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Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
Here we see the Nvidia direct FE or founders edition packaging. It is a very Nvidia flavor packaging with strong accents of Nvidia green and the angular printing you would expect. It’s an encapsulating design similar to what we saw in the 10 series FE packaging as well.
Here is everything that comes in the box. the little accessory box is recessed into the lower carton foam and has a pull tab to retrieve it. Once inside you get the essentials.
- 1x Displayport to DVI Adapter
- 2x small manuals to help get you started
Its nothing special but I mean I didn’t need any of this to get running so I would say its more than enough.
Here you can see the card out of the plastic and ready to prowl. I do have to say, I definitely like the direction they took on these coolers. the bent ALU shroud just gives a very quality look overall. it definitely feels substantial in your hand and there is NO PCB flex to be seen. The fact that Nvidia designed this cooler to be a full cover vapor chamber says a lot about its capability. The dual axial fans blow across the full fun array which moves the heat soaked into the fin array out to the ambient chassis air and off the card and its components.
Here you can see the rear I/O of the card and its bevy of connectors.
- 3x Displayport
- 1x HDMI 2.0b
- 1x VirtualLink (USB Type C)
Now, this looks like standard fare with the exception of USB Type C… Well for those not in the know, this is for the new VirtualLink connection which will power next-gen VR HMD’s (Head Mounted Displays) and it will carry not only power but the display/data connection all through a single cable. This means a much easier plugin for future VR headsets vs the multiple connections needed for current-gen headsets with Oculus needing 4-6 cables to have everything connected including sensors.
The power for the RTX 2080 TI is fed by dual 8 Pin PCIe power connectors as this is one hungry beast. Here you can also get a really good view of the angled ALU shroud that surrounds the card and follows along into the backplate.
Here you can see with the NVLink cover pulled off that the RTX 2080 Ti definitely sports a 2nd Gen Nvidia NVLink connector which is said to support 100GB/s Bi-directional bandwidth to allow a whole new world of multi GPU potential or just imagine SLI on steroids. However, this does beg the question of why? I mean when you look at SLI support over the last 5 years it has waned so badly that many users simply stopped trying as many games either have lackluster support or it does not really scale as much as expected. Now I wonder if maybe this is what we needed all along and the HB setup of Pascal was simply the next evolutionary step leading to this, and if this is the case I am very happy as I have always been a multi GPU guy and would love to see a resurgence of linked GPU performance.
Last but not least as Nvidia ditched the standard blower style fan which has been a staple of Nvidia reference GPUs for as long as I can remember, with the exception of dual GPU models which has a center mounted single Axial fan blowing through two opposing mounted fin stacks.
Enough of the outside now let’s tear her apart and take a look at the guts.
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.