GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Pricing and Availability
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition is now available to order from NVIDIA’s site. The Founders Edition has an MSRP of $1,199 and comes with a 3-year standard warranty. Non-Founders Edition or reference cards from AIB partners are said to be priced starting at $999. But since most of the partner cards feature custom cooler design, expect prices to be similar or even higher than the Founders Edition.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition Review: Conclusion
Well there you have it guys! The all-new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition is truly impressive to say the least and this is even without DLSS enabled. I’m sure many of you were quite disappointed when NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang didn’t present any performance numbers comparing the new RTX 20 series graphics card with the previous GTX 10 series graphics card. Instead, Jensen focused more on the features that these new cards would bring. Features like real-time ray tracing, AI, Deep Learning Super-Sampling, and many more. These are new features that are not available and will not be available on any current competing graphics card in the market and even on NVIDIA’s previous generation graphics cards.
I’m all for visual improvement and I hope that one day we will be able to play games with visual effects and graphics fidelity similar to what we see on a game’s cutscene movie (think Blizzard’s Diablo or StarCraft’s cutscenes). Real time ray tracing is just a small step, but it is forward thinking. I think this (Turing and all its features) has to happen, otherwise we would be stuck playing games with old visual tricks to fool our eyes. While real-time ray tracing is not as easy to implement and still very much a new feature, DLSS is the killer feature of these new RTX graphics card, thanks to the Tensor Cores. This is much easier to implement for the game developers compared to real-time ray tracing; and it would bring the performance of these new RTX graphics card to the next level.
It’s just unfortunate and disappointing to see that there are no real-time ray tracing and/or DLSS enabled games available at the time these new RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 are released. But we will test and review the performance of these graphics cards again once real-time ray tracing and DLSS features are rolled out. On top of that, these RTX 2080 Ti are not cheap; they are quite expensive compared to previous XX80 Ti graphics card. The price of the RTX 2080 Ti is similar to TITAN graphics cards previously released. The good news is, the RTX 2080 Ti is faster than any of the TITAN graphics cards released.
In terms of looks and aesthetics of the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, I like the almost all-metal cooler shroud that wraps around the entire PCB. The cooling performance the new full-length vapor chamber combined with two 13-blade axial fans is quite impressive as well. It’s definitely more silent and more effective compared to the previous blower type design; resulting in a more stable and higher sustained boost clock speeds. Speaking of boost clock speeds, NVIDIA also introduced GPU Boost 4.0, giving users more control when it comes to overclocking these new RTX graphics cards. We’ll post a separate article or guide for overclocking these new cards.
When it comes to gaming performance, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition is truly a beast. It’s able to drive most of the games at 4K 60 fps average; something that the GTX 1080 Ti failed to achieve. And this is even without the help of DLSS. How much more when DLSS gets mainstreamed. The performance difference between the RTX 20 series graphics card from the previous GTX graphics cards would simply widen even more. In my tests, I see a 20% to 40% increase when I compared the performance of the RTX 2080 Ti from the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP Edition. I also observe that the RTX 2080 Ti performs better on higher resolution, 1440p and 2160p.
However, the current price is what makes this card unattractive and somewhat disappointing; aside from the lack of ray tracing and DLSS featured games. While the new GeForce RTX 2080 Ti sounds really great, but it’s definitely not a value-oriented gaming hardware as it will cost you $1,200 for the Founders Edition. Expect custom designed 2080 Ti’s from partners will be priced similarly or even higher. This makes it out of reach for most gamers in the market, and only a few enthusiasts could afford one (or two). Well, we are in a time where prices of high-end premium hardware are increasing; just look at the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the new iPhone XS (Max). Not to mention the lack of competition from the red team and the blue team’s graphics card isn’t coming until two years from now.
At the end of the day, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is truly the graphics card for 4K UHD gaming. It’s really a beast! An amazing beast! A revolutionary and technologically advanced beast! But we will have to wait a little while until we see some games with real-time ray tracing and DLSS features. This review is somewhat incomplete since I wasn’t able to test the two main features of the RTX 20 series graphics card. But I’m more positive that it will only make the RTX 2080 Ti better once they are rolled out. If you have the money to spend on a RTX 2080 Ti now, I’m not going to stop you from getting one.
