INTRODUCTION

   The PC has always been about gaming for me, perhaps not so much for the past decade or so but when i first started using it back in the early 90's that was just about all i did with it (as did most kids my age). As a matter of fact, even today with the limited amount of free time i do have i still manage to spend several hours per week enjoying my favourite games while at the same time testing various peripherals. And in order to enjoy gaming what's more important than a good graphics card? Well, it's actually been quite some time since i last did a graphics card review but with prices finally on their way back to normal/recommended levels (especially for LHR models - still far from there however) i decided to take a closer look at one of the most sought after NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB models in the world, the Hall Of Fame (HOF) OC Lab Edition by GALAX.

   Founded in Hong Kong in 1994 formerly known as Galaxytech, GALAX has been fully committed to bringing the most innovative computer hardware to the growing worldwide market. By recruiting talented designers and sourcing the most advanced manufacturers, GALAX established its renowned reputation in creating sophisticated computer hardware and began its long-term AIC partnership with NVIDIA in 1999. GALAX now produces the best mid to high range graphic cards on the planet and continues to set the bar high and break world records.

   As mentioned before in past reviews the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB is based on NVIDIA's 2nd generation RTX technology (GA102 chip - 8nm) that sports CUDA cores with FP32+INT32 instructions (for simultaneous floating point and integer math), 2nd gen RT cores, 3rd gen Tensor cores and ray trace motion-blur effects. In terms of numbers the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti packs 10240 shader units, 320 texture mapping units, 320 Tensor cores, 112 raster operators, 80 ray tracing cores and 12GB GDDR6X RAM based on a 384-bit memory bus with an effective clock speed of 19Gbps. What immediately sets the GALAX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition graphics card is its all-white color which extends all the way to the PCB. This of course makes the GALAX GeForce RTX 3080 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition 12GB graphics card quite unique and thus a one way if you're looking for a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and you own a white system. Under the hood however the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition graphics card has many more strong selling points including an 14+6+4 phase (total 24 phase) DrMOS power design (ideal for overclocking - requires 3x8pin power connectors), Aurora ARGB Sync lighting (tri-zone), dual-BIOS (performance & silent), tri-fan custom cooling solution with zero-RPM mode (2x102mm & 1x92mm fans - dual aluminum heatsinks with 6 heatpipes), aluminum backplate, 1 click OC button and a decent factory overclock of 1815MHz for the boost clock. As for available connectors the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition comes ready with 3 DP v1.4a ports and a single HDMI v2.1 port (these support a total of 2 displays simultaneously with resolutions of up to 8K/7680x4320p). So, let's see what exactly has made the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition by GALAX so popular among gamers, enthusiasts and overclockers.