Power, Temperature and Noise
Running at 100MHz higher on boost and catering for RGB on a larger board pushes total power consumption up by about 20 watts, which is still comfortably lower than rival MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio.
The one obvious advantage of going big is enhanced cooling and lower temperatures. PowerColor beats out AMD by 5°C.
It's quieter, too, as the fans only spin up at 1,150rpm. Putting it in Quiet Mode keeps them below 1,000rpm. Noise drops to 35.4dB and benchmark performance to just below the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT's base levels.