I personally really like the 338 federal. I have one in a Tikka that is very handy. Plenty of power from a small light gun. I load and shoot 210 nosler partitions in mine but looking at factory ammo ballistics I disagree a little with some info that has been posted. A 308 shooting 180's in factory form will be somewhere near 2570-2600 fps and a 338 federal with a 180 grain accubond is 2830 fps and the 185 grain tsx is 2750 fps. That is a pretty significant performance improvement as far as I am concerned. I don't see any factory load info for a 200 grain .308 but the 338 fed will do 2630-2700 fps depending on the load. That means it will shoot a 20 grain heavier bullet approximately 100 fps faster than the .308 with 180s. It is certainly no magnum and does have a bit of recoil but for whitetails, pigs and bears out to 400 yards it is a great round.
