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
The 2018 GPU Benchmark Suite & the Test
Another year marks another update to our GPU benchmark suite. This time, however, is more in line with a maintenance update than it is a complete overhaul. Although we've done some extended compute and deep learning benchmarking in the past year, and even some HDR gaming impressions, our compute and synthetic lineup remains largely the same. But before getting into the details, let's start with the bulk of benchmarking, and the biggest reason for these cards anyhow: games.
Joining the 2018 game list is Far Cry 5, Wolfenstein II, Final Fantasy XV and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. We are also bringing in F1 2018 and Total War: Warhammer II. Returning from last year is Battlefield 1, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, and Grand Theft Auto V. All-in-all, these games span multiple genres, differing graphics workloads, and contemporary APIs, with a nod towards modern and relatively intensive games.
AnandTech GPU Bench 2018 Game List | ||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API(s) | |
Battlefield 1 | FPS | Oct. 2016 | DX11 (DX12) |
|
Far Cry 5 | FPS | Mar. 2018 | DX11 | |
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation | RTS | Mar. 2016 | DX12 (DX11, Vulkan) |
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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus | FPS | Oct. 2017 | Vulkan | |
Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition | JRPG | Mar. 2018 | DX11 | |
Grand Theft Auto V | Action/Open world | Apr. 2015 | DX11 | |
Middle-earth: Shadow of War | Action/RPG | Sep. 2017 | DX11 | |
F1 2018 | Racing | Aug. 2018 | DX11 | |
Total War: Warhammer II | RTS | Sep. 2017 | DX11 (DX12) |
That said, Ashes as a DX12 trailblazer may not be as hot and fresh as it once was, especially considering that the pace of DX12 and Vulkan adoption in new games has waned. The circumstances are worth an investigation on their own, but the learning curve required in modern low-level API and the subsequent return may not be convincing right now. As a more general remark, most developers and publishers tend not to advertise or document DX12 support as much as they used to, nor is it clearly labelled in game specifications as many times DX11 is the unmentioned default.
Particularly for NVIDIA and GeForce RTX, pushing DXR and raytracing means pushing DX12, of which DXR is a component. The API has a backstop in the form of Xbox consoles and Windows 10, and if multi-GPU is to make a comeback, whether that's via compatible workloads (VR), flexible usage (ray tracing workload topologies), or just the plain old inevitability of Moore's Law. So this is less likely to be the slow end of DX12.
In terms of data collection, measurements were gathered either using built-in benchmark tools or with AMD's open-source Open Capture and Analytics Tool (OCAT), which is itself powered by Intel's PresentMon. 99th percentiles were obtained or calculated in a similar fashion, as OCAT natively obtains 99th percentiles. In general, we prefer 99th percentiles over minimums, as they more accurately represent the gaming experience and filter out any artificial outliers.
We've also swapped out Blenchmark, which seems to have been abandoned in terms of updates, in favor of a BMW render from the Blender Institute Cycles Benchmark, and a more recent one from a Cycles benchmark developer on Blenderartists.org. There were concerns with Blenchmark's small tile size, which is not very applicable to GPUs, and in terms of usability we also ran into some GPU detection errors which were linked to inaccurate Blenchmark Python code.
Otherwise, we are also keeping an eye on a few trends and upcoming developments:
- MLPerf machine learning benchmark suite
- Blender Benchmark
- Futuremark's 3DMark DirectX Raytracing benchmark
- DXR and Vulkan raytracing extension support in games
Another point is that we do not have a permanent HDR monitor for our testbed, which would be necessary to incorporate HDR game testing in the near future; 5 games in our list actually support HDR. And as we look at technologies that enhance or alter image quality (e.g. HDR, Turing's DLSS), we will want to find a better way of comparing differences. This is particularly tricky with HDR as screenshots are inapplicable and even taking accurate photographs will most likely be viewed on an SDR screen. With DLSS, there is a built-in reference quality based on 64x supersampling, which in deep learning terms is the 'ground truth'; an intuitive solution would be to use a neural network based method of analyzing quality differences, but that is likely beyond our scope.
The following tech demos and test applications were provided via NVIDIA:
- Star Wars 'Reflections' Demo (includes real time ray tracing and DLSS support)
- Final Fantasy XV Official Benchmark (includes DLSS support)
- Asteroids Demo (features mesh shading and variable LOD)
- Epic Infiltrator Demo (features DLSS)
The Testbed
Because NVIDIA is not productizing any other reference-quality GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and 2080 card besides the Founders Editions, which are non-reference by specifications, we've gone ahead and emulated the true reference specifications with a 90MHz downclock and lowering the TDP by roughly 10W. This is to keep comparisons standardized and apples-to-apples, as we always look at reference-to-reference results.
In a classic case of Murphy's Law, our usual PSU started malfunctioning around the time of the review, but given the time constraints we couldn't do a 1:1 replacement in time. As it is a digital PSU, we were beginning to use it for PCIe power readings to augment system measurements, but for now we will have to stick power draw at the wall. For the time being, we've swapped it out with another high-quality and high-wattage PSU.
CPU: | Intel Core i7-7820X @ 4.3GHz |
Motherboard: | Gigabyte X299 AORUS Gaming 7 (F9g) |
Power Supply: | EVGA 1000 G3 |
Hard Disk: | OCZ Toshiba RD400 (1TB) |
Memory: | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 4 x 8GB (16-18-18-38) |
Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
Monitor: | LG 27UD68P-B |
Video Cards: | AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (Air Cooled) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 |
Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 411.51 Press AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.9.1 |
OS: | Windows 10 Pro (April 2018 Update) |
Spectre/Meltdown Mitigations | Yes, both |
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mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Does the site earn anything from your reading their articles? Just curious.sing_electric - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
I really wonder how well raytracing will be implemented in the next 1-2 years. My bet is that for many of the titles Nvidia's announced, the effects will be limited and sort of gimicky, and the real benefits will come with titles that are starting development now (or, more likely, in a few months, when devs can look at how the 1st attempts at using RT faired).If my hunch is right, then that means that the RT features are likely to be of little practical use in this generation, since the real benefits won't come until some point after Nvidia's next-gen (7nm? 5?) chips come out with much-improved performance.
MadManMark - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
It sounds like the 2080 TI at maybe 1440 might be viable for RT. But yeah, for the most part this is about the future, and starting to get some games out there so for future releses there is not the "chicken & egg" problem they have now (no games to use it for, but reason there are no games is there are no cards to use it).Nvidia clearly sacrificing short-term profitability to establish this base; notice how the 2080 is both priced & performs about the same as the 1080 Ti. With the larger die size despite 12nmFF, driver development costs, etc, there is little doubt in my mind that Nvidia will be making a bigger margin on the 1080 Ti than the 2080. But they want to make it cheap enough so that, even if there is little to gain RIGHT NOW from buying 2080 instead fo 1080 Ti, there is also little lost either.
milkod2001 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
It will have to be AMD who also jumps on raytracing thing first then maybe game developers will take it seriously.MadManMark - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
"Bartender, I'll have what milkod2001's having!" ;)El Sama - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
RTX 2080 not worth buying right now, 1080ti is cheaper (lol), cooler and performs equal. RTX 2080ti is a 1200+ Card that is around 60% price increase from 1080ti for a 25-28% performance increase? How is that a good purchase? Neither of them are worth buying right now.Toadster - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
decisions - 24 monthly payments for an iPhone XS Max? or GTX 2080Ti :)milkod2001 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Get iPhone if you want to be cool guy, you cannot put RTX 2080ti into your pocket :)Arbie - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
THANK YOU for the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark results. The deltas may not translate to other games but show me exactly what to expect from an upgrade.darckhart - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
But NVIDIA's key features - such as real time ray tracing and DLSS - aren't being utilized by any games right at launch. In fact, it's not very clear at all when those games might arrive, because NVIDIA ultimately is reliant on developers here.In the Star Wars Reflections demo, we measured the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition managing around a 14.7fps average at 4K and 31.4fps average at 1440p when rendering the real time ray traced scene. With DLSS enabled, it jumps to 33.8 and 57.2fps
Direct quotes from article. Price premium for NV tech that (1) will not be in games at launch and may have months of buggy implementation from early adoption and may not have widespread adoption, (2) needs extreme help from DLSS to have usable framerates. Should've been named DTX not RTX.