China doesn’t have many homegrown graphics cards, so expectations were high when graphics card maker Moore Threads announced the MTT S80. It’s hard to tell if the MTT S80 has what it takes to compete with the best graphics cards, but hopefully the graphics card collector will in Lechberg (opens in new tab) A modern benchmark can provide some insight.
Moore Threads is a green company, but the company has strong leadership. China’s fabless semiconductor company is new to graphics card gaming, as former Nvidia global VP and China GM Zhang Jianzhong founded Moore Threads in his 2020. The MTT S80 has garnered quite a bit of hype outside the country as it is not only a graphics card in China but also the first PCIe 5.0 gaming graphics card to hit the market. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace) and AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series (RDNA 3) products still use PCIe 4.0.
The MTT S80 is the successor to the MTT S60 and continues to leverage the same MT Integrated System Architecture (MUSA) architecture. It supports modern APIs such as CUDA, DirectX, OpenCL, OpenGL and Vulkan. A Chunxiao GPU manufactured on a 12nm process node powers the MTT S80. Like Nvidia and AMD, the MTT S80 adopts AV1 encoding support in addition to other popular formats such as H.264, H.265 and VP9.
Supporting PCIe 5.0 x16, the MTT S80 delivers up to 14.4 TFLOPs of FP32 performance using 4,096 MUSA cores running at 1.8 GHz. This puts the Chinese graphics card between the GeForce RTX 3060 (12.7 TFLOPs) and the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (16.2 TFLOPs), or the Radeon RX 6750 XT (13.3 TFLOPs) and the Radeon RX 6800 (16.2 TFLOPs). Moore Threads equips the MTT S80 with 16GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit memory interface. This arrangement sits on par with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and is good for a theoretical maximum memory bandwidth of up to 448 GBps.
MTT S80 features a popular dual-slot design with a triple-fan cooling solution. This is a gaming graphics card. Some RGB eye candy is inevitable. Graphics cards use an 8-pin EPS connector like the ones found on motherboards. With 255W TBP (Total Board Power), one EPS connector delivers up to 300W. The MTT S80 has the same output as Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 4090. Additionally, it receives three DisplayPort1.4a outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port, supporting up to four 8K displays.
Moore Threads MTT S80 Benchmark
| graphics card | Final Fantasy XIV: End Walker | Unigene Heaven D3D11 1080p 8xAA Ultra | 3DMark06 Default | 3DMark06 1080p 8xAA 16xAF | 3DMark03 1080p Default | 3DMark03 1080p 8xAA 16xAF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ark A770 | none | none | 40,809 | 36,052 | 141,302 | 58,294 |
| MTT S80 | 4,312 | 551 | 14,780 | 12,895 | 55,422 | 37,746 |
| GeForce GTX 680 | none | 1,178 | none | none | none | none |
| Radeon HD 7950 Boost | none | 1,108 | none | none | none | none |
It’s no exaggeration to say that benchmarking the MTT S80 was difficult. Löschzwerg emphasized that graphics card performance and drivers are inconsistent. GPU utilization was sub-optimal, graphics cards were rarely at their full potential, suggesting that drivers weren’t optimized.Tessellation does not work with current drivers, Unigine Heaven, 3DMark 11, and Final Fantasy XIV: End WalkerTo my surprise, the Resizable BAR works fine.
The results revealed that the Arc A770 outperformed the MTT S80 by more than 170% on 3DMark06 for both presets. Intel’s graphics card also delivered 155% higher performance in 3DMark03. Even with the more demanding presets, the Arc A770 beats his MTT S80 by a 54% margin.
The MTT S80 scored 551 points on Unigine Heaven at 1080p 8xAA with ultra presets.another Twitter user (opens in new tab) We provided scores for the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7950 Boost. Compared to the MTT S80, the former scored 114% higher and the latter scored 101% higher.
MTT S80 is Final Fantasy XIV: End Walker A benchmark with a score of 4,312 points. Unfortunately, the reviewer was using custom settings, so I couldn’t compare with the results, but his score slides between 4,000 and 5,999, which is on par with standard performance. This means your graphics card has what it takes to run the game with its default settings. Löschzwerg also tested his MTT S80 with Crysis and the graphics card seems to work fine, but he doesn’t give any performance figures.
However, the power metrics are truly staggering: our test system consisting of a Core i5-10400 and an ASRock B560M-HDV idles at around 22W. On the MTT S80, the idle power is about 131W, and we can see that the graphics card consumes 109W when idle. On the other hand, the peak system power consumption was 315W, so the MTT S80 consumed 293W. Again, the value is ridiculously high. For example, even his GeForce RTX 4070 Ti for enthusiasts is a 285W graphics card.
In its current state of drivers, the MTT S80 potentially leaves some performance on the table. Officially, the graphics card supports about 20 DirectX games, but performance is hit or miss. The graphics card performs better with his DirectX 9 titles than DirectX 11. However, it still has a long way to go when it comes to game compatibility.
The MTT S80 is priced at 2,999 yuan or $442.65 on JD.com. (opens in new tab), a popular Chinese online retailer. Unfortunately, a gamer in China can buy an Intel, AMD or Nvidia graphics card, so this is not a suitable option. However, the MTT S80’s raison d’etre may increase if export restrictions to China become stricter.
