Guru3D Thermal Paste Roundup - Round 2 (2021)
ClockTuner v2.1 for Ryzen (CTR) Guide
TRENDnet 5-port Unmanaged 2.5G Switch review
Powercolor RX 6700 XT Hellhound Spectral White review
Resident Evil Village: PC graphics performance benchmark review
Enermax LIQMAX III aRGB 240mm review
PCIe Resizable BAR Performance AMD and NVIDIA benchmarks
Guru3D Rig of the Month - April 2021
Intel Core i7 11700KF processor review
Acer Predator Apollo and Predator Talos DRAM Review
Gigabyte Releases Statement Regarding the SP-CAP and MLCC Capacitor on GeForce RTX 3080
Gigabyte is the first to offer an extensive press-release on the aforementioned CTD issues. With this statement they hope to clarify a thing or two, they deny the root issue to be POSCAP and MLCC related. Basically, they claim that the boards are meeting the speciations set by NVIDIA.
-- Gigabyte --
In response to the recent reports speculating that the use of POSCAP capacitors on the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards could lead to stability issues and crashes, we would like to clarify the issue with the following statement:
It is false that POSCAP capacitors independently could cause a hardware crash. Whether a graphics card is stable or not requires a comprehensive evaluation of the overall circuit and power delivery design, not just the difference in capacitor types. POSCAPs and MLCCs have different characteristics and uses, thus it is not true to assert that one capacitor type is better than the other.
The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards are designed in accordance with NVIDIA specifications and have passed all required testing, thus the product quality is guaranteed. GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING OC and EAGLE OC series graphics cards use high-quality, low-ESR 470uF SP-CAP capacitors, which meet the specifications set by NVIDIA and provide a total capacity of 2820u in terms of GPU core power, higher than the industry’s average. The cost of SP-CAP capacitors is not lower than that of MLCCs. GIGABYTE values product integrity highly and definitely does not reduce costs by using cheap materials.
NVIDIA has released a driver (version 456.55) on September 29, 2020 that improves stability. Users are advised to update to the latest driver for optimized performance. For users who have any concern, please contact our local service centers or representatives.
GIGABYTE has been constantly improving and optimizing product quality, especially in terms of thermal designs, to provide the best gaming experience to the consumers for decades. For the latest AORUS GeForce RTX 30 graphics card series, we have also paid extra attention to the cooling performance and introduced industry-leading solutions such as MAX-Covered Cooling to ensure that the operation of each component is stable.
| Model | NVIDIA RTX 3080 Reference Design | GIGABYTE RTX 3080 GAMING OC & EAGLE OC |
| GPU core Power | SP-CAP 220u/9m OHM *5 MLCC 22u *10 | SP-CAP 470u/6m OHM *6 |
| Total Capacity(u) | 1320u | 2820u |
GeForce RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G from Gigabyte has silver design and triple fan cooler - 09/29/2020 07:52 AM
From Gigabyte's "VISION" series for creators, a GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card equipped with a silver-colored triple-fan cooler "WINDFORCE 3X" has surfaced online....
Gigabyte Outs A Duo of new Mini-ITX motherboard A520I AC motherboards - 09/28/2020 08:45 AM
And with A520, these should not be expensive. Meet the A520I AC and A520M S2H. Two motherboard models that use the AMD A520 chipset have been released. Sales will start on October 2nd (Friday)....
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Series Renders Find their way to the www - 09/21/2020 08:28 AM
Gigabyte apparently has unveiled their GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards. The cards are based on Ampere GA104 GPU and the two products are RTX 3070 GAMING OC and RTX 3070 EAGLE OC. ...
Gigabyte shows RTX 3090 TURBO: With a dual-slot Blower Style cooler - 09/19/2020 09:49 AM
We're not sure what to make of it, other then it's going to make quite a bit noise with a 350W GPU. Gigabyte will be outting a 1500 USD version RTX 3090 based on a blower-style cooler. ...
Review: Gigabyte B550 Vision D - 09/16/2020 08:03 AM
Meet the Gigabyte B550 Vision D motherboard. This product from the Vision series (which includes also a Z490 motherboard) is an AMD AM4 socket product targeted at creators. Built-in the ATX form-facto...
Spets
Senior Member
Posts: 3070
Joined: 2011-05-10
Senior Member
Posts: 3070
Joined: 2011-05-10
#5836450 Posted on: 09/29/2020 01:27 PM
According to Der8auer the caps only made a 20mhz difference in clocks and the issue seems to be the way the card boosts either from vbios boost table or a driver fault:
Problem seems to be fixed with latest driver. Some were boosting to 2.1ghz then crash, these cards were not made to go that far at stock.
Video removed, it's been re-posted too much already.
According to Der8auer the caps only made a 20mhz difference in clocks and the issue seems to be the way the card boosts either from vbios boost table or a driver fault:
Problem seems to be fixed with latest driver. Some were boosting to 2.1ghz then crash, these cards were not made to go that far at stock.
Video removed, it's been re-posted too much already.
Denial
Senior Member
Posts: 13326
Joined: 2004-05-16
Senior Member
Posts: 13326
Joined: 2004-05-16
#5836451 Posted on: 09/29/2020 01:29 PM
It seems like they are right - the driver seems to have resolved the issue. All these manufacturers are going to have higher binned cards with better power delivery to sell at higher price points, the lower ones were never meant to go as high as they were.
Well, Gigabyte is simply saying that it's a driver related issue. And they are also summarizing their overall design as a "we cut no quality corners" in the manufacture of our RTX 3080. This no doubt sets well with them, but those who are experiencing the problem may not feel that way. 
It seems like they are right - the driver seems to have resolved the issue. All these manufacturers are going to have higher binned cards with better power delivery to sell at higher price points, the lower ones were never meant to go as high as they were.
Kaarme
Senior Member
Posts: 2356
Joined: 2013-03-10
Senior Member
Posts: 2356
Joined: 2013-03-10
#5836466 Posted on: 09/29/2020 02:00 PM
That's like some lawyer speech. If they weren't meant to go that high, they wouldn't have gone that high. They weren't clocking so high by accident. It was all defined in the bios/driver. Someone coded it all there. It's no accident. The manufacturers obviously wanted the cards to look good in reviews, no worse than the competitors' offerings. Perhaps you could say they ended up burning their fingertips, but that also means they wrote down the RTX 3080 launch in history as one with a problem that needed a fix. That's just how it goes.
the lower ones were never meant to go as high as they were.
That's like some lawyer speech. If they weren't meant to go that high, they wouldn't have gone that high. They weren't clocking so high by accident. It was all defined in the bios/driver. Someone coded it all there. It's no accident. The manufacturers obviously wanted the cards to look good in reviews, no worse than the competitors' offerings. Perhaps you could say they ended up burning their fingertips, but that also means they wrote down the RTX 3080 launch in history as one with a problem that needed a fix. That's just how it goes.
Denial
Senior Member
Posts: 13326
Joined: 2004-05-16
Senior Member
Posts: 13326
Joined: 2004-05-16
#5836475 Posted on: 09/29/2020 02:13 PM
But as stated before on this forum, the manufacturers couldn't benchmark the cards in actual gaming workloads - so if they are getting a "pass" on Nvidia's testing software at a given clockspeed - then what are they supposed to do when they actually launch the cards and they are boosting momentarily to unattainable clocks?
Further from what I read, it seems like these "unstable" boosts only occur in a few workloads, for like a microsecond before the card actually stabilizes at a much lower frequency for the remainder of the game. I doubt this is effecting benchmark scores to any real metric. Reddit responses post-driver mostly say scores aren't affected. I'd like to see an independent review, obviously - but it doesn't seem like this was intentional.
That's like some lawyer speech. If they weren't meant to go that high, they wouldn't have gone that high. They weren't clocking so high by accident. It was all defined in the bios/driver. Someone coded it all there. It's no accident. The manufacturers obviously wanted the cards to look good in reviews, no worse than the competitors' offerings. Perhaps you could say they ended up burning their fingertips, but that also means they wrote down the RTX 3080 launch in history as one with a problem that needed a fix. That's just how it goes.
But as stated before on this forum, the manufacturers couldn't benchmark the cards in actual gaming workloads - so if they are getting a "pass" on Nvidia's testing software at a given clockspeed - then what are they supposed to do when they actually launch the cards and they are boosting momentarily to unattainable clocks?
Further from what I read, it seems like these "unstable" boosts only occur in a few workloads, for like a microsecond before the card actually stabilizes at a much lower frequency for the remainder of the game. I doubt this is effecting benchmark scores to any real metric. Reddit responses post-driver mostly say scores aren't affected. I'd like to see an independent review, obviously - but it doesn't seem like this was intentional.
Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.
Senior Member
Posts: 283
Joined: 2010-07-20
Well, Gigabyte is simply saying that it's a driver related issue. And they are also summarizing their overall design as a "we cut no quality corners" in the manufacture of our RTX 3080. This no doubt sets well with them, but those who are experiencing the problem may not feel that way.