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At long last, we have the replacement to Pascal.
I have really gone back and forth on how to open this as, Well the new Nvidia RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards are something like I have never really dealt with before. I mean, yes, they are graphics cards by the normal sense but the capabilities they bring is not just another generational jump in performance. No, this time Nvidia has unveiled something that truly has the potential to change the way we view the performance from a GPU. Nvidia has redefined simple rasterization performance by circumventing the standard approach of chasing frequency and die performance by creating new methods to render scened and removing load from the shader and placing it onto specialized “cores” which were initially developed for Nvidia’s endeavors into the machine learning space. With that they also call upon their deep knowledge they have gained in the AI space to help better build out predictive models that I believe if adopted could truly pave the way for not just a new wave of gaming performance but a new generation of smarter, faster and more efficient consumer systems.
The Nvidia naming has now been flipped on its lid as GTX has been the stable for all gaming based Nvidia GPUs for so long. Now the torch has been passed to the new RTX series, which still remains to be seen if GTX will still live on in the form of other non “Ray Tracing” targeted products but as of this launch they have focused all in on the top 3 of the new stack with the RTX 2080 Ti shoring up the top of the offering followed by the RTX 2080 and the RTX 2070 which will be “coming soon”.
Today we have received the RTX 2080Ti and RTX 2080 for review to test, study, analyze and give you guys a view as to what makes these new entries into the market worth your hard earned dollar.
I feel that it is very important I get this out of the way first and foremost. These cards were explicitly designed for 4K+ and that was clearly defined to me by many people from Nvidia. With that being said I am still bucking convention and testing up to 4K including 1080p and 1440p along with 4K results. The other thing is that as these cards have some serious next level tuning and performance it is going to be a bit harder to justify them for anyone just looking at pure rasterization performance, but as I am writing this my actual gaming performance testing is complete for both the RTX 2080Ti and the RTX 2080 with regression testing of the TITAN Xp and 1080 Ti happening as these words appear on the screen.
I’m not here to sell you the product or tell you to buy it now (That’s Nvidia’s marketing teams job.. and they do a damn good job already).. some other media have already done that, and while I like Reddit I would prefer not to be memorialized via that light. I believe the job of a journalist as myself is to give my independent opinion on new hardware as it comes across my lab and let you know the good, the bad and the ugly. With that said, let’s dig into this thing and see what new features the RTX series has to offer and more importantly what does it mean for you.
The cards went up for presale and will have general availability very soon and the pricing has caused quite the stir.
This will be a hard pill to swallow for some, but as the story goes, early adoption with new tech normally carries a hefty fine. I don’t even want to admit how much I paid for my first few GSYNC displays including my ultrawide when they first came out.
That being said the measure of value is a tricky one as everyone would love TITAN V performance for 300 bucks but we live in the real world where that kind of performance costs a ton in R&D and engineering resources to even develop and build. I have a unique perspective on this as I have worked in the AIB side, the Manufacturing side and even the system integration side. This means I have seen most angles from PCB design/layout to building systems for gamers and everything in between.
Now the question becomes, is the price justified, well read on as I dive into, test, tear apart and squeeze every bit of performance out of these new RTX cards to see if you can get your money’s worth.
Features
- New Turing based GPU featuring hardware-based acceleration and hybrid rendering capabilities
- New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
- Turing Tensor Cores
- Real Time Ray Tracing (RTX)
- New shading enhancements
- Deep Learning Features for Graphics (DLSS and more)
- All new dual fan Founders Edition cooler
- Integrated VirtualLink port on the rear I/O (USB Type C)
- 2nd Generation NVLink – up to 100GB/s Bi-Direction bandwidth for next level multi GPU performance
- GDDR6 High-Performance memory
- GPU Boost 4
Specifications
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti |
| Graphics Engine | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Core TU102-300A-K1-A1 |
| Bus | PCI Express 3.0 |
| Video Memory | GDDR6 11GB |
| Core Clock (OC) | GPU Boost Clock: 1635 MHz, GPU Base Clock: 1350 MHz |
| CUDAÂ Cores | 4352 |
| RTX OPS | 78T |
| GIGA Rays/s | 10 |
| Memory Clock | 14000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 352-bit |
| Resolution | Max Resolution:7680×4320 |
| Interface | HDMI Output : Yes x 1 (Native) (HDMI 2.0b) Display Port: Yes x 3 (Native) (Regular DP) VirtualLink (USB Type C) : Yes x 1 (Native) HDCP Support: Yes |
| Power Connectors | 2 x 8-pin |
| Accessories | 1Â x Displayport to DVI Adapter 2 x Instruction Guides |
| Dimensions | 10.5″ x 4.556″ 266.74 x 115.7 Millimeter |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 |
| Graphics Engine | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Core TU104-400A-A1 |
| Bus | PCI Express 3.0 |
| Video Memory | GDDR6 8GB |
| Core Clock (OC) | GPU Boost Clock: 1800 MHz, GPU Base Clock: 1515 MHz |
| CUDAÂ Cores | 2944 |
| RTX OPS | 60T |
| GIGA Rays/s | 8 |
| Memory Clock | 14000 MHz |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit |
| Resolution | Max Resolution:7680×4320 |
| Interface | HDMI Output : Yes x 1 (Native) (HDMI 2.0b) Display Port: Yes x 3 (Native) (Regular DP) VirtualLink (USB Type C) : Yes x 1 (Native) HDCP Support: Yes |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin |
| Accessories | 1Â x Displayport to DVI Adapter 2 x Instruction Guides |
| Dimensions | 10.5″ x 4.556″ 266.74 x 115.7 Millimeter |
Two years later a new generation card should deliver around the performance the 2080ti does however the price is also expected to stay equal or less than the card it replaces. This is where the 2080ti fails big time and it’s sad to see reviewers ignore the fact. All serious reviewers should ignore nvidia marketing and compare the cards to similarly priced previous gen cards. So 1080 to 2060, 1080 to 2070 and 1080ti to 2080.
I agree, if this was a direct comparison as in Rasterization to Rasterization that would be 100% true and this review would be much different. However, as in life, things are much different and it has nothing to do with Nvidia’s marketing but more to do with having a long view on the direction of the industry. There is a lot at work which will come around as this all matures and new features really get to be explored. Thank you for the comment and for giving it a read as I always welcome constructive feedback. That being said, I would definitely revisit not just my review but others as the new features change the way you can render in-game scenes and opens the doors to next level performance differences along with massively more immersion with what the new real-time ray tracing capabilities start to show up.
I do agree that the new tech will change how rendering is done, in a GPU generation or two as it is the right way forward. But the 2080 and 2080ti cards simply do not currently deliver the value for anyone but developers that need to work on this for 1-3 years before it hits the market for real.
A card should be reviewed from a ‘consumer’ perspective. The consumer here being the gamer not a developer. Any existing consumer with a 1080ti looking to upgrade would be considering to spend around the same as amount for a new card. So his upgrade here is the 2080.. The 2080 does not currently provide the usual generational performance increase and is therefore close to worthless as a upgrade. If the consumer was willing to spend $1200 his existing card would most likely be a Titan X.
So from this perspective the 2080 upgrade is turing and rtx cores and they are not supported in DX12 yet (with luck it comes in October), furthermore there are no games currently available.
So all in all you are buying something that might work but most indications point to RTX forcing you to go from 4k -> 1080p on a 2080TI and the 2080 will probably not do well at all. This leaves DLSS as the only real gain.
Now if NVIDIA has launched this without marketing bullshit trying to sell a titan as a TI I would have no issues because people know what they are buying and all reviews would be done correctly comparing apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
So the conclusion for now is that the 2080 card probably only provides DLSS as a improvement over a TI for a higher price as the RTX cores most likely wont be able to render in a usable resolution for guys doing 4k or 144hz gaming .
Furthermore I would expect the 2080 FE (factory overclocked card) to be compared to a equally overclocked 1080 TI.
Any conclusion that skips these obvious issues are hard to take serious.
Very well said Reviewers are missing this very important point: nvidia is ripping us off with this outrageous prices
This is not true, as in any market the tech will go for what the market will bear. If you are not happy with the prices, you have no requirement to make a purchase or even buy when a model which meets your expectations show up. I have no skin in this game as far as what Nvidia sells their product for, of course as a consumer I would love to see it for 500 or even 99 bucks but the amount of research and time that goes into these products it is simply not feasible.
Same goes for any tech product… Try telling Tesla their products (cars) are overpriced.. Many feel that way and they choose not to purchase them, but knowing what I know about them, same as I know about this tech I would buy one if I could… today…
IF this were true I would definitely agree. but we have seen games which are in process of adding these features now.. many games which already exist and more are gonna be added to this list soon I am sure. I would definitely agree once again if this was some far off tech, but it’s simply not. This is tech we will see implemented within the next few quarters is what I am seeing.