The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo is unquestionably at the top of the video card industry, particularly in terms of the Ampere family of GPUs. It was initially priced at $799, which was $100 higher than the Founders Edition Nvidia RTX 3080; nevertheless, you're rare to find this card at its full retail price. Regardless, this is one of the greatest graphics cards for gaming and, in most cases, an absolute beast in 4K.

The emphasis on RGB lighting, the triple fan design, and the slightly quicker boost clock set the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo apart from other partner cards. If you can get this GPU for a reasonable price, it is well worth your time and consideration.

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo

Design

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo should seem familiar to anyone who has seen the Zotac Gaming product range previously. Zotac's standardised approach to triple fan graphics cards has shared a lot of DNA, especially since Turing, with several of the company's GPUs sharing the same looks. The 'HoloBlack' design, which includes intense RGB lighting on both the GPU's base and side, is the most notable distinction.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo may not appear like much before you turn it on, but once it's in, it truly breathes fresh life into a rig, especially one like mine, which is already bursting at the seams with vivid colours from all key components.

Aside from the lights, this graphics card is quite solidly constructed, with a metal front and backplate that helps to protect the important components within. Furthermore, unlike the Founder's Edition model, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo uses conventional 2 x 8-pin power rather than a 12-pin converter, and cables are provided in the package in case your PSU lacks the necessary leads.

Aside from aesthetics, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo has a slightly higher boost clock of 1770 MHz than the Founder's Edition's 1710 MHz, allowing you to overclock significantly more. It may not seem like much right now, but if you want to get the most out of your GPU, this little increase will give a handful of more frames that might make all the difference in the long run.

In terms of visual output choices, you'll find 3x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1x HDMI 2.1 to support resolutions and refresh rates of up to 4K 120 or 8K60. It works with all of the greatest gaming displays, as you might imagine. On the technological side, this GPU has 8,704 CUDA cores, 10GB GDDR6X memory, and a 320-bit memory bus that runs at 19 Gbps. That's a lot of bandwidth, and as you'll see later, it's more than enough to keep up with the great majority of games.

Naturally, the Firestorm Utility programme can provide you with real-time performance monitoring as well as Active Fan Control, giving you more control over your performance. For comparison, with our review unit, we kept everything as it came out of the box, but having the ability to simply turn things up to 11 is really welcomed, especially when gaming at 2160p, where the extra power really counts.


Features

Aside from aesthetics, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo has a slightly higher boost clock of 1770 MHz than the Founder's Edition's 1710 MHz, allowing you to overclock significantly more. It may not seem like much right now, but if you want to get the most out of your GPU, this little increase will give a handful of more frames that might make all the difference in the long run.

In terms of visual output choices, you'll find 3x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1x HDMI 2.1 to support resolutions and refresh rates of up to 4K 120 or 8K60. It works with all of the greatest gaming displays, as you might imagine. On the technological side, this GPU has 8,704 CUDA cores, 10GB GDDR6X memory, and a 320-bit memory bus that runs at 19 Gbps. That's a lot of bandwidth, and as you'll see later, it's more than enough to keep up with the great majority of games.

Naturally, the Firestorm Utility programme can provide you with real-time performance monitoring as well as Active Fan Control, giving you more control over your performance. For comparison, with our review unit, we kept everything as it came out of the box, but having the ability to simply turn things up to 11 is really welcomed, especially when gaming at 2160p, where the extra power really counts.


Performance

At 1440p and 4K, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo is a great performance. Because this GPU family is known for its ray tracing 2160p capabilities, I decided to put it through its paces in some of the most demanding titles available to see how well it could deliver on that promise. In most recent games, you should expect to see well over 60 frames per second in 4K at Ultra settings. Cyberpunk 2077 is the lone exception, as evidenced by the benchmarks.

There's not much the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo can't accomplish at 4K, especially when DLSS is taken into account. As a point of comparison, we tested each title in 'Performance' mode or native mode to ensure that the playing field was as even as possible. When using RTX features (ray tracing and DLSS) in tandem, you may anticipate 4K frame rates of above 100 FPS, but things start to slow down when pushing games to their limits in native 2160p; something that only the RTX 3090 can dependably achieve (yet).

Expectedly, the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo ripped through the great majority of games in my collection at 1440p and 2160p, with Metro Exodus delivering the best results (PC Enhanced Edition). Ray tracing is enabled by default in this game, therefore when the visual fidelity is turned up to Extreme (the game's equivalent of Ultra), the visual fidelity may be breathtaking.

With DLSS, you can obtain framerates of 87 on average with no noticeable loss in resolution. Dropping down to 1440p will see far above 120 FPS average in-game for not just Metro Exodus, but also Control, if you want to push the refresh rate higher.

The Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo struggles a little bit in native 2160p performance, with still usable framerates lingering around the 30 FPS level with all sliders turned up as high as they will go. If you're willing to sacrifice performance for aesthetics, this shouldn't be an issue, but if you're in 4K, I recommend leaving DLSS active or scaling down your resolution as much as possible.

Guardians of the Galaxy, which is one of the more graphically striking and well-optimized PC games to come out recently, had no issues with this RTX 3080 GPU. With everything set at maximum with DLSS and ray tracing enabled, I averaged 91 frames per second. The native performance was likewise excellent. In 4K, turning off DLSS fully still gave a respectable average of 46 frames per second, but 1440p doubles it to 84 for a silkier gameplay experience.

Over a year after its debut, Cyberpunk 2077 is more of a demanding visual spectacle, and you're still not going to be able to reach 60 FPS while pushing the game to its utmost at 2160p. We should point out that the average frame rate of 52 FPS is still highly playable, even creeping up to 60 FPS outside of firefights. However, if you want a rock-solid 60 FPS at all times, 1440p maxed out is the way to go, and it's my current favoured method of exploring Night City.

Make no mistake: the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo is a powerful graphics card that can handle 1440p and 4K resolutions. When everything is turned up, it will give you a respectable performance no matter what you throw at it. That's owed to the 10GB GDDR6X memory; aside from a few AMD-optimized games, we haven't seen games even approach the edges in terms of VRAM use.


Is the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo a good buy?

In an ideal environment, I would give the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo a clear recommendation. If you can locate it for $799 MSRP, you should acquire it immediately to enjoy PC games with ray tracing capabilities in 4K without any sacrifices. However, given that the great majority of RTX 30 series devices are plagued with supply challenges, with the RTX 3080 stock in particular suffering, that price point isn't feasible.

It's a very amazing video card, and one that's built to last at least the next several years, so if you can get your hands on it for its full retail price, you'll be quite pleased with what it can achieve, even in 2022.


How we put the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo through its paces?

In the more demanding ray tracing-enabled games on the market, I pushed the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo to its limits. Through PC Mark 10, I ran comprehensive benchmarks of both games and industry-standard tests, including Time Spy and Fire Strike in different formats.

Where specific benchmarking modes were not available, I tested the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 AMP Holo in Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Metro Exodus, Guardians of the Galaxy, and numerous more PC games at 1440p and 4K (2160p) and took an average FPS. I've been a part of the PC gaming community for almost seven years, and I've worked with hardware since the GTX 900 series debuted in 2014.