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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dustwalker13 - Sunday, September 23, 2018 - link
Way too expensive. If those cards were the same price as the 1080 / TI it would be a generation change.This actually is a regression, the price has increased out of every proportion even if you completely were to ignore that newer generations are EXPECTED to be a lot faster than the older ones for essentially the same price (plus a bit of inflation max).
paying 50% more for a 30% increase is a simple ripoff. no one should buy these cards ... sadly a lot of people will let themselves get ripped off once more by nvidia.
and no: raytracing is not an argument here, this feature is not supported anywhere and by the time it will be adopted (if ever) years will have gone bye and these cards will be old and obsolete. all of this is just marketing and hot air.
mapesdhs - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
There are those who claim buying RTX to get the new features is sensible for future proofing; I don't understand why they ignore that the performance of said features on these cards is so poor. NVIDIA spent years pushing gamers into high frequency monitors, 4K and VR, now they're trying to flip everyone round the other way, pretend that sub-60Hz 1080p is ok.And btw, it's a lot more than 50%. Where I am (UK) the 2080 Ti is almost 100% more than the 1080 Ti launch price. It's also crazy that the 2080 Ti does not have more RAM, it should have had at least 16GB. My guess is NVIDIA knows that by pushing gamers back down to lower resolutions, they don't need so much VRAM. People though have gotten used to the newer display tech, and those who've adopted high refresh displays physically cannot go back.
milkod2001 - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
I wonder if NV did not hike prices so much on purpose so they don't have to lower existing GTX prices that much. There is still ton of GTX in stock.poohbear - Friday, September 28, 2018 - link
Why the tame conclusion? Do us a favor will u? Just come out and say you'd have to be mental to pay these prices for features that aren't even available yet and you'd be better off buying previous gen video cards that are currently heavily discounted.zozaino - Thursday, October 4, 2018 - link
i really want to use itzozaino - Thursday, October 4, 2018 - link
i really want to use it https://subwaysurfers.vip/https://psiphon.vip/
https://hillclimbracing.vip/
Luke212 - Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - link
Why does the 2080ti not use the tensor cores for GEMM? I have not seen any benchmark anywhere showing it working. It would be a good news story if Nvidia secretly gimped the tensor cores.