RTX 3080 : bent pin in the power connector and lower Time Spy scores

[Bigem]

Hey everyone,

I got my brand new Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC a month ago and found out when replacing my older GPU, that it has a bent pin on one of the two 8-pin power connectors, as reported by many others 3080 owners (especially Gigabyte).

Considering that I live in Morocco and therefore that there's no RMA here, I decided to use a thin screwdriver to "fix" the bent pin. After that, I managed to power up the new GPU and it seemed to be working fine. I ran Time Spy and had a score of 14,717 (with the GPU at OC mode and an i7-8700k at stock clock, 32Gb RAM 3000 Mhz CL15, 750W 80+ Gold PSU).

However, I decided to overlock the CPU at 4.7Ghz all cores and change the thermal paste. Removed the GPU to do that, and had to bend the pin again to plug to PCIe power cables. A second Time Spy benchmark was done and I was expecting better results, but.... even though the overall score was higher, the graphics score was actually lower. I even overcloked the GPU (+50 on core clock and +39 on memory clock) for a third benchmark, and the graphics score was even lower that the 2nd...

There may be two explanations : I either damaged my 3080 by trying to fix the bent pin, or Time Spy is beyond my comprehension. Can someone please explain what's happening?

Thank you in advance for your help, and apologies for the long post.

 

[Besty]

paste your timespy scores here

 

[Bigem]

paste your timespy scores here

Will do as soon as I get to home

 

[Bigem]

paste your timespy scores here

1st benchmark (both GPU and CPU at stock clocks) : https://www.3dmark.com/spy/15730282
2nd benchmark (both GPU and CPU overcloked) : https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/55048113?

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Unstable CPU overclock - your cpu score is lower on the overclocked run.

 

[Aretak]

Unstable CPU overclock - your cpu score is lower on the overclocked run.

That sort of variance is pretty normal for 3DMark in my experience. Just looking at my last four Time Spy results and there's a 122-point difference in CPU score between the highest and lowest, and my CPU overclock has been tested extensively in much more stressful things than Time Spy. It seems to just depend on what Windows is doing in the background at the time, which is why hardcore overclockers tend to run benchmarks on stripped-down versions of Windows 7, or even Windows XP for very specific ones (SuperPi for example).

 

[Besty]

There may be two explanations : I either damaged my 3080 by trying to fix the bent pin, or Time Spy is beyond my comprehension. Can someone please explain what's happening?

I would leave the GPU at stock and the ram at stock, focus on understanding why the CPU score is below stock speed. Stock speed for a 8700k is approx 7,900.

Your overall score is still in the top 2% of all scores registered but to get a better idea of whether the GPU is a problem you need to get the CPU running more optimally. 'Optimal' is an overclocked CPU score of 9,500 for the 8700k but don't get overheating your chip chasing it.

 

[Bigem]

Actually the OC CPU was higher if I'm correct (7,555 on stock bench, 7,703 on OC bench). I'll try to finetune the CPU OC though. What worries me the most is the GPU score that is lower (17,675 in the 1st bench, 17,149 in the 2nd).