If it wasn’t for all the leaks, Nvidia’s surprise announcement of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at its Gamescom 2018 press conference would have been much more of a, well, surprise.
Still, it was exciting to see Nvidia tear up its previous conventions and release a Ti flagship model the same year it releases the RTX 2080.
But, how does the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti compare to its processor, the GTX 1080 Ti? We've now updated this versus piece as we've had time with the brand new graphics card, and have but the two cards through their paces to find out how well they really compare to each other.
The GTX 1080 Ti is certainly a tough act to follow, being one of the best gaming graphics cards ever made. It certainly feels like we’ve got the RTX 2080 Ti earlier than expected, but does this mean it’s less of a leap when it comes to performance? Let’s find out.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti vs Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti price
The GTX 1080 Ti launched on March 10, 2017, for $699 (£699, around AU$1,000). Even by Nvidia’s flagship GPU standards, this was a very high price tag, but for many people the pure gaming performance of the GTX 1080 Ti was well worth it.
Because of that, we weren’t expecting the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to be cheap, which is just as well when Nvidia unveiled its $999 (AU$1,899, about £753) price tag.
That’s a hefty amount of cash it’s asking for, so the performance better be worth it. Our full review of the RTX 2080 Ti, when we get our hands on one, will carefully consider this.
If that price is too much, then bear in mind that the price of the GTX 1080 Ti may well drop now that its successor is out. It’s well worth keeping an eye out for any bargains on that front.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti specifications
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti packs 3584 CUDA cores, 224 texture units and 88 ROPs. It comes with 11GB of GDDR5X VRAM, which has a speed of 11Gbps – making this Nvidia’s quickest Pascal card. It also has a base clock of 1,480MHz, and a boost clock of 1,582MHz.
Meanwhile the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti features 4352 Cuda cores, 272 texture cores and 88 ROPs. Memory-wise it has 11GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a speed of 14Gbps. Its base clock is 1,350MHz, and it has a boost clock of 1,545MHz.
That's for the reference spec of the RTX 2080 Ti. There is also a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition which features an overclocked boost of 1,635MHz.
It's certainly a decent spec bump over the 1080 Ti, and in our full review of the RTX 2080 Ti we’ll give the new GPU a thorough test to see just how much faster it really is.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti performance
As we mentioned earlier, we've now had a chance to run a variety of benchmark tests using the RTX 2080 Ti, so we can better compare it to the performance of the GTX 1080 Ti.