Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti review

Verdict: Whether you’re looking for the most powerful graphics card, or looking for Nvidia’s vision for the future, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is becoming the most powerful graphics card on the market. Review of Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti more …

pros:

• High FPS in 4K games with one video card;
• Ray tracing promises to revolutionize gaming;
• USB-C connection;

Minuses:

• Extremely expensive;
• Only a few games support ray tracing;

We’ve fully tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for this review and can finally present our verdict for this year’s ultimate gaming graphics card, a gamer’s dream.

Compare: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti vs. GTX 1080 Ti

Unfortunately, the cost of entering the new world of high-end graphics is incredibly high. And, if you don’t have the best hardware (like a high-resolution screen and a powerful processor), that’s just the beginning of your spending.

GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI: PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

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The developer version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is available for an almost obscene $ 1,199. Despite the fact that Nvidia said that you can find a graphics card for a starting price of $ 999 (65,000 r) or $ 1,049 (68,500 r), which is still significantly more expensive than the $ 699 (45,500 r), which we are used to seeing with Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti.

Meanwhile, more than a year has passed since AMD announced a new version of the graphics cards, so the closest competitor to the RTX 2080 Ti costs $ 499 (32,500 rubles), the Radeon RX Vega 64.

GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI: FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS

While it can cost almost twice as much as an alternative graphics card, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti offers impressive specs with 11GB of GDDR6 VRAM and 4,352 CUDA cores with overclocked 1635MHz clock speeds – thanks to Nvidia’s first self-supporting factory overclocking to 90 MHz. In comparison, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti offers 11GB of the latest generation GDDR5X VRAM, 3584 CUDA cores, and a maximum clock speed of 1582MHz.

The new graphics card also has two additional types of cores that have never been found on other cards, these are RT cores and tensor cores. Ray tracing is implemented by the RT2020 cores, which allows the graphics card to display much more complex lighting scenarios in real time and natural shadows, nothing like the 1080 Ti.

Meanwhile, 544 Tensor Cores are implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in consumer graphics cards, which Nvidia hopes to use for the most efficient anti-aliasing. According to Nvidia, Turing is eight times faster at handling anti-aliasing than Pascal through machine learning.

Tensor kernels also use a new technology called Deep Learning Super Sampling, which can increase resolution while applying anti-aliasing.

You will also find a surprising number of new ports on the new GPU. First, Nvidia’s high-bandwidth connector has been used to connect multiple video cards for many years, followed by NV Link, which is 50 times the bandwidth of previous technologies. The RTX 2080 Ti specifically provides two of these connectors to offer up to 100GB of total bandwidth that graphics cards can use to transfer images to multiple 8K monitors.

There is also a new USB-C video out port on the rear panel, which has become common among new monitors. The USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port not only supports UHD video, but also provides 27W of power output, so you only need to plug in one cable to power your future VR headsets.

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GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI: CONSTRUCTION AND COOLING

The RTX 2080 Ti – and the entire Turing-based RTX series – also implements the first dual-fan cooling system, which is not the case for Nvidia Founders Edition graphics cards (benchmark).

Typically, third-party graphics cards always come with a fan-style cooler that essentially sucks in cold air to pump heat through the back of the card. A dual-fan system, meanwhile, basically captures cold air and directs it to an open radiator, after which it removes heat in all directions.

While fan-style coolers are great for isolating heat from the rest of your components, their cooling capacity has historically been much lower because a single fan can move a limited amount of air. Dual and multi-fan systems can move much more air, but they ultimately increase the temperature inside the PC case. This debate within the computer industry has not yet come to a consensus, so it remains to be seen if Nvidia’s solution with another fan can be a good idea.

Besides the new fans, the RTX 2080 Ti also features a full-size vapor chamber to cover the PCB. Nvidia has promised that the entire system will stay cool with a minimum of noise.

In our own testing, we found the new Founders Edition cooler performs as promised, keeping the GPUs cool and quiet. However, it seems that new coolers were needed, as Nvidia’s graphics cards, both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080, heated several degrees more than their predecessors, even when idling.

And as long as no video card has exceeded the 80 degrees Celsius threshold, we can imagine how video cards easily overheat if equipped with a standard cooler.

GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI: PERFORMANCE

After rigorous testing of the graphics card, we can confidently say that the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti is the most powerful graphics card in the world.

Not only does it twist the hands of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, but it outperforms the Nvidia Titan Xp – and that’s not an easy edge. Nvidia’s new flagship GeForce graphics card offers 2,000 points headroom in virtually every synthetic benchmark, delivering at least 10 extra frames per second in each of our gaming benchmarks.

Nvidia is already ahead of AMD, it is far ahead, almost as if the company made a leap into another galaxy. The only threat to this flagship GeForce superiority is the $ 799 RTX 2080, which is slightly inferior in all tests, but cannot consistently hold 60 frames per second at 4K resolution.

Outside of benchmarks, we were finally able to play Destiny 2 at an incredible 70 to 100 frames per second while the game was played in 4K HDR with the highest quality settings. Meanwhile, the recently released Shadow of the Tomb Raider stuck to pretty high 50-55fps with similar 4K Ultra settings.

Unfortunately, outside of ray tracing demos, there are currently no games that actually support the technology, so we can’t judge how Nvidia RTX will affect performance. What can we tell you that Shadow of the Tomb Raider and other games with Nvidia RTX showed stunning visuals with ray tracing enabled.

At the Nvidia GeForce Gaming Celebration at Gamescom 2018, we saw the Nvidia RTX deliver a much more realistic picture with varying lighting intensities on rocky ruins in the rainforest. We also looked at the walls, looking at how light flickers, reflects and refracts.

In terms of frame rates, an early build of Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at mostly 40-50 frames per second, which is impressive since the game was running on a single GPU with support for new ray tracing techniques.

We also played Battlefield V and Metro: Exodus with an Nvidia RTX, noting that performance was over 100fps at 4K resolution and Ultra quality. You can see the gameplay of Battlefield V on the Nvidia RTX above, captured with the Nvidia GeForce Experience app.

Surprisingly, to achieve this level of performance, the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti actually draws less power than the Titan XP and 1080 Ti. However, the GPU draws twice the minimum power and heats up quickly, so make sure your computer is prepared to dissipate all that heat load before installing a graphics card.

GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI: SUMMING UP

Whether you prefer PC gaming and have been looking forward to a more powerful graphics card, or if you really believe Nvidia sees the future, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is the new best graphics card in the segment.

Having seen the realistic lighting that ray tracing can implement, we honestly don’t want to go back to traditional rasterization and muddy puddles where we don’t have to wait for incredible reflections. On the other hand, tensor kernels look like you are paying for long-term dividends.

The Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti’s unbeatably steep $ 1,119 (R73,000) price tag can slow down even the most interested users. The RTX 2080 is almost as attractive and offers incredibly close performance to Nvidia’s flagship graphics card. However, if you’ve already thought about spending the same $ 70,000 for the Titan Xp, just go for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

Nvidia Turing can really shake up the world of the best graphics cards.