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
Power, Temperature, and Noise
With a large chip, more transistors, and more frames, questions always pivot to the efficiency of the card, and how well it sits with the overall power consumption, thermal limits of the default ‘coolers’, and the local noise of the fans when at load. Users buying these cards are going to be expected to push some pixels, which will have knock on effects inside a case. For our testing, we use a case for the best real-world results in these metrics.
Power
All of our graphics cards pivot around the 83-86W level when idle, though it is noticeable that they are in sets: the 2080 is below the 1080, the 2080 Ti sits above the 1080 Ti, and the Vega 64 consumes the most.
When we crank up a real-world title, all the RTX 20-series cards are pushing more power. The 2080 consumes 10W over the previous generation flagship, the 1080 Ti, and the new 2080 Ti flagship goes for another 50W system power beyond this. Still not as much as the Vega 64, however.
For a synthetic like Furmark, the RTX 2080 results show that it consumes less than the GTX 1080 Ti, although the GTX 1080 is some 50W less. The margin between the RTX 2080 FE and RTX 2080 Ti FE is some 40W, which is indicative of the official TDP differences. At the top end, the RTX 2080 Ti FE and RX Vega 64 are consuming equal power, however the RTX 2080 Ti FE is pushing through more work.
For power, the overall differences are quite clear: the RTX 2080 Ti is a step up above the RTX 2080, however the RTX 2080 shows that it is similar to the previous generation 1080/1080 Ti.
Temperature
Straight off the bat, moving from the blower cooler to the dual fan coolers, we see that the RTX 2080 holds its temperature a lot better than the previous generation GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti.
At each circumstance at load, the RTX 2080 is several degrees cooler than both the previous generation and the RTX 2080 Ti. The 2080 Ti fairs well in Furmark, coming in at a lower temperature than the 10-series, but trades blows in Battlefield. This is a win for the dual fan cooler, rather than the blower.
Noise
Similar to the temperature, the noise profile of the two larger fans rather than a single blower means that the new RTX cards can be quieter than the previous generation: the RTX 2080 wins here, showing that it can be 3-5 dB(A) lower than the 10-series and perform similar. The added power needed for the RTX 2080 Ti means that it is still competing against the GTX 1080, but it always beats the GTX 1080 Ti by comparison.
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beisat - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Very nice review, by far the best one I've read. Thanks for that.How likely do you think the launch of another generation is in 2019 from Nvidia / and or something competitive from AMD based on 7nm?
I currently have gtx970, skipped the Pascal generation and was waiting for Turing. But I don't like being an early adopter and feel that for pure rasterisation, these cards aren't worth it. Yes they are more powerful then the 10er series I skipped, but they also costs more - so performance pro $$$ is similar, and I'm not willing to pay the same amout of $$$ for the same performance as I would have 2 years ago.
Guess I'll just have to stick it out with my 970 at 1080p?
dguy6789 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
RTX 2080 Ti and 2080 are highly disappointing.V900 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
That’s a rather debatable take that most hardware sites and tech-journalists would disagree with.But would do they know, amirite?
dguy6789 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Just about every review of these cards states that right now they're disappointing and we need to wait and see how ray tracing games pan out to see if that will change.We waited this many years to have the smallest generation to generation performance jump we have ever seen. Price went way up too. The cards are hotter and use a more power which makes me question how long they last before they die.
The weird niche Nvidia "features" these cards have will end up like PhysX.
The performance you get for what you pay for a 2080 or 2080 Ti is simply terrible.
dguy6789 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Not to mention that Nvidia's stock was just downgraded due to the performance of the 2080 and 2080 Ti.mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
V900, you've posted a lot stuff here that was itself debatable, but that comment was just nonsense. I don't believe for a moment you think most tech sites think these cards are a worthy buy. The vast majority of reviews have been generally or heavily negative. I therefore conclude troll.hammer256 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Oof, still on the 12nm process. Which frankly is quite remarkable how much rasterization performance they were able to squeeze out, while putting in the tensor and ray tracing cores. The huge dies are not surprising in that regard. In the end, architectural efficiency can only go so far, and the fundamental limit is still on transistor budget.With that said, I'm guessing there's going to be a 7nm refresh pretty soon-ish? I would wait...
V900 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
You might have to wait a long time then.Don’t see a 7nm refresh on the horizon. Maybe in a year, probably not until 2020.
*There isn’t any HP/high density 7nm process available right now. (The only 7nm product shipping right now is the A12. And that’s a low power/mobile process. The 7nm HP processes are all in various form of pre-production/research.
*Price. 7nm processes are going to be expensive. And the Turing dies are gigantic, and already expensive to make on its current node. That means that Nvidia will most likely wait with a 7nm Turing until proces have come down, and the process is more mature.
*And then there’s the lack of competition: AMD doesn’t have anything even close to the 2080 right now, and won’t for a good 3 years if Navi is a mid-range GPU. As long as the 2080Ti is the king of performance, there’s no reason for Nvidia to rush to a smaller process.
Zoolook - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Kirin 980 has been shipping for a while, should be in stores in two weeks, we know that atleast Vega was sampling in June, so it depends on the allocation at TSMC it's not 100% Apple.Antoine. - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
The assumption under which this article operates that RTX2080 should be compared to GTX1080 and RTX2080TI to GTX1080TI is a disgrace. It allows you to be overly satisfied with performance evolutions between GPUS with a vastly different price tag! It just shows that you completely bought the BS renaming of Titan into Ti's. Of course the next gen Titan is going to perform better than the previous generation's Ti ! Such a gullible take on these new products cannot be by sheer stupidity alone.