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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Vayra - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Why would I want a feature like DLSS when current AA methods do the job fine and we can also just run at native, higher resolution anyway and not use any AA whatsoever?And why would anyone care about vaporware like RTRT?
Lolimaster - Saturday, September 22, 2018 - link
No DLSS, NO.Blur.
Not capable of raytracing, just raytrace small parts of a frame on selected scenes on selected games...
Gastec - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
You must be joking right? What do we care if the price of manufacturing increased for Nvidia. We are mot supporters, we are clients. We don't have to support their pricing because WE ARE NOT SOCIOS! Let Nvidia reduce their costs by cutting the salaries of their CEOs and other wortless corporate officers. Then I will BUY their 2080Ti product, at the consumer-friendly price of €750Andrew LB - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Except for the fact that the non founders edition is $999, not $1200. And the GTX 1080ti released at $699 but for the better part of the past two years cost substantially more.eva02langley - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Then find one at that price, genius.3rd parties are OC their cards and offering additional cooling solutions, they will all be over the MSRP and close to the FE.
Also, they use GDDR6... you didn't learn anything from Vega and HBM2?
jeffcd57 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
Agree the cost is ridiculous. I haven't paid it and won't. Got to many children to raise. I've never seen them at the above mentioned.jeffcd57 - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
1080 Ti for $600, where, when?ezridah - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
A month ago.https://www.theverge.com/good-deals/2018/8/21/1776...
TheJian - Thursday, September 20, 2018 - link
So buy a 1080ti. For some the new features are worthy and boost perf quite massively making it truly worth it if those technologies are the new way forward. At worst, a good 25 games are already coming with NV's new tech. Many are huge titles most would like to play surely.Also as Hexus noted a while back, the price to make these things is just below MSRP. Note the small chip is as large as a titan, and the larger chips...WOW. That's a lot of transistors for a game card. Also apples vs. oranges here, as said by others 1080 etc can't do raytracing or dlss.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-rtx-plat...
27 games coming with NV tech. Will they look the same on 1080ti or less? NOPE. Will they be faster and BETTER looking on RTX...YEP. Value is in the eye of the beholder ;)
Spunjji - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
The problem is, you just counted twice when you said "will they be faster and better looking on RTX".The absolute truth of it from what little we can glean so far (after the official launch!!!) is that you can have RTX effects /OR/ you can have your better performance, not both. That's a heavy caveat!
It would be one thing if it were a proposition of waiting a couple of months for some amazing features that will knock your socks off and have few drawbacks. It's another to be paying over the odds for a card now to maybe get some cool stuff that will DEFINITELY run slower and at a lower res than you're used to.