The MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z is one of the highest end 2080 Ti graphics cards currently
available, coming in at $1600 USD as a result, so let’s find out what makes this card different
and find out if it’s worth it.
Let’s start by taking a look at the card. It’s got a black and gold colour scheme,
although the gold is only really viewable if you mount it vertically. There are three
fans on the front along with a carbon fibre pattern. On the backplate there’s more carbon
fibre, and there’s actually a heatpipe behind it. Up top there are three 8 pin power connectors
on the right, NVLink connector on the left, and next to the dragon logo there’s a screen
which can be customized to show different animations.
There’s RGB lighting on the top, on the backplate, and inside two of the fans, all
of which can be controlled using MSI’s light sync software to change the effects to match
the rest of your system. The software can also be used to change the dynamic dashboard
animation, or set it to just display useful information such as GPU temperature. You’ve
also got the option of uploading your own custom gif to display.
For the I/O we’ve got three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, a HDMI 2.0b output and USB Type-C
port.
The card is fairly large, coming in at almost 33cm in length, 14cm in height, and 6.3cm
wide, making it a three slot card and weighing in at a beastly 1.85kg. With all that weight
I was concerned there’d be some sag once installed in my system, but for me once all
three slots were screwed in it was fine. It does come with an optional support bar though,
who knows maybe that carbon fiber on the back does actually strengthen it like they say
on their website.
The RTX 2080 Ti is currently the top end graphics card available from Nvidia from their GeForce
gaming lineup, there is of course the titan but it’s not really marketed towards gamers.
MSI have taken this one next level though, I feel like I’m not even able to properly
fully test it, it’s got dual BIOS so you can swap in to LN2 mode for hardcore overclocking.
Enabling this mode unlocks power, current and thermal limits for improved overclocking,
and was what all testing in this video was done with as I figure if you’re paying more
for this card you’ll want maximum performance.
Out of the box we’re looking at a 1,770MHz boost, just 15MHz above MSI’s 2080 Ti Gaming
X Trio that I’ve previously covered. It does seem to have more cooling though, given
it’s a three slot card with a larger cooler, but as we’ll see a bit later the temperatures
are still on the warmer side.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5.0GHz in
an MSI Z390 ACE motherboard, along with 16GB of T-Force Night Hawk CL16 memory running
at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Check the links in the description for details on all of the
components as well as for up to date pricing.
Now let’s check out some game benchmarks. I’ve tested these games at 1080p, 1440p
and 4K resolutions with different setting levels from high to maximum. I’ve also tested
with the 2080 Ti at stock speeds, and while overclocked, again with the LN2 BIOS enabled.
I was able to boost the GPU core by 178MHz using MSI Afterburner’s OC scanner, and
I increased the memory by 1,000MHz, so let’s see how well it’s doing.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested using the built in benchmark with ultra high settings,
as high as they go. In all upcoming graphs I’ve got the 3 tested resolutions on the
side, 4K, 1440p and 1080p down the bottom. The purple bars represent the 2080 Ti at stock
speeds, while the red bars show the overclocked results. In all tests for this game the overclocks
were giving us a fair boost to performance, with up to a 12% improvement to average frame
rate seen with the resolution at 4K, and then smaller improvements to 1% low.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode with high settings, as it’s easier to consistently
reproduce the same test run. Starting with RTX off, in this test at 4K the frame rate
was basically the same with or without the overclock in place, however there was better
performance seen at 1440p and 1080p resolutions. There was a 6% improvement to average FPS
at 1080p, and 7% boost at 1440p with the GPU overclock in place, and about a 7 to 8% improvement
to 1% lows.
Now let’s look at the results with ray tracing on. At 1440p the game was still actually very
playable, with 60 FPS averages being hit at 1440p with the overclock applied, though it
still went alright prior to overclocking too. 4K was pretty bad, although strangely it did
feel less choppy with the overclock applied despite only being a few FPS higher than stock.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark, but this time high settings were used, one
setting below the maximum of ultra. At 1440p and 1080p there was no major differences to
the average frame rate, however the 1% low with the GPU overclock applied ended up coming
out worse. With the resolution at 4K though we’re finally seeing some decent improvement,
with a 9% boost to average FPS once overclocked.
Watch Dogs 2 was tested with very high settings, just one step down from ultra. At 1440p and
1080p there were small improvements to average FPS once overclocked, but not much, at least
compared to 4K where there was a 10.6% improvement to average FPS, and an 11% increase to 1%
low. Given I can play this game just fine with a solid 30 FPS, even with these high
settings at 4K the game was very playable.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the built in benchmark, and there was agains
a nice boost with the overclock in place, up to 9% of an improvement to average FPS
at 4K. I suspect this would have been higher with higher settings though.
Ghost Recon was also tested using the built in benchmark with very high settings, just
one step under the maximum preset of ultra. This was another game that saw worse 1% low
performance at 1080p and 1440p, but then ahead with the overclock at 4K. In terms of average
frame rate, at 4K the overclock was giving us almost 12% higher average FPS.
The Witcher 3 was tested with high settings and hairworks disabled. There were some good
improvements to average FPS at 1080p and 1440p, 6% and 8% respectively with the overclock
in place. 4K only saw a 4% improvement, but realistically I think these frame rates are
plenty for this game to be played well, even with high settings.
From the games tested it seems that in order to best utilize any overclocking we need to
be running with high graphical settings and ideally higher resolutions, in some games
at 1080p and even 1440p I saw worse performance when compared to 4K, but as we’ve seen it
varies by game.
So we’re seeing some decent performance, but what are the thermals like? These are
the temperatures I measured with the Heaven benchmark in an ambient room temperature of
26 degrees Celsius, on the warmer side as we’ve only just finished summer here in
Australia. Temperatures were warmer than I expected, even with the fans maxed out I was
only able to get a 2 to 3 degree drop and with the overclocks in place we’re seeing
3 to 4 degree increases. The idle temperature isn’t too bad, given the fans don’t spin
at all until it warms up.
Just for fun I’ve used my thermal camera so you can see how the backplate looks with
the stress tests running. As you’d expect with all this power it was getting quite hot,
there was noticeably a large amount of heat coming off of it.
I’ve got the average and peak clock speeds while running the Heaven benchmark for an
extended period, and it was possible to get a little boost to performance by maxing out
the fans, but not much.
These are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures
and clock speeds just shown. Although the card has three fans, only two were picked
up by hardware info, so I’ve got the average fan speeds in the purples, and peak speeds
in the reds. This was interesting because the peak speeds are way ahead the averages
even with the fans apparently set to 100% in MSI Afterburner, so it seems like they
can still go faster outside of what I defined. Here’s how the tests sounded so you can
get an idea for yourself.
As I’ve got 7 other fans in the case this isn’t the best test, however you can use
the idle test as a baseline with just the case fans going and then compare the rest
against that.
I’ll also note that while testing I was not able to hear any coil whine with my unit.
Here’s what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same Heaven benchmark,
once manually overclocked I was seeing an increase of almost 50 watts, about 10% more
power, which I guess seems fair given in some of the games tested we were getting around
a 10% improvement to frame rate.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over
time. At the time of recording, in the US the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z is
going for $1600 USD, while here in Australia it’s $2600 AUD, or $500 AUD more than MSI’s
own 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio card, so is it worth paying more for this one? Honestly in this
case I’d just go with the cheaper 2080 Ti, not that it’s particularly cheap, but you
know what I mean. Diminishing returns are present here, and while the Lightning Z is
very impressive I don’t think you’re going to get $500 worth of performance out of it,
or about $300 USD. Unless you’re a pro overclocker and going to be modding it for record or something,
then it most likely makes sense to pick something else, but this does appear to be one of the
best air cooled options available.
So what did you guys think of MSI’s RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z graphics card? Obviously
this is not something that’s targeted to most people, even out of those actually looking
to buy a 2080 Ti this one seems pretty niche given the higher price, but as we’ve seen
it does perform very well even in 4K gaming with high settings, and in my personal opinion
it looks pretty cool. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and if you’re new
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