Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080TI Founders Edition & RTX 2080 Founders Edition GPU Review

Closing Thoughts

I’m not calling this section a conclusion as I am far from done testing with the Turing Cards. I still have more tests upcoming for Ray Tracing and more testing for DLSS. While it’s a good technology demonstration and I am impressed with the results, I can dig under the hood. I can’t say that I like that when testing a new bit of tech. I’m sure patches are being rushed out the door for games that have pledged their support for DLSS and Ray tracing as I am finishing this write up.

This launch from Nvidia was a bit strange in my opinion. I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was or if it was the whole show in general. What I do know is the internet was a fury of posts and people voicing their concerns about performance, price, etc. While my concerns haven’t been fully answered yet, I’m very impressed with what I saw. As the drivers mature and the software becomes available to take advantage of the new RTX features, there will be even more of a generational performance gap.

On the RTX 2080TI front, it performed pretty much like I had expected and crushed whatever I put in front of it. I intentionally tested at the maximum in-game settings at 4K. Everything I tested was super smooth and looked great. On the HDR front, I did tests with both HDR off and HDR on and on all three cards and noted not more than a 3 frame per second difference in any of the games that supported it.

Performance wise, I really couldn’t be more pleased with the results. But it is not just the frames per second I am talking about but the cooling performance. I for one, am very happy to see the old style\ with the single blower fan go away. Bring on the metal! The RTX cards feature a full-length vapor chamber cooler which under load kept both cards to under 75°C where as the GTX 1080TI Founder Edition did hit 80+°C on occasion. The fans on the RTX cards are quiet when auto fan control is enabled.

As far as overclocking with the RTX 2080TI, my Aorus Z370 Gaming 7 does not have an external power connector on the motherboard and I think that was my limitng factor but I did manage to get a manual overclock of 2100MHz on the core and 7850MHz on the RAM. I added 25mv and cranked the power target to 123% with 100% fans. Using the Nvidia scanner, I was able to get 2050MHz on the core with a slight increase in fan noise. These cards seem to be begging to be pushed to the limit and more overclocking is coming.

I think Nvidia has a great product on their hands and delivered a real 4K single card solution. Either card will handle 4K with out an issue. I can’t wait to get more software loaded up and see what the real world impacts of DLSS & Ray tracing will be. There’s a “tax” on every new piece of technology. An early adopter’s fee if you will. The price tag on the RTX 2080 may be more palatable and has a lower entry fee into the buttery smooth 4K gaming arena. The price tag on the RTX 2080 TI will keep most away except for the ultra high end enthusiasts away. However, it is the fastest graphics card on the planet.