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When Nvidia's GeForce RTX graphics cards debuted as overclocked at the factory RTX 2080 Founders Edition and RTX 2080 Ti Edition Founders this fall, a host of after-sales service advices have also appeared at third-party manufacturers. Among them is PNY, a technology company based in New Jersey, best known for storage hardware. PNY also manufactures graphics cards, however, under the XLR8 label (pronounce "accelerate"). One of the latest additions is the PNY GeForce RTX 2080 XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition ($ 899), a GPU with a higher MSRP than Nvidia's Founders Edition hardware. Unfortunately, this difference in price is justified by a little more than a colored LED lighting strip for the aesthetic cut. We would rather prefer the Founders edition, unless the price of the PNY card is lower than this one.
Stretch your RTX
Measuring 11.5 x 4.4 inches, the PNY GeForce RTX 2080 XLR8 overclocked game edition is longer than the Founders Edition. This card is suitable for most medium or larger computer cases, but the cooler slightly exceeds the printed circuit board.
Like the RTX 2080 Founders Edition, the PNY XLR8 game card uses a dual fan system for cooling. This differs from the blower-type cooler of the former Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition; the air is dispersed in a downward direction, instead of being expelled from the back of the chassis. The fans are surrounded by a black plastic case, shining in some areas and dull in others. In the center of the two fans is the XLR8 logo, a red arrow pointing to the front accompanied by the letters "XLR8".
In comparison, the edition of the founders Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 is a little more flashy, opting for a shiny metal shroud and a metal backplate in relation to the finer plastic shroud material and the open-circuit printed circuit board of the PNY board. The fans, as well as the area that separates them, are still plastic, but the Founders Edition card looks like a much more sophisticated product than the PNY card from a design point of view.
That said, this is a product that will live in the confines of a PC case. Unless you are constantly scanning the side panel window of your case, the appearance may be important. In addition, the black coating of the XLR8 2080 will blend perfectly into most motherboards, if that's your taste. Conversely, the RGB lighting strip included in PNY, located under the words "GeForce RTX", is an added bonus, so bling is more your thing.
Basic connectivity and specifications
The PNY card has the same port loading as all the other RTX 2080 cards I've seen up to now. On the far left is a USB Type-C port for the new VirtualLink connection mode. It is designed for future virtual reality (VR) headsets. VirtualLink envisions a future in which head-mounted displays (HMDs) are only connected by a single Type-C USB cable, as opposed to the wide range of connectors required for current generation headsets. To the right of the USB-C port is an HDMI 2.0b port between twotwo DisplayPort 1.4 connections. Below these is a single DisplayPort 1.4 connection.
With regard to basic specifications, the PNY XLR8 gaming card is equipped with 2,944 CUDA cores and an effective basic CPU clock of 1,515 MHz, identical to that of the RTX 2080 Founders edition. The main difference between the PNY card and the Founders edition lies in the optimized clock speeds of both cards. The Founders Edition RTX 2080 is overclocked with an accelerated clock speed of 1,800 MHz, while that of PNY has a clock rate of up to 1,815 MHz, indicating that it should be slightly faster. (More on this in the performance tests.) This means that the PNY card should be able to run about 6% faster than a reference version of the RTX 2080 that is not overclocked at all. In addition, you can use One-click scanning utility from Nvidia push higher clock speeds than the manufacturer claims.
Given its RGB flair, I thought very early that I would be able to change the lighting of the PNY board in the company's Velocity X software. Allowing you to monitor the main clock speed, fan speed, power consumption, etc., this application also allows you to customize the LEDs of the "selected" RGB compatible 10-Series video cards, according to PNY. Unfortunately, for the moment, the compatibility of the program does not extend to PNY RTX cards yet. More worryingly, a company representative confirmed that PNY had "no ETA" for the time when an updated version of the Velocity X software will be available. Thus, early users of the PNY map can end up with the rainbow cyclist colors that it presents by default. This sounds good, but take note if your goal is to build a color-coordinated PC.
Testing: Orchestrated on the air of the founders
Before diving too deeply into each marker that I used with the PNY card, a quick spoiler … heu, summary: This card was almost unreal with the Nvidia Founders Edition RTX 2080 card.
My tests ranged from 3DMark (Fire Strike Ultra, Time Spy) to benchmarking utilities ranged in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Tom Clancy's The Division, and others. demanding AAA games. Some of them are based on DirectX 12, while others are DirectX 11. Most of these tests are run according to the possible predefined settings. I've compared it to other relevant and current GeForce GTX and RTX maps, as well as to the only true AMD competition at this point, the Radeon RX Vega 64..
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra
Described by its creator, UL Benchmarks, as the "DirectX 11 showcase reference for modern gaming PCs", the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra reference places considerable demands on your GPU because it generates extremely detailed 3D animations at a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. .
In this test, the PNY RTX 2080 scored lower than GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition of Nvidia, just 3%. In comparison, the RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition generated a score of 8,217, a gain of about 30% compared to RTX 2080 cards.
3DMark Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme
Another test of the 3DMark suite, Time Spy, has launched the DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming computers. While the old Time Spy runs at 1440p, the most demanding Time Spy Extreme runs at 4K and requires a GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM.
In vanilla Time Spy, the PNY version of the RTX 2080 has a score of 10,346, or 1% less than the RTX 2080 Nvidia Founders edition. The RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition was approximately 20 to 22 percent higher than the RTX 2080 cards. The PNY RTX 2080 outperforms the latest generation of Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti founders about 13%. It will be interesting to see if this advance is valid.
In Time Spy Extreme, the differences are even less noticeable, the PNY map being essentially tied with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders edition. The RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition was about 30% better than the GTX 1080 Ti Founders edition.
Overlay Unigine
The Unigine Overlay takes place in a classroom belonging to a solitary Wolf teacher, in which the machine runs in circles. We run it on Extreme 1080p presets, Optimized 4K and Optimized 8K. It requires at least 2 GB of video memory.
The GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition provided the same results as the PNY at all three resolutions, while the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition averaged 85 fps, 65 fps, and 37 fps, respectively, with the 4K Optimized presets , 1080p Extreme and 8K Optimized. . No surprises here.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The latest entry in the Tomb Raider-reboot franchise that debuted in 2013, Shadow of the Tomb Raider follows Lara Croft as she battles Trinity's paramilitary organization, while thwarting an apocalypse scenario. maya that she ignites casually. The stealth and combat mechanics can be squeaky, but Shadow of the Tomb Raider still provides advanced visuals (and an integrated tool) ideal for benchmarking graphics cards.
Once again, the results of the PNY map were very close to those of the RTX 2080 Founders Edition. At the resolutions you will probably use with games with this card (1440p and 4K), the PNY card respectively handled respective display frequencies 27% and 24% lower than the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. Nevertheless, he released a few more frames per second at the three resolutions than the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition.
The rise of the slayer
Nearly three years before Shadow of the Tomb Raider saw Lara Croft travel to Siberia, where Trinity was looking for immortality in the mythical city of Kitezh. A heavyweight of graphics in his day, Rise of the Tomb Raider was accompanied by an integrated landmark, in the image of his critically acclaimed predecessor.
The PNY card behaved the same as the RTX 2080 Founders Edition at all three test resolutions. Looking higher in the stack of cards, the RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition recorded an 8% increase over the PNY RTX 2080 in 1080p, an increase of 31% in 1440p and 28% in 4K. More surprisingly, however, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition scored higher than the GeForce RTX 2080 in Rise of the Tomb Raider at all three resolutions. This is a bit disturbing for a card that is selling for 200 USD more than the GTX 1080 Ti, but let 's look at it' s outlier value.
Hitman (2016)
Hitman (2016) is the sixth entry of the Hitman franchise, based on third-person stealth takedowns, centered on a series of assassination deals to be concluded for the International Contract Agency (ICA). Although it was originally launched as an episodic game, it is now possible to purchase it as a "Complete First Season" package. Hitman's built-in benchmark opens from the game launcher that appears when you start the game.
At the risk of looking like a scratched disk, the PNY m's map again gave similar results to those that I had seen with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders edition. The results of 1440p and 4K were identical, and the difference was only 4 frames per second at 1080p. That said, for $ 200 less than the PNY, you can buy a GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition card for remarkably similar frame rates in this game.
Far Cry 5 and Far Cry Primal
Each game of Far Cry takes place in a unique open environment. Far Cry Primal, from 2016, brings players back to the Mesolithic Age; woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats are your nemesis. The threat matrix of Far Cry 5 is more modern: the fictional burg of Hope County, Montana. Far Cry 5 and Far Cry Primal both use the Dunia engine and both have built-in reference tools.
Since both games use the same engine, the results of the PNY RTX 2080 differed little between the two, and again, they did not differ much from those of the GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition. The GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition also released almost identical scores.
Benchmark Final Fantasy XV for Windows Edition
To take us back to the world of Eos, the reference tool of Final Fantasy XV for Windows Edition is a separate download from the standalone game. In this document, the characters Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto go to Altissia for the wedding of Noctis with Lunafreya, the former princess of Tenebrae. As complicated as history may be, its benchmark test is easy to execute. Note: Remove the last two digits of the FFXV score to obtain the average frame rate that the system was able to achieve in the test scene.
Again: the PNY map and the RTX 2080 Founders have got pretty much the same score at all resolutions, just like the latest generation of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition. Regarding the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, it got about 25% better than the PNY RTX 2080.
World of Tanks Encore
Based on World of Tanks, a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), this evaluation test shows sequences of fierce tank battles, regardless of the speed of your computer. The reference number is an exclusive score that is only useful for comparing graphics cards to each other. (There is no decoder ring for numbers like with FFXV.)
No outliers here: the PNY card, as well as the two competing Founders Edition cards (the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the RTX 2080) scored in a tight gap. At 4K, the RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition is up about 30%.
Tom Clancy: The division
Described in an alternative version of Manhattan invaded by a smallpox pandemic, The Division is an action-role-play (RPG) dating from 2016. Recalled as the best for its destructible environments embedded in an open world to explore, the division was congratulated for its release. Online cooperation features, as well as for its shared world system and Destiny-inspired loot.
At 4K, PNY's RTX 2080 card was running less at 3 ips from the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition and less than 1 ips from the RTX 2080 Founders Edition – minimal differences. The limit for the RTX 2080 Ti Founders edition, meanwhile, was about 25%.
… and how about some legacy games?
Finally, I used the Adrenaline Action Benchmarking Tool to run a handful of older games (before 2014) with their highest graphics settings and with 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions …
You can analyze the differences as you see fit; Believe me, you will not see any surprises. And as before, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition and RTX 2080 Founders Edition cards offered roughly the same frame rates.
A quick touch of overclocking
Real-time ray tracing and DLSS still not supported by most games (to learn more about these features in our Review of Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition), one of the main advantages of buying an RTX series graphics card immediately is its compatibility with the Nvidia scanner. Nvidia has distributed this technology to its partners to provide graphic card owners with a one-click solution to overclock their GPUs.
To access Nvidia Scanner and then run it, I used MSI's Afterburner software (version 4.6 Beta 9). The process took about 10 minutes and worked by increasing the main clock speed of the graphics processor, while closely monitoring the evolution of the voltage to detect any instability. Once an ideal clock speed (a speed that will not cause the system to shut down during the scanning process) was detected, I restarted some of our tests to determine if any of them would see a dramatic improvement.
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra was the only one to display it. The PNY card originally recorded a score of 6,283. Once overclocked, it gained 6,613, an increase of 5%. Other tests have shown hollows, however. In 3DMark Time Spy, for example, the new score of 9,967 was inferior than his pre-OC 10.346. Time Spy Extreme has also dropped. There were probably chokes.
Since the system broke down some of my Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme tests after overclocking, the Auto-suggestion to overclock Scanner was clearly not stable. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I noticed lower frame rates after the OC, and my Far Cry 5 races crashed several times. Since the PNY card is overclocked, a further Manual overclock more modest than the one suggested by Scanner seems to be all you can expect.
Should you stay true to the founders?
Although the PNY GeForce RTX 2080 XLR8 Gaming Overclocked Edition specifications suggest a marginal performance advantage over Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition, this 15 MHz difference did not really fit the real world. And since the PNY card costs $ 100 more than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition and $ 200 more than the similar GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition card, the value proposition here is difficult. Plus, the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition seems to be coming off the market. The main competition of this card is therefore the edition RTX 2080 Nvidia Founders.
Unless you are sold on the band of If the price of the PNY card is lower than that of the RTX 2080 Founders Edition, I would turn to another member of the RTX 2080 family of Nvidia, including that of the manufacturer of chips, or, if you could manage the size, more aggressively. Overclocked model like the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming Trio X.
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