Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition
The GTX 1080 Ti killer we’ve been waiting for?
Now that we’ve gone over some of the key highlights of the RTX series, it’s time to take a look at the cards themselves, starting with the RTX 2080.
The GeForce RTX 2080 is based around the Turing TU104 GPU. It packs in 2,944 CUDA Cores, 46 RT Cores, and 368 Tensor Cores. The Founders Edition comes with a 1,800MHz boost clock, which Nvidia claims is a 90MHz overclock over the base GPU specification. In reality we’d expect these clocks to be the real world base specification.
There’s also 8GB of 14Gbps GDDR6 memory, which combined with its 256-bit bus width, means it has 448GB/s of available memory bandwidth. This is big jump from the 320GB/s of the 1080.
The PCB itself sees a significant improvement. Previous Founders Edition cards have tended to have a reputation for a bare bones design and so we’re pleased to see the RTX 2080 has a beefed up 8+2-phase DrMOS VRM system. There’s a new dynamic power management system which helps with power delivery stability and efficiency, both of which are desirable traits for overclocking.
The RTX 2080 features forward looking display connectivity with three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs that are capable of driving displays up to 8K resolution at 60 Hz from a single cable. There’s a HDMI 2.0b connector with HDCP 2.2 support and the previously mentioned VirtualLink USB Type-C connector designed for VR headsets.
Nvidia completely overhauled the design of the cooler, and it’s a work of art. The entire card, including the rear is covered with a premium machined aluminium shroud. It really does look and feel like a high end graphics card should. While board partners are releasing their own versions with bigger coolers, the differences in thermals and acoustics should be somewhat smaller than we’ve seen with previous FE and custom cards.
The TDP of the RTX 2080 is rated at 225W, a notable increase compared to 180W for the GTX 1080. Our power consumption tests reflected this with an increase of 47W from the wall when compared in our reference system. The card remains very quiet under load thanks to the much improved cooler.
Performance is about where we’d expect it to be, better than the 1080 Ti, but not in every circumstance. It is able to game at 4K and is a great choice for high refresh rate 1440p monitors. We’d expect future drivers to add a little more performance to extend the overall lead of the 2080.
The RTX 2080 packs a truly next generation set of features. If you’ve got the dollars (and you’ll need a lot of them) then the RTX 2080 will deliver excellent performance now, and into the future. While we love the RTX series, there’s no doubt that the pricing is a tough pill to swallow, so if you’re already rocking a GTX 1080 Ti, then the 2080 isn’t a major upgrade, at least until ray tracing support becomes widespread. For those of us with a 1080 or less, the RTX 2080 is a technological and real world performance leap forward.