NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 And RTX 2080 Ti Benchmark Review: Turing Is A Beast

To date, NVIDIA has disclosed a number of details regarding its GeForce RTX series graphics cards, based on the bleeding-edge Turing GPU architecture. We covered NVIDIA’s official announcements direct from Gamescom, where high-level features like Ray Tracing, DLSS, NVLink, and pricing were initially revealed and followed up with a nice, long podcast chat with NVIDIA’s own Tom Petersen, during which a handful of interesting tid-bits were divulged. We were able to dive into the Turing architecture last week, where we detailed and explained what makes Turing tick in all of its brain-melting glory. Today though, we can finally reveal how the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and GeForce RTX 2080 actually perform. We know many of you have been eagerly awaiting this important data.


Before continuing, we suggest taking a step back and checking-out NVIDIA’s initial unveil and reading our Turing architecture coverage – there are numerous details in those two articles we won’t be going into again here. If you want the back-story and a juicy technical deep dive, you’ve got some reading to do. In this piece, however, we’re going to focus strictly on performance, including things like overclocking and power consumption. The GeForce RTX series is about more than just performance, however. Some of the capabilities enabled by its new architecture, with RT and Tensor cores, needs to be seen to be fully appreciates, so we’ve put together some video coverage to set the stage...


We cover lots of ground in the video, but have more on tap for you on the pages ahead. First on the list are some up-close-and-personal details regarding a couple of NVIDIA partner boards from EVGA and MSI, namely the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra and the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio. We put both of these cards through the ringer as you’ll see a little later. We should also mention that we tested NVIDIA’s own GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti Founder’s Editions (seen above) as well – for more pictures and details on NVIDIA’s cards specifically, point your browser right here.


The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra features a totally new design. It is a complete departure from EVGA’s previous-gen cards and is outfitted with a new, more powerful cooler and custom PCB – heck, even the packaging design is new and more “premium” than older EVGA cards. You can see us opening live in this unboxing from a couple of days back.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra comes overclocked as well. Its GPU base and memory clocks are the same as NVIDIA’s, but its GPU boost clock is 1815MHz – a slight bump up from the Founder’s Edition’s 1800MHz.
The card features new Hydro Dynamic Bearing (HDB) fans that EVGA claims output less noise and have a longer a lifespan than traditional axial fans. The fans also have newly designed blades and a hub tuned for quieter operation. Underneath those fans in a dense heatsink array with L-shaped fins, and a base that’s punched from solid sheet of metal. There’s a stylized metal plate on the backside of the PCB to help dissipate heat and add some rigidity as well. And we can’t forget about the customizable RGB lighting.


The fan shroud is translucent on the card and can be removed to swap out the colored-accents behind it. This card has white trim, but other colors will also be available – EVGA will actually be running a promo where users that register their RTX-series cards can get a free trim kit in the color of their choice. A metal shield option will also be available, along with a hydro-copper water cooling kit.

Outputs on the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra mirror NVIDIA’s design, though the case bracket on this 2.75-slot wide card is very difference. The supplemental power plugs are the same too (one 6-pin, one 8-pin), but EVGA incorporates tech that allows for real-time wattage monitoring via its Precision X1 utility.

We should also mention that EVGA has a huge array of GeForce RTX cards coming – 31 by our count – and the XC Ultra is one of the “simpler” models. There are cards with updated ICX2 cooling coming, three fan designs, and additional power phases too. The top-end 2080 Ti boards will have 19 power phases; the top 2080 boards 14.
MSI has also gone all-out on its new GeForce RTX series cards. What you see pictured here is the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio. This beast of a graphics card comes factory overclocked as well, with a max boost frequency of 1860MHz. To keep the cards running cool, MSI has outfitted the card with what it’s calling a “Tri-Frozr Thermal Design”, which is just a fancy name for a high-quality, triple-fan cooler.
The Tri-Frozr cooler features a huge heatsink array with thick copper heap-pipes, dedicated MOSFET cooling, three double-ball bearing fans, and premium thermal paste. The sheet size of the heatsinks and triple fan assembly result in a card that is over a foot long. There’s a solid metal back-plate on the card as well, customizable RGB lighting, and the PCB features a 10-2 phase power array. To keep the card fed with plenty of juice while overclocking, MSI also outfitted it with a pair of 8-pin supplemental power connectors.
The outputs on the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio also mirror NVIDIA’s, but other than that, this card is essentially all custom. And though the case bracket is only two-slots wide, like the EVGA card above, the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio is 2.75 slots wide.

If you’ve been following GPU news lately, you’ve probably seen these cards before, so let’s get to what you’ve all been waiting for -- some benchmarks...