Comparison of Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti

Ray tracing is fine, but how many frames do you actually get from Nvidia's new RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 cards?

After the company's most important launch at Gamescom this year, I slowly got into tests with what most people would consider to be the three flagship gaming cards: RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 Founders Editions, which cost $ 1899 and $ 1299 respectively. . I have them against a GTX 1080 Ti, the old flagship product of the game, which you can buy locally for around $ 1,150 to $ 1,250, depending on the brand.

But when Nvidia cards were first launched, two components were still missing: games that support ray tracing and a crucial update of Windows to enable ray tracing features in DirectX 12. Windows Update has turned out to be a horror show for Microsoft. the company must cancel the update not one, but twice to ensure the stability of the system.

So, when you remove the equation of the rays (which I'm going to do for the purposes of this article), how do RTX cards compare to modern games? Nvidia has released preliminary graphics and slides indicating that the RTX 2080 can handle games such as HITMAN and Final Fantasy XV on (or at) 60fps at 4K and HDR.

But in the real world, with real-world drivers, games released and synthetic tests available to the public, up to where are your $ 1300 or $ 1900 going?

Before starting the tests, here is the system used. This is what most people consider a good gaming platform, but it is not. better. The weakness concerns in particular the 7900X processor, a 10-core Intel offer. It works well, but it will not get the following result: a six or eight-core offering that can run at a higher speed (like the recent i9-9900K, or the popular i7-8700K with fewer physical cores, but a turbo clock speed higher than other chips). Keep this in mind as you digest the results below.

Reference system:

• CPU: Intel i7-7900X (stock speeds)
• RAM: TridentZ RGB RAM 32GB DDR4 3200MHz G-Skill
• GPU: GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition / RTX 2080 / RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
• Motherboard: Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7
• Monitors: monitors Acer X27 4K HDR 144Hz / EIZO 23.5 "240Hz VA
• Power supply: EVGA Supernova G2 850W
• GPU Drivers: 416.16 (October 4, 2018)

Thanks to Nvidia for also providing the Acer X27 Predator screen for these tests.

For clarity: the 7900X runs at the original clock speed on a Corsair H100i liquid cooler, while the RAM runs at 14-14-14-34-1.35V (confirmed with the CPU -Z). G-SYNC has been disabled for all tests and the GPU has been set to Maximum Performance in the Nvidia Control Panel.

The tests and games used were:

• 3D brand (fire strike, ultra fire strike, extreme fire strike)
• Forza Horizon 4 (DX12)
• Total War: Warhammer 2 (DX11)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Middle-earth: The shadow of the war

At the time of writing, the Final Fantasy XV The DLSS repository was available privately, but not publicly. It has since been publicly released, but DLSS support does not (and never will) be patched in the full game. I will also launch specific 4K tests with RTX compatible games and other recent AAA titles, such as Battlefield 5, about new drivers at a later date.

Regarding the games chosen, I opted for this mix because it uses a variety of engines. There is a range of DX11 and DX12 uses – some support both Warhammer 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider – and each game is built using an internal engine. Almost all the games in this test are also pretty well optimized, with the exception of Total Warhammer 2. Creative Assembly Warhammer RTS is more processor-related, but it's also the type of game that attracts players who spend more for their PC than others, and I kept it spinning for the moment.

Due to the time of the year and my daily workload, I have not been able to expand the testing of a Ubisoft title or a game based on Unreal Engine. Battlefield 5 was not available at the time I ran these tests. However, I intend to do more coverage of some of these games soon.

All games have been tested on 1080p, 1440p and 4k using the three highest presets available in each game. 3D Mark does not have such presets, but as the different tests work at different rendering resolutions, you get the same effect.

All tests were also run repeatedly, with outliers ignored. Some tests are more consistent than others – Shadow of war tends to give similar results, whether you run it 17 times or 70 times, but this has been done to avoid variance problems. I have also disabled, as far as possible, the automatic updates of each of the games (which is easy to do for games running via Steam) in order to avoid any inconsistency in future improvements of the games. performance.

This has been particularly beneficial for Shadow of the Tomb Raider: a future update actually caused stability issues for Nvidia owners, which caused the game to complain about memory errors, which I discovered after fixing the game after the tests. Fortunately, Square Enix allows users to revert to their previous versions via Steam Beta settings, which more developers should consider supporting.

An important factor, which I will explain after the results: these tests were performed without HDR. I'll get into that at the end, though. Dynamic resolution was also manually disabled in games where there was an option to ensure consistency.

Let's start with the synthetic numbers. By clicking or pressing the reference graphs below if you need to expand them for readability. All figures are reported in medium images per second.

3D Mark Fire Strike

3D Mark is the standard synthetic day test for gaming platforms. Split into several tests that focus on different parts of the system and the graphics processor before the combined tests that you have probably seen a once in a shop window.

The RTX 2080 Ti is the king of the pack here, and it will remain so for the rest of the tests. The advantage of the GTX 1080 Ti over the RTX 2080 – which will be largely neck and neck for the rest of the results you're about to see – is the extra 3GB of VRAM, slightly more bandwidth memory (484 GB / s). RTX 2080 (448 GB / s) and a larger memory bus.

However, the RTX 2080 is faster and, in most cases, far ahead of the GTX 1080 Ti while offering additional hardware for the future. Fire Strike tests, however, are an area where they are right behind. But that's very fractional and in the margin of error. It is also common to see incremental performance jumps with future drivers, so keep this in mind in the future.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Lara's latest adventure was to be one of the first games with shadows drawn by rays, and it seemed a treat to Gamescom. Shadow had not been updated with ray casting shadows at the time of testing, but the reference in the game is improved compared to that delivered The rise of the slayer, providing a more representative recreation of performance in the game as Lara crosses city centers and jungles.

When Nvidia proclaims that the dream "4K 60fps" has been realized, it's usually the kind of result they're talking about. The frame rate has fallen below the waterline to 60 fps on the preset, but it's here that I'll remind everyone: the 7900X is not the best processor of game that is. If these tests were run with an i7-8700K processor, one of the newer i9 processors or the Ryzen 7 2700X starter, the 2080 Ti would have more flexibility with the Ultra settings.

As far as the RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti are concerned, I would only consider staying at 1440p. It is important to have this additional overhead for the most intensive scenes, which must be taken into account when averaging the landmarks and the general nature of the game. A solid 60fps when the sun goes down on the The horizon is pleasant. A solid 60fps in the heat of battle is much, much better.

Middle-earth: The shadow of the war

The monolith simulator that eliminates / dominates the orc can be very comfortable when all the textures are ejected at their highest level. It's also a fun game in its own right, especially now that the most glaring elements have been fixed and some solid extensions have been released.

Shadow of war has an integrated reference that runs through a single, uninterrupted scene, flying over a vegetation before diving into a bloody castle in the middle of a battle and approaching an orcian leader in full chain armor. The game also supports HDR, provided you have enabled the required setting in your Windows display settings.

A well optimized game, and that the three cards should have no problem to appreciate at 4K. The RTX 2080 Ti has by far the largest margin of waiting, although the game remains fantastic at High, and that the very accurate lens of 144 frames per second (useful for those who have a game monitor refresh high) is at hand for all flagship products. right here.

The chain armor has air real good at 4K, though. I look forward to replaying this later this year when I will have some free time.

Forza Horizon 4

He did not receive as much praise as he should have been, but holy shit is Forza Horizon 4 well optimized. It's almost at CONDEMN Performance levels for the quality of its operation on these three cards, and I would expect similar results for users of the RTX 2070, GTX 1070 and AMD cards (since Turn 10 would have a lot of experience in the optimization of AMD hardware in the Xbox One X).

Even better: Forza Horizon 4 has one of the best landmarks in game, replicating a short race with an AI that is not so different from the actual gameplay. And it's an excellent showcase for the performance of Nvidia's three cards: all three are able to keep well above 60fps to 4K, to any preset.

The difference between the GTX 1080 Ti and the RTX 2080 is reduced Forza Horizon 4 eat more VRAM, which is predictable when the resolution starts to increase. This is also a good reminder of the impact of the frame rate that separates the highest possible presets from the second or third option.

A game running at 4K on High will look better than 1440p on the Ultra Preset – you get sharper textures, anti-aliasing algorithms do not need to run as loud and the clarity will be better since you play the game. native resolution of this screen, baduming you were playing on a 4K screen.

And even then, I would always recommend under-sampling when the results are as good.

Total War: Warhammer 2

An old favorite, Total Warhammer is a CPU-intensive game that throws tons and tons of units onto the battlefield as all sorts of explosions, effects and spells decimate the terrain. For these tests, I used the heavier Skaven combat marker, rather than the battle or campaign landmark.

Warhammer 2 supports DX11 with "beta" support of DX12, although in my tests, Nvidia cards generally get better performance than DX11, so I stayed like that.

You can see the obvious limitation here in the results: it's the processor, not the GPU, which partly explains why the Ultra setting did not cause any performance difference between 1080p and 1440p for the three cards . Things change a little once Warhammer 2 is starting to eat more VRAM at 4K, but in general, the poorest performance is a level of optimization that is not as refined as that of other titles.

That's what we expect: it's the oldest game in this range and I'll be excited to see what improvements Creative Assembly will make with the next one Total war especially in their DirectX 12 implementation. DX12 has many multithreading advantages that would Total war games, so we will have to sit still until Total Warhammer 3 rolled.

---

A word about HDR

The HDR game has been possible for a while with the latest GPUs. Support for GeForce 900 series GPUs, though via HDMI, has been enabled, while all AMD cards on the R9 380 and RX 460 have supported HDR technology via DisplayPort and HDMI. It's a little more complicated if you have a G-Sync monitor: only the GTX 1050 series or higher is supported.

HDR support among PC games is becoming increasingly standard among AAA games, especially as many of these studios are already working on the HDR implementation of their choice for the consoles. Games like Destiny 2, Battlefield 1, the last Assbadin & # 39; s Creed Games ARK: Survival Evolved and HITMAN are just a few of the HDR-compatible titles. In the tests above, Shadow of war, Forza Horizon 4 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider all support HDR, while Total War: Warhammer 2 does not.

So, you could ask: why not test everything in HDR?

The reasons are double. First, the vast majority of PC gamers still do not have a primary or secondary display that supports HDR. Preference is always given to monitors with a high refresh rate, or a panel with higher color reproduction, to a monitor capable of playing HDR recordings. Monitors supporting all these elements, such as the Acer X27 Predator provided by Nvidia for testing, are extremely expensive. The Acer X27 that supports G-Sync, 144hz, HDR and 4K will cost you $ 2,800 at the time of writing this article, or $ 3,500 if you want the ASUS ROG Swift 27 "screen.

If you want a 4K screen that runs almost unattended 144hz, you expect about $ 770. But 144hz is a pinnacle for many PC gamers, and for good reason, and having owned high refresh screens since the first models were available in Australia almost a decade ago, I will not argue against owning one.

HDR panels have been slow to spread among PC games, mainly because manufacturers have focused on other market extremes: smaller screens for phones and larger screens for TVs. PC monitors are a smaller market with a lower profit margin than either of these two extremes, which means that many players are still struggling.

The other hurdle to HDR is Windows. HDR support for Windows has not been great in the last 12 months, and while the April update of this year improves Windows SDR content management, it's still awful . Non-SDR content always looks faded, and you then have different implementations of HDR to handle: some games support Dolby Vision, others only support HDR10, and others have sliders to allow you to adjust the luminance so that your eyes do not bleed. .

But I did a short series of tests to illustrate one point: the lack of performance difference between HDR and non-HDR. The GTX 10 series supports HDR, but its performance is still at the rendezvous. It's still a little noticeable in the limited tests I've done, but most of the time, if you want to run a game in HDR and you can get the graphics to a comfortable and enjoyable point, the performance should not to be a problem.

Before getting into the heart of the matter and dissecting the prices of all these cards, there is another feature we must talk about: the AI.

Super Sampling Deep Learning (DLSS)

The range of AI-powered technologies in RTX cards, especially the updates made to Ansel, is pretty cool. But among them, DLSS, Nvidia's neural network-powered anti-aliasing technique, will have the most impact on performance at the moment.

At the time of writing, two synthetic tests were available, but they only work with Nvidia RTX cards. One of them is a Mark type 3D test, the Epic demo's Infiltrator. You can watch a video of Guru3D on YouTube below to give you an idea of ​​what we are talking about:

The second was a separate construction of the Final Fantasy XV reference that supported DLSS. You can get the reference for yourself, with or without DLSS, via the FFXV site here.

At the time of writing, this is the best way to get closer to the performance benefits of DLSS. That said, there are strong arguments to ignore them in the tests.

When it was published, the FFXV The benchmark was released with serious reform and stuttering issues described by Gamers Nexus earlier in the year. The main problem was that the reference made objects and patterns well Beyond the player's vision, Square admitted on February 6 that the benchmark was plagued by stuttering and level of detail issues that "will be dealt with in the expedition game".

… for a wide variety of settings.
The benchmark will give you an idea of ​​the beauty of the game when released, but for the reasons stated above, the benchmark may not accurately reflect the final performance of the game. (2/2)

– Final Fantasy XV (@FFXVEN) February 6, 2018

For the most part, these problems were processed in the final version of PC. They simply have not been addressed in the reference, which makes all of this questionable.

While the FFXV benchmark shows noticeable improvements in performance when DLSS is enabled, this is a really very bad benchmark. It always yields an arbitrary score, rather than standardized metrics that fit any other ratio, and the aforementioned problems make it too unreliable for me to be able to use it without hesitation as a gauge of actual performance.

After seeing DLSS in action at Gamescom earlier this year, I still hope that RTX owners will benefit from optimal performance when they start playing games. I do not think the FFXV reference meets this standard, and with the development on the PC version of FFXV having been canceled, it seems unlikely that DLSS will be implemented in the full game. I think it's always worth seeing how FFXV 4K, especially that Nvidia contributed to the development of the PC version before the publication, but it is an article to come.

---

Whichever of the three flagship GPUs you choose, you will spend at least $ 1,150. The situation is different at the international level, but in Australia, local resellers evaluate the RTX 2080 at about the same level as the GTX 1080 Ti, which is a valuable argument among the arguments put forward abroad, where the GTX 1080 Ti's price has become rather competitive.

More importantly, the stock of the RTX 2080 is more widely available. I've even seen cases – albeit limited – of RTX 2080 priced below $ 1,150, although you had to buy from Newegg for that.

But for someone who buys today, someone who is really considering an investment in a card that will last at least three years, I would consider this.

There is a much stronger value proposition that can make the 2018 hit games work at the highest settings – at extra cost – rather than spend more on a card that goes most bring you there. If you take into account the natural depreciation of technology and the growing popularity of ray tracing (Nvidia are not the only ones investing in this space), a person with an 8th generation Intel gaming platform or installation 2nd generation Ryzen will benefit more from the RTX 2080 Ti, which should not be a problem at 1440p and even at 4K (with a few drops in settings) in a few years.

This is the best way to think about these cards. How much are you planning to invest in the next few years? It's a thing now to spend $ 600 or $ 700 on a video card. But in the end, you need to ask yourself how long your purchase will take, when you are about to upgrade to the next version, and where to get the best mileage from the rest of the system.

If the money was not an object or if I already had a reasonable system limited by a GPU of a generation two or older – people still on the 900 Series GPUs, or making the most of a AMD RX 480 or R9 390X – the GTX 2080 Ti offers a substantial improvement in performance that will last for years.

If we are talking about a pure value proposition of what you can buy today, the RTX 2080 offers better value to Australians. This is not the case abroad where the stock of the GTX 1080 Ti is more readily available and at more competitive prices, but you can only play the cards you have distributed. In addition, the situation is better for players: the most modern technology is up to, if not slightly higher than that of the 1080 Ti, slight reductions in memory bandwidth and memory VRAM, and you enjoy upgrades to the NVENC encoder (which streamers will enjoy). ), RT cores and tensors dedicated to ray tracing and AI, as well as a more energy efficient card.

But it depends entirely on one thing: the fact that you are looking at the three cards alone. For example, it is not worth knowing whether an immediate investment of $ 500 or $ 600 (in order to buy the second generation of RTX cards in two or three years) is more advantageous. Or the impact of AMD 7 nm cards on next year.

And that is the imminent presence of AMD that could ultimately reinforce the argument in favor of RTX cards, especially if AMD was doing the same by supporting real-time ray tracing in a convincing manner. Even if the performances are not up to those of Nvidia – and the previous experience lets me think that it will not be the case, at least initially – the support of the two manufacturers supporting the technology under a form or another will help increase developer support in the future.

And then, we must take into account future downward pressure on prices.

So, I'll leave it there. If you are in the preferred financial situation, consider buying no matter who of these cards, and the raw value proposition is less of a concern, so you might as well go for everything. The RTX 2080 Ti is a fantastic card, with enough overhead on a range of games for maximum settings. If you are loaded, you will not be disappointed – at least not in gross performance. Raster tracing is another matter, even if Windows nightmares do not help.

If you're looking for an almost premium upgrade without knowing if the GTX 1080 Ti is a better buy, the RTX 2080 is the best choice. Its price is the same, more supplies are available locally, and you'll have a test for the next two years once developers become accustomed to ray tracing and AI technology . The only qualification I would make is the one that addresses people who do a lot of Adobe work or professional rendering: the extra VRAM and CUDA cores in the GTX 1080 Ti may be more convenient, and you can not do not sacrifice much game performance. But that's a questionable point if the offer remains limited.

If you are the kind of person for whom these cards are ambitious and you have hesitated against the price of the GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti during their first fall: continue as you were. These are the best cards on the market, but hardly the most affordable.

As a player who grew up in poverty and playing with a lot of aging systems (with the permission of local banks who did not want to or do not know what to do with them), I will always look for the best quality- price. And that will only really happen next year, once Nvidia has more competition in the market and prices of AIB models start to fall below four digits. An RTX 2080 around $ 800 or $ 900 is not a price to pay.

That said, there will always be this player who has the money to splurge today. And for that person who buys the RTX 2080 Ti?

Just make sure you have a good screen to go with.