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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Billstpor - Friday, September 21, 2018 - link
Wrong. It's already known that the tensor cores have enough juice to run ray-traced effects and DLSS at the same time:https://youtu.be/pgEI4tzh0dc?t=10m55s
Vayra - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Wrong, the tensor cores need DLSS to run ray tracing at somewhat bearable FPS - that is, 30 to 60.DLSS is a way to reduce the amount of rays to cast.
Vayra - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Hence the non-existant improvement, or even worse position in terms of quality compared to SSAA x4 or better.In other words, running at native 4K is miles sharper and will perform miles better than a DLSS+RTRT combination still.
IUU - Sunday, September 23, 2018 - link
While your argument is solid, these days are just so weird that even $1200 cards seem to make a hell of a lot sense. This is also valid for similar desktop cpus.Why? Well , go buy a high-end iphone or a high end android phone... Enough said.
PS. For those who may use arguments like geekbench and such , it is just insulting to put it very very kindly!
Gastec - Thursday, September 27, 2018 - link
So basically buying high-priced electronics make sense because the companies selling them just increase the prices every year to make profits and a certain type of consumers are supporting those companies by purchasing no matter what the price (call them fanbois). The question is: Why, why are those people acting like that? What drives them?watek - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
Consumers paying these premium prices for features that are not even fully developed or finished is mind boggling!! People are being bent over and screwed by Nvidia hard yet they still pay $1500 to be beta testers until next Gen.V900 - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
Mindboggling? I suppose it would be for a time traveller visiting from the 19th century, but for everyone else it’s perfectly normal.There is always a price premium for those early adopters who want to live on the cutting edge of technology.
When DVD players came out, they cost over a 1000$ and the selection of movies they could watch was extremely small. When Blu-ray players came out, they also cost well over 1000$ and the entire catalogue of Blu-ray titles was a dozen movies or so.
And keep in mind, that the price that Nvidia charges for joining the early adopter club is really shockingly low.
When OLED or 4K televisions first came out, people paid tens of thousands of dollars for a set, and the selection of 4K entertainment to watch on them was pretty much zero.
With the 2080, early adopters can climb aboard for 600-1000$.
Games that take advantage of DLSS and RTX will be here soon and in the meantime they have the most powerful graphics card on the market that will play pretty much anything you can throw at it, in 4K without breaking a sweat.
It’s not a bad deal at all.
imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
Again, two technology that have not even seen the real light of day, let alone to be proven worth it at all. Early adopters of the other techs you listed at least got WORKING TECH from the start as promised.V900 - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
Ok, you’re either deliberately spreading untruths and FUD, or you just haven’t paid attention.There are games NOW that support RTX and DLSS. Games like Shadow of the Tombraidet, Control and PUBG.
And there are more games coming out THIS YEAR with RTX/DLSS support: Battlefield 5 is one of them.
The next Metro is one of many games coming out in early 2019 that also support RTX.
So tell me again how this is different from when Blueray players came out?
imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
THose games you listed don't have it now, they are COMING. lol Even then the difference is not even worth it considering the games don't hardly take a hit for the 1080TI. You are the nvidia shill on here and forums as everyone knows.