China's first proper gaming graphics card, the MTT S80 from Moore Threads, has been tested across various games by Expreview.
China's First Gaming GPU, Moore Threads MTT S80, Benchmarked In Games: Good For eSports But Lacks Driver Support & Loses To An RTX 3060
The Moore Threads MTT S80 is purely focused on gamers. It features 4096 MUSA streaming cores and runs at 1.8 GHz, providing users with 14.4 TFLOPs of compute performance. While gaming is its focus, the graphics card can also be used for 3D rendering and AI processing.
The graphics card comes with a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, offering up to 128 GB/s of bandwidth. The card is also equipped with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. As for the display outputs, the graphics card features 3 DisplayPort 1.4a and a single HDMI 2.1 port.
Moore Threads is really betting on the gaming prowess of its MTT S80 graphics card and will be offering its latest PES (Perfect Experience System) control center that allows users to control and customize various functions of their graphics cards while easily receiving the latest driver updates.
The Moore Threads MTT S80 is the follow-up to the MTT S60 which was launched earlier this year & was an entry-level GPU with 6 TFLOPs of performance and 8 GB of LPDDR4X memory on board. It's more than double the boost in compute performance alone and will support more modern games and APIs (DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES). Moore Threads state that this is the first and only GPU in China that supports the DirectX API which will definitely be a huge deal for the domestic gaming segment. The company has also worked with Unreal and Unity to bring more next-gen AAA experiences and optimize the engines for their graphics cards.
Moore Threads MTT S80 Graphics Card Overview
The Moore Threads MTT S80 reference design comes in a triple-fan and dual-slot design which features four display outputs that include three DP 1.4a and a single HDMI 2.1 output. The card comes with a single 8-pin power connector but this is no standard 8-pin connector. The MTT S80 uses an EPS 12V 8pin connector which is the same as the one used by CPUs and can deliver up to 300 Watts of power. There's an adapter that ships with the card and requires two standard PCIe 8-pin plugs to boot.
The card has a 255W TGP so one of these connectors is more than enough to power it. The fans include two 80mm and one 70mm design with 11 blades and the card itself is measured at 286 x 111 x 49mm.
As for the PCB, the MTT S80 features a 6+2 phase design and has a total of eight GDDR6 memory chips surrounding the GPU. While this Samsung dies are rated at 16 Gbps, MTT S80 only makes use of 14 Gbps speeds across a 256-bit bus for 384 GB/s of bandwidth. The heatsink makes use of two large aluminum fin blocks with four dense copper heat pipes and a pure copper base plate that is connected to the GPU.
Moore Threads MTT S80 Graphics Card Design (Image Credits: Expreview):
Moore Threads MTT S80 Graphics Card Benchmarks
In synthetic benchmarks, the Moore Threads MTT S80 graphics card offered a mixed performance where it sometimes beats the RTX 3060 and sometimes loses by a wide margin. The GPU's gaming performance isn't that great either with 4K offering better performance than 1080p which means that the card doesn't scale well at lower resolutions. Regardless, it was able to run esports titles that are very popular in China at over 100 FPS and at 4K resolution.
For example, the graphics card offered 128 FPS at 4K in Leauge of Legends, 165 FPS in CrossFire at 4K, and 87 FPS in Street Fighter IV at 4K however, these are less demanding titles and anything that you can actually call graphics-intensive game will give the MTT S80 a hard time, even at 1080p.
However, it should be pointed out that the graphics card has support for only 60 games at the moment and most of them are Chinese titles. Support for anything beyond DX9 is very poor at the moment so while there's the potential for better support in the future, the current state of the drivers is quite bad. Following is a list of games that are either supported or will soon be supported by the card:
Moore Threads MTT S80 Graphics Card Thermals & Power
Lastly, the graphics card consumed around 210W on average, 240W with power stress tests, and 114W during standby. The standby or idle power is horrible at the moment but it is expected to be fixed in a driver update soon. The temperature of the card at idle is around 44C but no load temps are mentioned.
Moore Threads MTT S80 Graphics Card Power Chart (Image Credits: Expreview):
The Moore Threads MTT S80 has been available since 11th November but is only available as part of a bundled deal with an ASUS B660 motherboard with a pricing of 2999 RMB or $418 US. The RTX 3060, on the other hand, can be found at dirt cheap rates in the Chinese used market and you don't have to buy a motherboard with it.
Moore Threads MTT GPU Lineup:
| Moore Threads MTT Series Graphics Cards | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wccftech | MTT S3000 | MTT S80 | MTT S2000 | MTT S60 |
| Process Technology | Chunxiao | Chunxiao | 12nm MUSA | 12nm MUSA |
| FP32 Cores | 4096 Cores | 4096 Cores | 4096 Cores | 2048 Cores |
| Performance (TFLOPS) | 15.2 TFLOPs | 14 TFLOPs | 12 TFLOPS | 6 TFLOPS |
| Memory | 32 GB GDDR6 | 16 GB GDDR6 | 32GB | 8GB LPGDDR4X |
| Form factor | Dual-slot passive | Dual-slot / Triple-Fan | Single-slot passive | Single-slot blower |
| API Support | DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES | DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES | DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES | DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenGL ES |
| OS Support | X86/ARM/LoongArch; Windows/Linux | X86/ARM/LoongArch; Windows/Linux | X86/ARM/LoongArch; Windows/Linux | X86/ARM/LoongArch; Windows/Linux |
| Display Support | DisplayPort + HDMI 2.1 | DisplayPort + HDMI 2.1 | DisplayPort 1.4 up to 8K | DisplayPort 1.4 up to 8K |
