What we have here is the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 OC. The first GeForce RTX model to ever land on our doorsteps. It features an improved cooling solution over its last generation counterpart, has a USB Type-C connection to boot and is just appealing to the naked eye.
On this review, we are going to take the card for a spin on our good old selection of games at 1080P, 1440P and 4K resolutions. No ray-tracing nor DLSS performance figures just yet!
Table of Contents
Technical Specifications
| GPU | |
| Model | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 |
| Cores | 2944 |
| Core Clock | 1515MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1890MHz |
| Architecture | Turing |
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 12nm |
| TDP | 215W |
| Memory | |
| Memory Clock | 14000MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit |
| Memory Capacity | 8GB |
| Memory Type | GDDR6 |
| Connectivity | |
| Display | HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4, USB Type-C |
| Power | 2x 8-Pin |
Packaging and Accessories
The ASUS ROG Strix Geforce RTX 2080 OC comes in your usual ROG Strix packaging. Has that familiar scent to it, with the good old foam inserts in tow.
The graphics card doesn’t come with anything else. I suppose this is an early review sample, so there’s no reason to add any. At least we’ve got the retail box with a WTFast bundle. Edit: You’ll get a Velcro strap plus some form of documentation according to ASUS.
Design, Build and Connectivity
Granted, the overall design hasn’t changed much for the past 2 years but the ASUS ROG Strix Geforce RTX 2080 OC still got that premium graphics card aura no matter where we look at it. It is a long and heavy card though, weighing in at almost 2 kilograms with a length of 11.8 inches or about 30cm.
Looking at the back, we could see the stylized aluminum backplate together with the LED button – which is a nice addition if you just want total control over the software or if you just hate the idea of RGB lighting in the first place.
With a staggering weight, ASUS made sure to support the card properly with a steel brace for both sides. Power on the other hand is provided by dual 8-pin connector.
As for cooling options, It has 5 heat pipes connected to the dense heatsink design. This cooling solution goes all the way into the GDDR6 VRAMs surrounding the GPU itself. There’s also an option to add two more fans and another RGB strip as well.
There are 5 display options to choose from, with dual DisplayPorts, dual HDMI ports and a single USB Type-C port. Disgustingly good ports here for VR and standard display options.
Test Setup
The system performance shall be evaluated by various benchmarking tools and applications. We are testing this system with the high-performance settings enabled at the OS, with the default UEFI configuration. Background processes such as anti-viruses and third-party applications are disabled as well.
Temperature
The graphics card thermal figures are taken during a 15 minute idle, and a 15 minute load via AIDA64 Extreme Edition’s GPU Stress Test. The ambient temperature is checked at 27°C (±1°C), with values extracted via HWiNFO and GPU-Z.
Power
The total system power consumption are taken during a 15 minute idle, and a 15 minute load via AIDA64 Extreme Edition’s GPU Stress Test. The measurements are taken by a watt-meter.
Noise
The graphics card noise levels are taken during a 15 minute idle, and a 15 minute load via AIDA64 Extreme Edition’s GPU Stress Test. The ambient sound level is 34dBA (±1dBA), with measurements taken by a sound level meter situated exactly 12 inches away from the card.
With its sizeable cooling solution, the ROG Strix RTX 2080 OC managed to cool the Turing chip with ease. It sports one of the best cooling performance we’ve seen so far with a great noise level performance to boot. Power consumption on the other hand goes toe to toe with the GTX 1080 Ti.
Synthetic
3DMark 2013 is a suite of benchmarks catered for the gamers and enthusiasts. The total system scores from each presets will be used.
LuxMark is an OpenCL cross-platform benchmark tool and has become, over past years, one of the most used OpenCL benchmarks.
The Aida64 Extreme Edition GPGPU Benchmark is designed to measure GPGPU computing performance via different workloads. Every benchmark methods are designed to work on up to 16 GPUs, including AMD, Intel and nVIDIA GPUs, in any combination.
Synthetic benchmarks wise, the RTX 2080 OC performed really close to what the GTX 1080 Ti could offer, even surpassing the Pascal chip at Luxmark and 3DMark’s Firestrike 4K benchmark.
Gaming
Overwatch is Blizzard Entertainment’s critically acclaimed First Person Shooter, running on a custom game engine utilizing the DirectX 11 API. Settings are set to Ultra with a Render Scale set to 100%.
Battlefield 4 is Electronic Art’s popular First Person Shooter, running on the Frostbite 3 game engine developed by DICE utilizing the DirectX 11 and the Mantle API. Settings are set to Ultra.
DIRT: Rally is CODEMASTER’s take on the rally racing game genre. It utilizes the EGO game engine with support for the DirectX 11 API. Settings are set to Ultra.
Project CARS is Slightly Mad Studios’ latest simulation racing game, running on the Madness game engine utilizing DirectX 11 support. Settings are set to maximum.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda’s critically acclaimed Action Adventure RPG. Skyrim utilizes the Creation Engine with DirectX 10 support. Settings are set to Ultra with V-SYNC turned off.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is CDProjekt RED’s award winning Action Adventure RPG. The Witcher 3 utilizes the REDengine 3 with DirectX 11 support. Settings are set to Ultra.
Gaming performance is close to the GTX 1080 Ti at 1080P and 1440P at most games tested on the review. At some cases, it is marginally lower or better depending on the titles. There’s that one trend that made the RTX 2080 to stand above the rest though and that’s the 4K UHD gaming performance of the card. At every titles tested, the RTX 2080 delivered a 60+ FPS 4K gaming experience.
Software
The ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 OC comes with a number of bundled software. That includes the GPU Tweak II which is an all in one tuning and optimization solution.
The XSplit Gamecaster is also a part of the bundle too, with support for GPU Tweak II overlays. I am not sure how long you could use the license for this one though.
WTFast and ASUS QuantumCloud also comes bundled with the card as well.
Finally, we get to check out the ASUS Aura Sync lighting technology. This is one of, if not, the best lighting solution out there. This even supports peripherals including the ROG Strix Fusion 700 wireless gaming headset.
As for the real-time ray-tracing and AI enhanced super-sampling, I have yet to take a plunge as far as testing goes. These are the GeForce RTX series’ most prominent features yet there aren’t many titles to choose from as of date. We also don’t have other RTX models to compare with.
Both features also had some issues with certain games and due to that, initial reception is not really what I expected in spite of their game changing attributes. We just have to wait a little more, I guess. To learn more about the card’s features, head over to the official product page.
Final Thoughts
With the RTX 2080 Ti tested, it is easy to say that this card is what the GTX 1080 should’ve become in the first place. A single card capable of breaching the 60 FPS barrier at 4K resolution even with graphically intensive games.
Product stacking and viability aside, the arrival of the RTX 2080 ensures that ray-tracing and AI assisted gaming is the future. Nvidia saw potential into incorporating these features and so should you as a gamer. Think of it like the PhysX cards of the yesteryear. In time, we’ll know for sure how it will affect the gaming landscape as a whole.
As for this RTX 2080 model specifics, ASUS made sure to cram it up with everything they’ve got. It is a well made card, practically a tank by today’s standards and with an excellent cooling solution in tow. Prepare to shell out 55350 Pesos for one though.
ASUS ROG Strix Geforce RTX 2080 OC
Summary
As for the model’s specifics, ASUS made sure to cram it up with everything they’ve got. It is a well made card, practically a tank by today’s standards and with an excellent cooling solution in tow. Prepare to shell out 55350 Pesos for one though.
