Super offers Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super is essentially the RTX 2080 on steroids. This Super RTX GPU has more CUDA cores and faster VRAM than its predecessor, while coming in at a slightly cheaper price point, taking inspiration from AMD Navi GPUs' balance of performance and value. Nvidia's initial line of Nvidia Turing cards, specifically the flagship RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 models, came at a hefty price tag. But pressure from AMD led Nvidia to offer you A-game and better prices with its Super series. And what you get are cards like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, which offer much better performance for slightly less money. Even with the RTX 3070 and 3080 in the wild, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super is still among the best options if pure performance is what you're after.
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super (8GB) at Amazon for € 1,699.95
Prices and availability
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super launched in the US on July 23, 2019, and the Founders Edition is available for $699 (around $560, AU$990). The RTX 2080 it replaces, by contrast, launched in September 2018 for $799 (£749, AU$1,199). You read that right: the RTX 2080 Super technically gives you more power for less money than the RTX 2080 did at launch. While this means almost nothing to people who already own an RTX 2080 - something we'll cover later - it does mean that people who have been waiting for the RTX 2080 to drop in price finally have a more powerful option to upgrade to. breaking the bank To make the price even sweeter, Nvidia was launching Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood with the price of the card; now you will get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Although that still leaves us wondering: why didn't Nvidia release the RTX 2080 in September with this hardware and at this price? The answer probably has something to do with AMD Navi.
Specifications and Features
When you take a look at the Nvidia Super and the technology behind it, it's not much different from the first Nvidia Turing card hack that preceded it. With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, you're essentially getting a slightly more powerful RTX 2080 with 3,072 CUDA cores, as opposed to the RTX 2,944's 2080, with a boost clock of 1,815 MHz. It's minimal, but still an improvement. The biggest upgrade here, though, is the faster VRAM: you get up to 15.5 Gbps of memory bandwidth, alongside the 14 Gbps of the standard RTX 2080. In theory, this should help improve performance, especially with games and applications that consume memory bandwidth. On a hardware level, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super definitely offers improved performance over the RTX 2080. That's really not enough to wow everyone though, as the RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 have seen more with their Super counterparts. On the other hand, beyond the hardware, there is a new software feature available that should be a boon for all hardware enthusiasts: FrameView. It is considerably more accurate and even easier to use benchmarking software and API compared to many others. FrameView will not only show you frame rates, frame times, GPU usage and temperature, but also the power consumption of your graphics card without having to rely on expensive external hardware or questionable third-party software. For most everyday gamers just trying to play the latest PC games, this may not be of much help. However, it should come in handy when you're trying to troubleshoot potential issues or trying to overclock your graphics card to its full potential. Image 1 of 7
RAM: 16GB G.Skill TridentZ Royale DDR4 (3400MHz)
Motherboard: ASRock Taichi X570
Power supply: Corsair RM850x
Storage: 2TB Gigabyte Aorus M.2 SSD (NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4)
Enclosure: Corsair Crystal Series 570X RGB
Operating system: Windows 10
Performance
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super is without a doubt a powerful piece of hardware. With its 3,072 CUDA cores and 8GB of 6Gbps GDDR15,5, it's certainly a heavyweight graphics card. Still, it's not much more powerful than the existing RTX 2080. When testing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, we saw about a 4-6% performance boost over the vanilla RTX 2080, both in our synthetic benchmarks and in our anecdotal gaming tests. For example, in the Metro Exodus benchmark at 4K using Ultra settings, we see around 40 fps on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super and 38 on the older card. That's a 2 fps increase, or just 5%. It's still an improvement, but it's nothing special. In 3DMark, on the other hand, we see similar numbers. On Firestrike Ultra, the RTX 2080 Super scores 6.636 points compared to the RTX 6281's 2080 – an improvement of just 6%. Then, in TimeSpy Extreme, we see the Super card score 4,869 points vs. 4,656 for the RTX 2080, another 6% improvement. Image 1 of 4
Final verdict
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super is a more affordable and powerful version of the original RTX 2080. That may be enough to convince the people sitting on that Turing fence. However, Nvidia Pascal users who were expecting performance close to the RTX 2080 Ti, but with an affordable price, might not be satisfied. Still, we appreciate the lower price if nothing else, high-end graphics becoming more affordable can only win everyone. So if you're looking for a high-end graphics card, maybe it's time to jump on the Nvidia Turing bandwagon. Price - Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super: ▼