes a lot of difference on these cards.

Playing at 4k turning the power target up on my palit to plus 9% is the difference between getting a solid 60fps and drops to low 50s without it.

It's not really overclocking it one bar to turn up and it makes a very noticeable difference in games at 4k 60hz.

What temps are you seeing though? Have you set a custom fan curve to keep the temps below the throttling temp?

 

[justwondering]

Yeah I set the custom fan curve to 70c max. It does make the card louder but nothing terrible.

Here is a video I done earlier Red dead 4k with the slider all the way up (no AA) and it was 60fps constantly the whole time I was playing.

It's the same on need for speed at max settings 4k having the power target up to 9% I can play for hours without dropping below 60fps. At stock it has sharp drops to low 50's and you really notice it.

The video is bad quality but if you go to 2 mins 10secs you can see my GPU temp and boost.

I'm going to do another video later because the FPS counter I was using in nvidia experience didn't show in the recording and the fraps frame counter wasn't working in red dead.

Looks good, really need to see a Zotac tested before and after with a custom fan, to see how it boosts, as the magic sauce seems to be lower temps.