The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti & RTX 2080 Founders Edition Review: Foundations For A Ray Traced Future
by Nate Oh on September 19, 2018 5:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- Raytrace
- GeForce
- NVIDIA
- DirectX Raytracing
- Turing
- GeForce RTX
Grand Theft Auto V (DX11)
Now a truly venerable title, GTA V is a veteran of past game suites that is still graphically demanding as they come. As an older DX11 title, it provides a glimpse into the graphically intensive games of yesteryear that don't incorporate the latest features. Originally released for consoles in 2013, the PC port came with a slew of graphical enhancements and options. Just as importantly, GTA V includes a rather intensive and informative built-in benchmark, somewhat uncommon in open-world games.
The settings are identical to its previous appearances, which are custom as GTA V does not have presets. To recap, a "Very High" quality is used, where all primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, except grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced rendering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.
| GTA V | 1920x1080 | 2560x1440 | 3840x2160 |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 99th Percentile |  |
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There was an interesting issue during testing that affected the RTX cards at 4K; running the benchmark would result in a blank screen for the entirety of the run. The image would appear with Alt+Enter to put it in windowed mode, but disappear again back in fullscreen. An external overlay resolved the issue, but performance results were identical either way. We really didn't have time to investigate thoroughly, but GTA V, especially with Social Club, can be quite finicky and I hesitate to call it a driver bug without digging into it more.
It's a testament to both GTA V and the nature of graphics optimization work that a GeForce card can only now average 60fps. Even still, it's restricted to the RTX 2080 Ti performance tier, which is roughly where the Titan V stands as well. Regardless, the results represent the performance scenario that NVIDIA is ultimately hoping to avoid: the 1080 Ti exceeding the 2080 in performance even with the Founders Edition tweaks. At this point, the 1080 Ti is a mature card and the offerings will skew towards tried-and-true halo custom cards, factory overclocked and well-cooled. Plain performance regression in reference settings is not something the RTX 2080 can easily afford with the higher price - Founders Edition or otherwise.
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Midwayman - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
You *should* want ray tracing. Its freaking awesome. I think the question really is if it is worth the trade-off yet.Fritzkier - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
I agree with you. Even though Nvidia shouldn't have priced RTX that high, we still want ray tracing.mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
I couldn't give a hoot either way, I just want games that make sense and are believable, that's far more important than how a game looks. If an object cannot be used or behave in a manner that corresponds to its appearance, then what's the point? Everyone went mental about the puddle in the PS4 game, but did anyone stop to ask whether the water on the ground was wet? Likewise, th RTX demo of that fire effect (which looked grud awful anyway), is the fire hot? Can it melt the glass if fired close enough? Can I break the glass? Use a shard as a weapon? Would an enemy reveal their position by walking on the fragments, or do the pieces just fade away because they're nothing more than a fancy PhysX visual? Can I throw a grenade into the cabin to make the glass explode and harm passing enemies?World interactivity, object function and unexpected complexity & behaviour makes for a far more immersive game than any amount of ray tracing can ever provide. A glazed china teapot can look glorious with complex reflections & suchlike, but if I can't use it to make tea than it's not a teapot. If I can't open a door, close it, lock it, break it down, etc., then it's not a door. People are obsessed with visuals in games atm because they've been told to be. The sheep behaviour of consumers with all this is utterly mind boggling.
That aside, these Turing cards are simply not fast enough for doing RT effects anyway. NVIDIA has spent the last five yers hyping people up for high frequency gaming, 4K and VR, all things which need strong fill rates (rasterisation performance). Those who've gotten used to high frequency monitors physically cannot go back, the brain's vision system adapts, standard 60Hz sudden looks terrible to such users. Now all of a sudden NVIDIA is trying to tell the very crowd with money to spend, who've largely jumped onto the HF/4K/VR bandwagon, that they should take a huge step backwards to sub-60Hz 1080p, at prices which make no sense at all. That's absolutely crazy, doubly so when dual-GPU is dead below the 2080, a card which is not usefully faster than a 1080 Ti, costs more and has less RAM.
Gastec - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
1000 thumbs-ups sensei! :)Writer's Block - Monday, October 1, 2018 - link
+1I'm an occasional gamer; I'd be more than an occasional gamer if games did what your suggest
Gastec - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Like that freak said: "How much of your life do you not want to be Ray traced?" or some similar abomination.webdoctors - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
?? I knew about ray tracing before it was announced. Ray tracing isn't a new technology, its been around for more than 25 years, the idea might predate computers.Who DOESN"T want ray tracing?!
You can argue you don't want to pay a premium for it, but that's not the same thing.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - link
I just want better games, I don't care whether they're ray traced or not. This is why I like Subnautica so much, functionally it's a far more interesting and engaging game than most I've seen recently, even though the visuals are not as sophisticated. I had been spending much time playing Elite Dangerous, but that game has become very wide with no depth, it lacks the interactivitity and depth that Subnautica captures nicely. And re my comments above, see:http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/reflections.txt
sonny73n - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
@V900Are you gonna reply to every comment to justify Nvidia’s rip-offs? lol
BurntMyBacon - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
@V900: "If you look at AMDs Vega and compare it with the previous AMD flagship: Fury, you see a similar 30-40% increase in performance.In other words: This isn’t Nvidia wanting to rip gamers off, it’s just a consequence of GPU makers pushing up against the end of Moore’s law."
Point of consideration: Though VEGA did see a lesser performance increase (not sure how accurate 30%-40% is), the MSRP of Vega64 ($500) was less than the MSRP of the FuryX ($650) and even the Fury ($550).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_300_se...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_RX_Vega_series