MSI’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio graphics card is one of their top end models,
so let’s find out just how well it performs. To do this I’ll be testing gaming at 4K,
1440p and 1080p, as well as overclocking, cooling, and of course ray tracing to help
you decide if it’s worth buying.
Let’s start by taking a look at the card. Overall it’s got a black and gunmetal grey
theme, so pretty colour neutral and should fit in well with most builds. There are three
fans on the front, metal backplate with a nice brushed finish and the MSI logo on the
back, and two 8 pin and 6 pin power connectors on top, along with the SLI connector.
There’s RGB lighting on the top and bottom of the card, though it’s a little hard to
show on camera as I’m not able to mount it vertically. The lighting can be controlled
using MSI’s light sync software, and there are around 20 different effects available
and you can modify colours and speeds of different areas.
For the I/O we’ve got three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, a single HDMI 2.0b port and single
USB Type-C.
The card is fairly big too, coming in at almost 33cm in length, and it weighs a bit as well,
just under 1.6kg. It comes with an optional mounting bracket to help prevent sag, but
I didn’t have any issues in my case to need it.
Like other RTX cards the 2080 Ti also makes use of GDDR6 memory, and there’s 11GB available
here with a larger memory bus and higher memory bandwidth compared to those below it. It also
comes with a 1,755MHz boost clock, so a factory overclock out of the box
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU in an MSI Z390 Gaming Pro
Carbon motherboard running at stock speeds, 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.
First up let’s check out Battlefield 5, a game that actually supports Nvidia’s new
ray tracing, one of the key selling points of these RTX cards. For comparison I’ve
also got results with RTX on and off, and testing was done in campaign mode rather than
multiplayer, as it’s easier to reproduce.
With RTX off we’re seeing more than a double improvement to average frame rate compared
to RTX on in the green bars. At 1440p I considered high settings playable with RTX on, though
I’d personally much prefer the higher frame rates from RTX off.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and with high settings
the 2080 Ti is able to average above 60 FPS at 4K, pretty impressive and quite playable
as I don’t think this game needs a high frame rate to enjoy, though of course higher
FPS is possible at lower settings or resolutions.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the built in benchmark, and again pretty nice results at
high settings from the 2080 Ti, as you’d expect from a top of the line card. There
wasn’t much of a difference between 1080p and 1440p, both were able to pass 100 FPS
averages.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, so the exact same test was done at each resolution
with high settings in use. Even at 4K I was able to average above 100 FPS, with well above
200 possible at 1440p or 1080p resolutions.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the built in benchmark, and again even at
high settings in this more intensive game 4K was still scoring quite well, with above
100 FPS achievable at 1440p or 1080p if you’re after more frames.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical benchmark, and this game runs very well on modern hardware.
Even at 4K with all settings on medium we were getting above 300 FPS, but of course
higher FPS is generally better here, and at 1080p almost 500 FPS was possible with the
1% lows above 150 FPS.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range, and as another well optimized game we’re
seeing very high frame rates again. The 300 FPS cap was often hit at 1440p and constantly
hit at 1080p even with ultra settings in use, with 4K even having a 1% low that would be
great for one of those new 4K 144Hz monitors.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and this is again another well
optimized title which is why we’ve got high frame rates even with high settings. Again
4K was giving us very high frame rates, absolutely no issues at all.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game, but I find it to play well with a solid 30
FPS, so even with very high settings at 4K it’s playing extremely smoothly for me,
almost able to average 60 FPS, with higher possible at 1440p and 1080p if needed.
PUBG saw similar results, in that the frame rates at 1080p and 1440p were pretty close
together, but then still alright FPS at 4K, though if you’re playing seriously for the
chicken dinner you would most likely be using settings below high for best performance.
As we’ve seen we’re able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested, 1080p
and 1440p ran very well with no problems at all even with high settings which I’ve tested
with across the board, while 4K in all instances still delivered a playable experience.
For overclocking I’ve retested with Far Cry 5 at high settings. I was able to overclock
the GPU core by 130MHz and just stuck the memory to an extra 400MHz, but didn’t spend
long tweaking the memory.
At 1080p there was a 2.5% improvement to average FPS, a 4.2% improvement at 1440p, and then
a 6.1% improvement at 4K, as the graphics becomes less constrained by the CPU at higher
resolutions.
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
27 degrees Celsius, fairly warm as it’s summer here during a heatwave. Despite this
the temperatures are still quite decent, a little warm at idle but it’s fair given
the fans don’t spin at all until around 60 degrees Celsius. We’ve got the option
of cooling it down further by 14 degrees Celsius with the fans maxed out, so you should be
able to find a good balance of fan noise and cooling that works for you.
Just for fun here’s how the backplate looked after the stress tests, getting to around
the mid 70s, you’re not going to want to take it out immediately after use.
I’ve got the average and peak clock speeds while running the Heaven benchmark for an
extended period, and with the 130MHz overclock applied with MSI Afterburner we're getting
a nice improvement. We can also see that by maxing out the fans we're able to boost performance
by 30MHz, and you'll hear how this sounds soon.
These are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures
and clock speeds just shown. At idle they don't spin at all so it was silent, and then
they only rise a small amount with the overclock applied, I couldn't really tell the difference
sitting next to it. By maxing out the fan speed they can get quite a bit faster, and
although the card has three fans only information for two of them was reported in HWInfo which
is what I've got here. Here’s how these 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, at stock at least I
had no problems at all with this volume, especially considering I didn't have the side panel of
my case on.
I’ll also note that while testing there was a tiny bit of noticeable coil whine with
my card, but hard to hear once the fans kick in.
Here’s what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same Heaven benchmark,
so once manually overclocked there’s just a 15 watt power increase.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as pricing will change over
time. At the time of recording, in the US the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio
is going for around $1400 USD, or around $2200 AUD here in Australia.
The Gaming X Trio is one of MSI’s best 2080 Ti graphics cards available at the moment,
recently surpassed by the new lightning Z. There are cheaper models available, such as
the Ventus or Duke, so you’ll need to determine if it’s worth paying a bit more for a beast
of a card like this for the better cooling and out of the box clock speed boost, otherwise
you can of course try overclocking the cheaper options and most likely get pretty similar
performance though. The 2080 Ti is quite well suited to 4K gaming, and is one of the best
options if this is something you’re after, while easily being able to smash 1080p and
1440p games even with high settings. While the 2080 Ti provides an awesome experience
they’re not cheap, so you’ll need to decide if your wallet is worth emptying for so much
power.
So what did you guys think of MSI’s RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio graphics card? Let me
know your thoughts down in the comments, and leave a like on the video if you found the
review useful. Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for more GPU testing,
including a comparison with this card against another 2080 Ti to see how it stacks up.