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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whaever85343 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Whatever, this is your new benchmark:https://albertoven.com/2018/08/29/light-lands/
Golgatha777 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
I just want to be able to play all my games at 1440p, 60 FPS with all the eye candy turned on. Looks like my overclocked 1080 TI will be good for the immediate future is what I got from this review. The only real upgrade path is to the 2080 TI, and at $1200 that's an extremely hard sell.vivekvs1992 - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Well the problem is in India retailers are not willing to reduce the price of 1080 deries.. At present the 2080 is cheaper than all models of 1080 ti.. If given the chance I will definitely go for 2080..thing is that I will have to invest in a gaming monitor firstwebdoctors - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Any mining benchmarks?Can I actually make money buying these cards?
ravyne - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
I agree these are really for early-adopters of RT, or if you're doing a new build or need of a new card but want it to last you 3+ years, so you need to catch the RT wave now.I think the next generation of RT-enabled cards will probably be the optimal entry-point; Presumably they'll be able to double (or so) RT performance on a 7nm process, and that means that the next xx70/80 products will actually have enough RT to match the resolution/framerate expectations of a high-end card, and also that the RT core won't be too costly to put into xx50/60 tier SKUs (If we even see a 2060 SKU, I don't think it will include RT cores at all, simply because the performance it could offer won't really be meaningful).
More than a few things are conspiring against the price too -- Aside from the specter of terriffs, the high price of all kinds of RAM right now, and that this is a 12nm product rather than 7nm, it looks to me like the large and relatively monolithic nature of the RT core itself is preventing nV from salvaging/binning more dies -- with the cuda/tensor cores I'd imagine they build in some redundant units so they can salvage the SM even if there are minor flaws in the functional units, but since there's only 1 RT core per SM, any flaw there means the whole SM is out -- that explains why the 2080 is based on the same GPU as the TI, and why the 2070 is the only card based on the GPU that would normally serve the xx70 and xx80 SKUs. Its possible they might be holding onto the dies with too many flawed RT cores to re-purpose them for the AI market, but that would compete with existing products.
gglaw - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
Is there a graph error for BF1 99th percentile at 4k resolution? The 2080 TI FE is at 90, and the 2080 TI (non founders) is 68. How is it possible to have this gigantic difference when almost all other benchmarks and games they are neck and neck?vandamick - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
A GTX 980 user. Would the RTX2080 be a big upgrade? Or should I stick with the 1080Ti that I had earlier planned? My upgrade cycle is about 3 years.Inteli - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
Are you willing to pay the extra $1-200 for a 2080 over a 1080 Ti for the same performance in current games, in exchange for the new Turing features (Ray-tracing and DLSS)?I'm not convinced yet that the 2080 will be able to run ray-traced games at acceptable frame rates, but it is "more future-proof" for the extra money you pay.
mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
Thing is, for the features you're talking about, the 2080 _is not fast enough_ at using them. I don't understand why more people aren't taking this onboard. NVIDIA's own demos show this to be the case, at least for RT. DLSS is more interesting, but the 2080 has less RAM. Until games exist that make decent use of these new features, buying into this tech now when it's at such a gimped low level is unwise. He's far better off with the 1080 Ti, that'll run his existing games faster straight away.AshlayW - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
They've completely priced me out of the entire RTX series lol. My budget ends at £400 and even that is pushing it :(