all right so a couple weeks ago we posted our review of the RTX 2080 and
2080 TI and a lot of you guys brought up the fact that some cards we used we're
necessarily representative of what was available to buy basically we ended up
showcasing the reference based cards and what they were able to accomplish
against one another with the founders edition GTX 1080 ti squaring off against
the RTX GPUs the tested methodologies were perfectly in line with the ones
we've been doing for the past 15 years on both the Hardware Canucks website and
here on YouTube now using a reference based GPU basically allows us to
establish a baseline performance whereas using custom aftermarket GPUs and
comparing them against the founders Edition or AMD's reference based cards
usually stacks the deck against anything reference spec notice I said usually
there guys well the problem is the RTX founders edition cards on running at
Nvidia's baseline spec at all nor are they priced like regular cards either
they're pre overclocked premium priced monsters that cost a ton of money
meanwhile literally all of the gtx 1080 ti cards available are non-reference cards
that have awesome heat sinks and come with higher clock speeds that means a
lot of you guys were right in holding our feet to the fire about the cards we
chose particularly when we compared the RTX 2080 founders edition I think more
fitting comparison would have been using a custom cooled gtx 1080 ti and that's
exactly what we decided to find out since we didn't have one at the time of
making that video so we ended up grabbing an overclocked EVGA GTX 1080
TI superclocked Black Edition gaming for seven hundred and seventy dollars
however by the time you're watching this video this card may be more or less
expensive personally I think this card is an excellent representation of what
invidious board partners still have available and it doesn't carry a huge
premium over the gtx 1080 ti starting price of about
$700 right away I threw out the possibility of using something like the
Asus GTX 1080 ti Strix OC or Zotac's AMP Extreme Core Edition in this
video since right now both of those actually cost more than the RTX
2080 founders Edition which right away makes them a pretty poor value so using
them to compare value and other factors wouldn't have worked maybe a look into
those a little bit later but for now I wanted to include a card like the super
clocked Black Edition since it combines pricing with pre overclocked goodness
it's time to play with light with fine things digital RGB star kit that
includes two LED strips and all the appropriate cables the main hub is
magnetic velcro tape is available with three digital channels for LED strips or
halos Lux fan frames that display a ton of lighting effects and they're
absolutely gorgeous check out the kit down below so let's
start off with a little test one of the issues with the GTX 1080 ti founder's
Edition is that it uses a blower style heatsink on the positive side this means
a lot of the hot air is exhausted outside your case but at the same time
downdraft coolers are typically more efficient so with Nvidia's boosts
outdoor them allowing for higher overall clock speeds under cooler temperatures
our initial gtx 1080 ti results could have been lowered due to increased core temps
there's no mistaking that Nvidia's RTX 2080 founders Edition runs incredibly
cool given the size of the heat output of the TA 104 core however take a look
at the gtx 1080 ti founders Edition as it hits 84c which happens to be right near
its thermal limit in stock form and that could lead to some throttling as the
boosts algorithm tries to balance temperature fan noise and power input
compare that to EVGA superclocked Black Edition and the difference is massive
EVGA's cooler capped temperatures at an amazing 68 degree Celsius which
should give plenty of clock speed Headroom but what actually happens when
we look at frequencies well here you go remember in order to give you guys an
accurate idea of how GPUs performed while you are gaming we put them under
load for a few minutes before each benchmark so here you can see exactly
why we do that both Nvidia and AMD cards can paddle after a little while and if
we would jump from one benchmark to another leaving
card to cool down between each run our results wouldn't show what you guys
would actually experience in this case the gtx 1080 ti founders edition goes from
a respectful 1820 megahertz in the first few minutes all the way down to about 16
80 megahertz around the four-minute mark due to invidious and boost algorithm
trying to balance things out that's a pretty big delta when he compared to EVGA
superclocked Black Edition which remained around 1900 megahertz
throughout testing and that's pretty amazing so it looks like some of our
initial results comparing the RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 ti were negatively influenced
by the founders edition heat sink which caused lower frequencies but that
doesn't mean that they were wrong since for the last 5 years or so our testing
methodology has been specifically set up to show gaming conditions rather than an
optimal environment that avoids throttling now that EVGA card results are
really eye-opening though so let's see if those higher frequencies really allow
it to close the gap with the RTX 2080 i'm gonna roll these benchmarks without
any commentary until the end feel free to pause the video if you want to have a
bit more time to check them out
so there you have it guys and I have to say that I'm actually really impressed
with these results the EVGA superclocked Black Edition really showcase some
impressive performance across the board and that's likely due to its consistent
clock speeds compared to the founders edition in some cases it was able to
match or even slightly beat the RTX 2080 founders Edition and I think that
that's pretty awesome for the price that you pay for this card but in the end how
do these numbers average out across all these tests as you can see the RTX
2080 is still able to very narrowly beat the EVGA card when every game is taken
into account but only by around four percent at 1440p basically the RTX is
noticeably better in dx12 and Vulcan whereas pre overclocked GTX tends to
perform extremely well in older api's moving on to 4k and this is where the 11
gigabyte gtx 1080 ti ends up winning all day
once again the margin isn't huge but in some titles the RTX 2080's frame
buffer can be a limitation like I said and launched a review that's a big
worrying since the lasting is an $800 GPU shouldn't be choking itself out at
new HD resolutions with this in our back pocket we can now look at the actual
value as well at 1440p the RTX 2080 and EVGA GTX 1080 ti superclocked are
pretty much tied from a value perspective but before you all keyboard
warriors start typing hate in the comments there's something important
here based on how good a reference gtx 1080 ti does if you can find it custom one
for less than $750 it'll be an excellent value but that's getting harder and
harder without going into the used market since the GTX series is selling
out quickly moving up to 4k and the RTX 2080 gets its butt kicked from a value
perspective due to its memory limitations the EVGA card is far out in
the lead something else interesting is that due to its huge performance numbers
in 4k games the RTX 2080 Ti has closed the gap a bit too
despite its ridiculous $1,200 price tag that's something to take into account if
you have the money to burn so with all these new numbers has our opinion
changed about the RTX 2080 yes and no you see it's amazing to see
what a custom GTX 1080 ti and make a difference especially with the
results and honestly we should have included one from the very beginning
since it would have given a more balanced perspective with those taken in
the equation the founders Edition RTX 2080 becomes a lower value and a less
step towards stepping up to a 4k display compared to a gtx 1080 ti
then again I have to wonder how well something like these $750 EVGA RTX 2080
XC would do since it is $50 less than the founders Edition but has very
similar frequencies that's another question for another video I guess since
we've had the time to digest what the market is doing now our perspectives
have changed a bit too folks are frustrated at in video since those
starting at $699 RTX 2080's have failed to appear and honestly the more I look
at it the $800 RTX 2080 could be a brilliant but underhanded mood to clear
out stocks of their discontinued pascal cards if that was a plan it worked
pretty well but in no way to the benefit gamers it's actually pretty hard to find
a GTX series cards at reasonable prices or even at stock and I wouldn't be
surprised if we start to see the $699 RTX 2080 magically appear once the gtx
1080 ti cards are flushed out speaking of 1080 ti's remember when I said if you
find that card for less than $750 it would be a good deal well I actually
found this ZOTAC an for under $700 which i think is an absolute steal at the time
of making this video I'm not even sure if this card will be around by the time
you're seeing this video but if it is I'll make sure to link it down below
just be aware that these kinds of deals are getting rarer and rarer these days
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coming back to RTX and I think the main problem with RTX cards is a lot of
their price is based on nothing more than a promise of right tracing and AI
that'll be a huge or I guess a big thing for
Gaming at least that's what nvidia is trying to convince us so I'm going to
repeat the exact same thing that I said foot since day one of this our text
lunch and that is if you don't absolutely need a graphics card right
now waiting to see how things will look in the next few months but with the EVGA
gtx 1080 ti super clocked in the charts it's obvious that depending on the price
a Pascal based GPU can be a phenomenal value just don't pay well more than 750
dollars for one because about that price point you're looking into an area of
diminishing returns for your money amiibo 800 connects thank you so much
for watching make sure to check out some relevant content over here subscribe to
our new boot sequence channel for the latest tech news and rumors I'm signing
off and I'll see you guys in the next one