The Nvidia RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 are both good gaming graphics cards in terms of overall
power, but which should you pick, and is it worth upgrading? In this video we’ll test
out a bunch of games at 4K, 1440p, and 1080p to help you see the performance difference
between them, and find out which is better for the price.
Let’s quickly take a look at how the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 actually differ in terms
of specs, note that things like clock speed and power will vary between specific cards,
these are just the reference specs for each model. The 2080 has more CUDA cores, higher
base and boost clock speeds, so an improvement in most aspects, although the memory between
them is the same. The 2070 also has no NVLink capability, while the 2080 does.
For the testing I’m using the Zotac RTX 2070 mini and the MSI RTX 2080 Ventus OC,
so both cards are factory overclocked, however overclocks generally only equate to a couple
FPS here and there in most games, so expect slightly different results with different
cards.
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 from Team Group 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. The same Windows
version and Nvidia drivers were used for the testing, so let’s get into the results.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark using high settings.
In all of the upcoming graphs I’ve got the RTX 2070 results shown by the green bars,
and the RTX 2080 shown by the blue bars underneath, with the 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions listed
on the left. Starting down the bottom at 1080p there was an 8% improvement in terms of average
FPS with the 2080, a slightly higher 9% at 1440p, then 14% higher FPS at 4K.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run, and it seems to be more graphically intensive,
as there were fairly big differences between the two GPUs here. At 1080p the RTX 2080 was
16% ahead of the RTX 2070 for average frame rate, 23% higher at 1440p, and then 25% higher
average FPS at 4K, a fairly significant difference, although at 4K there were no major differences
in 1% low.
I’ve also tested Battlefield 5 with RTX on, and although overall the results don’t
look great, granted I am playing with high settings here. You could of course lower settings
to boost frame rate, but in my opinion the game looks better at higher settings with
RTX off and performs better too. At 1080p it was playable with both the 2070 and 2080,
although the 2080 was scoring 22% higher average FPS. At 1440p I’d say it was still playable,
but I think for a first person shooter game you generally want to target at least 60 FPS,
anyway the 2080 saw a 23% improvement here, while at 4K there was a 15% improvement. It’s
also worth mentioning that at 1440p and 1080p the 2080 had 1% low results higher than the
average of the 2070, a nice improvement.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark with high settings. At 1080p there was just
a 7% improvement to average frame rate with the 2080, but a much larger 26% increase to
the 1% low. At 1440p the 2080 was now seeing 22% higher average FPS, and then a massive
28.5% improvement at 4K, where the 1% low of the 2080 at 4K was almost ahead of the
average frame rate from the 2070.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested using the built in benchmark with high settings.
At the bottom of the graph with our 1080p results the 2080 was getting 15% higher average
FPS compared with the 2070. At 1440p this rises to a 25% improvement with the 2080,
and then up to 29% higher average FPS at 4K.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested using the built in benchmark at high settings. I’ve found
this game to favour Nvidia’s turing graphics cards over pascal, so we’re seeing nice
performance here overall. In terms of differences though, at 1080p the 2080 was getting around
11% higher average FPS compared to the 2070, 21% higher at 1440p, and finally a large 30%
improvement at 4K, where yet again the 1% low from the 2080 result was close to the
average of the 2070.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and at 1080p there was a 7% improvement to
average frame rate with the 2080. At 1440p there wasn’t really any change, with now
a 6% increase, while at 4K there was a larger 12% boost to average FPS. Either way both
are still providing extremely good performance, I generally find this to be more of a CPU
bound test anyway, so it’s a good example of a game that makes less of a difference
which you pick.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range as I can easily perform the same test run
compared to playing with bots or other players which will differ every time. The RTX 2080
only saw a 7% increase to average FPS at 1080p, but then at 1440p this rose to 22%, and then
25% at 4K. At 4K even the 1% low was higher than the average FPS of the 2070, although
the game did still play well even with ultra settings at 4K on either card, as this is
a pretty well optimized game.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay at high settings. At
1080p the RTX 2080 saw almost no improvement to average FPS, but was a little better in
1% low. At 1440p there’s now more of a difference, with a 17% boost to the average frame rate,
and then a larger 26% improvement was seen at 4K.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game, and I can play it alright with a solid 30
FPS, so it was actually playing well on either card at 4K with very high settings. This was
another game where the 1% low of the 2080 was almost ahead of the average FPS the 2070
was able to provide. At 1080p the average FPS from the 2080 was 11% better compared
to the 2070, rising to 21% at 1440p then 25% at 4K.
In terms of overall improvement, over all 10 tests with a 1080p resolution on average
the RTX 2080 is performing 10.6% better than the RTX 2070 in average FPS. More CPU demanding
games like CS:GO for instance are closer to the bottom, while others like Battlefield
5 seem to really benefit from the increased GPU power.
At 1440p on average over the same games the RTX 2080 was now scoring 19% higher average
frame rates when compared with the RTX 2070, so a nice increase to performance now as we
step the resolution up, however we can see the results can still vary a fair bit depending
on the game.
At 4K the RTX 2080 was now on average 23.2% better than the RTX 2070 in these games. The
average frame rate difference improves further as we step up in resolution as we start becoming
less CPU bound and really start to see what these graphics cards are capable of. As we’ve
seen before, the 2080 is close to a 1080 Ti, so in lieu of the 2080 Ti it’s actually
not a bad option for 4K gaming with higher settings.
I haven’t tested overclocking here, as results aren’t guaranteed and will vary between
hardware based on what overclocks you can get, realistically it generally only makes
a couple of FPS difference, but I’ll cover overclocking in the full review videos for
each of these cards, so get subscribed for that.
Now for the final difference, the price. I suggest checking updated prices using the
links in the description, as prices will change over time. At the time of recording, the Zotac
RTX 2070 mini I’m testing with goes for around $529 USD, while the MSI RTX 2080 Ventus
OC is $729, so a $200 price increase, or 37.8% more money to go from the 2070 to 2080. There
are of course other priced 2070 and 2080 cards, so you can do the math with my results to
work out the difference based on the model you’re looking at.
I think for lower resolutions like 1080p, the 2080 is less worthwhile, as there was
just a 10% average performance gain with the 2080, however for higher resolutions like
1440p and 4K the 2080 was giving 19% and 23% higher performance respectively, making it
an easier pill to swallow. It does of course depend on the game you’re playing though,
in some cases like Overwatch I don’t really think it would make a noticeable difference
while playing, whereas with other games the 2080 can take you to a playable experience
at 4K where the 2070 would be struggling.
I think I’d pay more and just get the 2080 if I needed that level of power, but that’s
only because as we saw in my recent 2060 vs 2070 video the 2070 is pretty bad value. The
2060 is much better, so if I was going to be sticking to 1080p and maybe some 1440p
I’d probably be looking there instead. You then of course also have the 10 series cards
which can be picked up on the second hand market for an even better deal, but that’s
an entirely different story.
Let me know which card you’d pick down in the comments, the 2070 or 2080, and don’t
forget to subscribe for more comparisons and future tech videos like this one.