ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER

In late July, NVIDIA released their GeForce RTX 2080 Super. While the release seems unexpected at first, it makes sense if you take a closer look at their product stack. In order to counter AMD's Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 Series, NVIDIA released the "Super" refresh of Turing, which offers faster variants of the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070. Unlike the original RTX 2070, the RTX 2070 Super is based on the TU104 graphics processor, which is the same chip that powers the RTX 2080 lineup.

As stated, we're a little confused with the RTX 2080 Super Dual Evo OC - It has a reference PCB and a custom cooler. That's it. So there are no double eight-pin power connectors (the dual has to do with 'only' 6 + 8-pins) extra fans and there is no massive out of the box tweak applied either. That means the RTX 2080S in this revision should be positioned at 699 USD / 749 EUR, and really should not be much higher in retail. Unfortunately, it easy passes 850 Euros which is silly. Overall it's close to reference perf offering product, you get to play around with RTX/DLSS if you desire. While we can still argue DLSS and RTX you do need to realize that the industry is at a clipping point, hardware-based ray tracing is coming, whether that is NVIDIA, AMD or Intel. You probably still are paying a price premium to be that early adopter with a handful of games to actually test it on. But you can't blame NVIDIA for pioneering with technology. The out of the box factory tweak is so small that I won't even name it a tweak, I mean 15 MHz, come on. Tweaking wise the card did not disappoint. The 2080 Super is plenty fast for any gaming up-to Ultra HD based on shading performance. With Raytracing enabled you'll be in the 1080p or 1440p range. The good news is that the card is TU104 based, and that means it is fitted with an NVlink slot, yep you could pair up two of these and go for SLI. However, given its track history, Multi-GPU is dying. As stated, the factory tweak is pretty weak, the cooling performance average at best and the same can be said about the noise levels. If priced right it would have gotten an award as really it ain't a bad product at all. But at prices ranging from € 810,- to € 869,- as listed right now, you are way better off with a cheaper brand or founders edition RTX 2080 Super at 699 USD / € 749,00 in the EU.