Best Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020:

Twenty-seven months. This is the exceptional lifespan of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 10 series of graphics cards. Excellent at launch and still offering excellent benefits in games, they are now replaced by the GeForce RTX 20. Obviously advertised as faster than the previous ones, these new models bring with them the possibility of accelerating the hybrid rendering for ever more realistic games. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is the spearhead of this new line and is positioned as the ideal solution for playing in 4K at more than 60 frames per second.

Presentation

Like all GeForce RTX 20s, the RTX 2080 Ti uses a “Turing” GPU. We broached the subject in length, in breadth and across, in a dedicated article . We are therefore not going to go back in detail on the innovations brought by this architecture, but to summarize the key points. Turing therefore provides a new method for distributing computing units, units dedicated to AI (Tensor Cores), units dedicated to accelerating raytracing rendering (RT Cores) as well as optimizing the various cache levels.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is based on the use of a TU102 chip composed of 18.6 billion transistors, but not all of the calculation blocks of which are used. Thus, of the 72 SM blocks present, only 68 are active on this model. Each SM has 64 calculation units, 4 units dedicated to textures, 6 units dedicated to deep learning (Tensor) and 1 calculation block dedicated to raytracing (RT). In the end, this therefore gives rise to a chip grouping together no less than 4,352 computing units, 272 units dedicated to textures, 544 Tensor Cores and 68 RT Cores. The whole is accompanied by 88 rendering units.

However, the operating frequency does not change much on paper. It must be said that the transition from a 16nm burning process to a 12nm FFN process (from TSF FinFET specific to Nvidia) is not a big change. 

Best Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals & Sales 2020

1. NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition

2. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card with Free Battlefield V Combo

3. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card with PCIe Riser

4. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card with Free Forza Horizon 4 Combo

5. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition Graphics Card

The base frequency is thus announced at 1350 MHz, against 1480 MHz on the 1080 Ti – a regression therefore on the minimum frequency held by the new chip. On the other hand, the average GPU Boost frequency is increasing since it goes from 1,582 MHz to 1,635 MHz on the Founders Edition models (the model tested here). Please note, the Founders Edition are no longer to be seen as reference models, but as factory overclocked models. Thus, some Nvidia partners will be able to offer non-overclocked variants, the GPU Boost frequency of which will be fixed at 1,545 MHz, or at a frequency slightly lower than that of the 1080 Ti.

GPU Boost 4.0: a slight evolution for more control

Nvidia has nevertheless revised its frequency adjustment system and passes the GPU Boost in its fourth iteration. With GPU Boost 4.0, there is always a question, as with GPU Boost 3.0, of adjusting the operating frequency as a function of the load applied, a power consumption threshold and the temperature of the chip. The change is at the level of temperature management, which has an intermediate temperature threshold before which the frequency goes to its nominal value. According to Nvidia, this would allow to keep a higher frequency than previously when the cooling system of the graphics card is efficient.

An overclocking simplification tool that changes little

Nvidia has also decided to allow users to change the value of the temperature thresholds. No in-house utility for that, but a third-party utility like Precision X1 from Evga or Afterburner from MSI, for example. This software will also be able to integrate the Nvidia Scanner kit so as to offer simplified manual overclocking.

Similar to the automatic overclocking system introduced on the GeForce GTX 10s, the Nvidia Scanner still allows utilities to act on the voltage level to define which maximum frequency is most stable. The new system would nevertheless be more precise with a more realistic GPU load. The user, for his part, must first define the consumption and temperature limit – as much to set the sliders to their maximum – and play on the temperature thresholds of which we spoke a little above. In short, it is largely automatic, but still not entirely.

GDDR6 makes its debut

Nvidia also takes the opportunity to inaugurate GDDR6. On its high-end 10 series models, the company used GDDR5X and kept classic GDDR5 on mid- and entry-level models. The GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 are for their part on an equal footing at this level and therefore all benefit from this new type of memory which allows both to increase the speed and is energetically more interesting with a gain 20% on energy efficiency.

On the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, Nvidia does not change the quantity and thus always offers 11 GB of memory as well as a 352-bit bus. Switching to a frequency of 1,750 MHz, however, offers a bandwidth of 616 GB / s, much higher than the 484 GB / s observed on the GTX 1080 Ti and on the Radeon RX Vega 64  – the AMD card operates for its share of HBM2, much more expensive to produce and above all to integrate.

Noise

With its RTX 20, Nvidia is making a big change in the cooling system. Exit the turbine type ventilation found on the brand’s models since the GeForce 6 (2004) and makes way for a system based on two axial fans. Once again, the manufacturer takes the side of its partners who, on their high-end versions, use this type of cooler – sometimes with three fans. From experience, we know that this type of system is less noisy than turbines while offering more efficient cooling. The disadvantage is that part of the hot air generated is forced inside the housing rather than being completely expelled. Proper ventilation of the housing is therefore preferable. We note in passing that the finish of the card is rather admirable, with its gray metal shell with beveled angles. Only the central part, made of plastic, would have benefited from being more neat.

In order to offer a convincing system, Nvidia also chose not to use copper heat pipes, but a steam chamber type plate, applied directly to the GPU and which spans the entire width of the card so to be in full contact with the fin radiator. A metal plate then links the steam chamber to the rest of the components (memory chips, power stages). At the back, the metal plate is not only decorative, unlike the one we usually meet; here it serves as a heat sink. Two 8.5 cm diameter fans cool the whole.

Final

Nvidia’s system is thus at the level of partner brand systems (Asus, Zotac, Gigabyte, MSI) taking place on the GeForce GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti, to say. On the cooling efficiency side, the system maintains the GPU at its temperature of 81 ° C.

However, ventilation remains audible at rest. The fault of the fan overcoming the supply stage which continues to run fairly quickly without load. A problem that Nvidia hopes to be able to correct via a driver update.

Consumption

As we have seen, the transition to 12 nm is a big optimization of the 16 nm process of the GTX 10 rather than a real new process . In games, the new Nvidia card is therefore more energy-consuming – more computing units to be powered, in particular – than the model it replaces. We note peaks at 296 watts against 260 watts on the 1080 Ti. The average is around 290 watts, which is quite close to what we observe on a Radeon RX Vega 64. Note, the 14 watts of power consumption at rest.

However, the absolute electricity consumption analyzed alone does not mean much. It must be correlated with the level of performance achieved so that it can be assessed through a value called energy efficiency. And there, the ratio between the number of frames per second reached in games and the power consumption gives the RTX 2080 Ti as slightly better than the GTX 1080 Ti. Not surprisingly, it offers a much better result than the RX Vega 64 from AMD.

Performance in games

In games, spent several minutes of non-stop testing, the card sees its real GPU frequency oscillate between 1,395 and 1,470 MHz for an average of 1,455 MHz, about 50 MHz less than on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

On our panel of games, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is on average 42% faster than the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti when games are executed in 4K. The newcomer is also 32% ahead of the Titan Xp , the fastest Pascal architecture model to have seen the light of day. Suffice to say that AMD looks pale next to it with a Radeon RX Vega 64 which is 89% behind on average.

Obviously, the gap is narrowing as the definition drops. The RTX 2080 Ti thus retains a lead over the GTX 1080 Ti of 29% in WQHD and 13% in Full HD – the processor, a Core i7-8700K , limiting performance more and more. Compared to the Titan Xp it is respectively 20 and 8%.

Finally

With the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, Nvidia promises a graphics card capable of outputting more than 60 images per second in 4K. In practice, it is true that many games can be executed at more than 70 fps while the rest is close to the 60 mark. A more than convincing result that we can only salute all the more as the RTX 2080 Ti is, at the time of this writing, the only graphics card on the market capable of providing this. The various improvements made by the Turing architecture are bearing fruit since we reach an average difference of 25% at best compared to the best of the Pascal cards, the Titan Xp. However, it is possible that this difference may seem insufficient in the eyes of some players who will have waited more than two years between the two generations of cards.

Because the problem for Nvidia is that the company uses here a particularly large chip and used for the most part. In addition, Nvidia still has enough to offer a “super model” of the Titan type by exploiting all the units of the chip, but the difference with the RTX 2080 Ti could not be huge. And as much not to be deluded, the arrival of an even more massive chip can not be on the program as the GPU used here is already huge. In short, with less than a 10 nm pass, Turing therefore seems to deploy almost all of its strength through the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.

More

Suddenly, the firm is betting on other areas to perpetuate this range with the promise of a better quality rendering thanks to raytracing and, to a lesser extent, DLSS (a less greedy system than conventional antialiasing). Nvidia goes even further by assuring us that it is the video game industry that pushes hybrid rendering and not itself which, for its part, simply wants to offer something to exploit it properly. We summarize the state of these two technologies in our box.

Finally, there remains the question of the tariff. Offered at € 1,259, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is a particularly expensive graphics card, offered in the price segment held by the Titans so far. A high price that Nvidia justifies by the premium aspect of the cooling system and, above all, by the size and the complexity of the chip used – which we will not contradict. As such, it therefore offers better for less than the Titan Xp. But we will not fail to notice that it is at least 70% more expensive than the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti while offering only 42% of additional performance. 

The raytracing and implementation of units dedicated to deep learning(for DLSS in particular) are therefore paying a high price, so let’s hope that the promises at this level will be kept in the long term. The player equipped with a 4K screen, him, will not really have any other alternative, unfortunately.

STRONG POINTS

• Game in 4K at 60 fps finally possible.
• Energetic efficiency.
• Operating silence.
• The promise of hybrid rendering.
• VirtualLink output.
• Manufacturing quality.

WEAK POINTS

• The ventilation does not turn off at rest.
• Still little visibility on raytracing performance.

CONCLUSION

Nvidia delivers here a graphics card perfectly suited for playing in 4K at 60 frames per second or more. A first that we salute all the more since the firm brazenly distances the best of rival cards, the Radeon RX Vega 64. The firm also aims at rendering better quality via raytracing and has spared no efforts to achieve this by making a particularly complex chip, expensive to produce, which is not without consequence for the price of the card. The hybrid rendering, although pushed by the industry according to Nvidia, remains a very good promise on which it will still be necessary to be both careful and patient since the first games bringing this support are not expected before mid-October 2018 at earlier.

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