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Test Setup for Asus ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
Our test configuration for the hardware and software remains unchanged from other recent reviews. We're using an 8-core/16-thread Core i9-9900K running stock clocks, but with DDR4-3600 memory and the XMP profile enabled. The CPU generally runs at 4.7GHz during our gaming benchmarks, though the slightly older Coffee Lake architecture can be a bit of a bottleneck at lower resolutions.
We're also still running Windows 10 21H1. We plan to update to Windows 11 in the near future and see how that impacts performance — which will also require retesting a bunch of GPUs, so we're not looking to jump on the preview builds just yet.
We already tested ray tracing and DLSS performance using the reference RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, so we're limiting testing on third-party cards to our standard 13 game test suite, running at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p at ultra (or equivalent) settings. Each test setting gets run multiple times, to ensure the consistency of our results. Now let's see how much the liquid cooling and factory overclock help with performance.
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