NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 owners report better stability but lower boost clocks with latest drivers
NVIDIA has released updated drivers promising improved stability, and it looks like they delivered on that promise. The latest GeForce Game Ready 456.55 WHQL drivers seems to be working out great for gamers who were previously facing crashes with the GeForce RTX 3080 cards.
It seems that NVIDIA decided to reduce the aggressiveness of the boost algorithms to achieve stability with these GeForce RTX 3080 cards though. Users are reporting anywhere from 15MHz to about 100MHz lower boost clocks in games, although I am pretty sure everyone would be happier with improved stability than high but unstable clocks. Interestingly enough, the cards also seem to deliver better performance despite the lower clocks, which is nice to see.
While this takes the spotlight away from the MLCC vs polymer capacitors debate, AIBs like EVGA have reported that using MLCC capacitors do provide better stability at higher performance levels. Recently, ASUS Republic of Gamers have taken to their Instagram to boast that their ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 feature MLCC capacitors for improved overclocking headroom.
So while both EVGA and ASUS have shared that using MLCC does promise better performance, it doesn’t mean that polymer capacitors are just bad. It probably just means that the cards featuring polymer capacitors might not be able to hit as high an overclock as the cards packing MLCC, but either way, all GeForce RTX 30 series should be stable at their factory settings. Not to mention whether a card is stable or not when overclocked is usually not an AIB’s concern because it would be considered running it out of spec anyway.
Pokdepinion: Well, glad that that’s all over.