Road test: new Nvidia graphics card RTX 2080 Ti is the future of gaming, if you’re ready to pay for it
- Real-time ray tracing, used by film studios, is the big selling point of Nvidia’s next-generation GPUs, and makes gaming a surreal experience
- Barely 20 games currently use real-time ray tracing, so for now US$1,199 card may draw gamers with deep pockets who like to crank up the settings
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 20 series is the company’s next generation of graphics card, and promises to be significantly faster than the GTX 1080 and with support for real-time ray tracing, a technology that makes video game graphics look more realistic than ever before.
We put the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition GPU through its paces to see how it performs.
Hardware
The first impressions when picking up the RTX 2080 Ti are its gorgeous lines and heft. Sheathed in matte, machine-finished aluminium, the top-tier GPU certainly feels every bit like its US$1,199 price tag. Nvidia has done away with the blower – commonly found in computer servers – in the 2080 Ti Founders Edition for a pair of axial fans that your ears will appreciate. Under the hood, though, lies an advanced full-length vapour chamber to keep the GPU cool.
The RTX 2080 Ti draws a whopping 260 watts, a huge step up from the 180 watts of the GTX 1080. Nvidia now recommends at least a 650W power supply for stable operation, which means that gaming enthusiasts with a compatible two- or three-year-old PC are likely to require a new power supply unit (PSU).
