# EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra 11 GB



## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

The RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra is EVGA's flagship RTX 2080 Ti. It comes with a large triple-slot triple-fan cooler that delivers amazing temperatures. Power limits have also been increased, and the VRM is stronger than ever with 16-phases for the GPU and three phases for the GDDR6 memory.

*Show full review*


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## bug (Nov 7, 2018)

Basically $100 buys you nothing on top of the (already ridiculously expensive) 2080Ti XC Ultra.


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## neatfeatguy (Nov 7, 2018)

$1350 for a single GPU? Holy crap.

In all honesty, I think I spent about that much for my entire computer build that I'm currently using.....let me price it out quick:
SSD: Free - had $95 in Amazon gift cards
PSU: ~$95
GPU: ~$650
CPU/MB/RAM: ~$545
Case: ~$80
Total = $1370 (and this was over the course of about 8-10 months for buying parts as money became available)

To those that have the money to spend on these cards......congratulations? I guess I'm not really sure if I should be impressed or disgusted.....then again, it's not my money so it doesn't really bother me either way.

While the performance jump over the Maxwell series is very impressive, I don't see the high prices being a worthwhile investment for anyone using Pascal. If prices stay like this in any future hardware releases, I don't know if I'll ever be upgrading or building a new PC in the future. I like to buy a new GPU that's twice the performance of my current and that would be the 2080 - but spending $800+ isn't an option. Dropping $650 was really pushing it when I got my 980Ti. Maybe another generation or two out I can find a mid ranged card that's not horribly overpriced that'll dish out twice the performance of my 980Ti.....


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

bug said:


> Basically $100 buys you nothing on top of the (already ridiculously expensive) 2080Ti XC Ultra.


Off the top of my head: higher power limit, more VRM, case fan header, RGB header, dual BIOS, much bigger cooler


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## ppn (Nov 7, 2018)

on page 1 should be 352-bit, instead listed as 256.

37% more bandwidth and 61% (the golden ratio 1,61) better performance compared to NonRef 2070 $500.


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

ppn said:


> on page 1 should be 352-bit, instead listed as 256.


Fixed, thanks


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## bug (Nov 7, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Off the top of my head: higher power limit, more VRM, case fan header, RGB header, dual BIOS, much bigger cooler


Off the top of your review: all that yields exactly the same performance 
Dual BIOS is probably boon to whoever dares to go there though.


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## jabbadap (Nov 7, 2018)

Why so tiny fans, no wonder the noise is as high as it's. Great review


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

bug said:


> all that yields exactly the same performance


that's correct of course


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## Enterprise24 (Nov 7, 2018)

What settings in Unigine Heaven OC result ?


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

Enterprise24 said:


> What settings in Unigine Heaven OC result ?


A customized subset of the normal run, nothing you can reproduce. The % difference should be very similar on your setup though.


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## ZeroFM (Nov 7, 2018)

Stop review 2080Ti , nobody care about this crap for 1% people


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## bug (Nov 7, 2018)

ZeroFM said:


> Stop review 2080Ti , nobody care about this crap for 1% people


Don't you worry about that. I'm sure the editors are capable of noticing when a review doesn't draw enough clicks.

And yes, I know these are priced ridiculously and all that. But at the end of the day, they're still faster than the cards before them and I want to know by how much.


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

ZeroFM said:


> Stop review 2080Ti , nobody care about this crap for 1% people


No worries, I got more reviews I'm working on: ASUS 2070 STRIX OC, ZOTAC 2070 AMP Edition, ZOTAC 2080 AMP Extreme, Palit 2070 JetStream

Maybe even a RX 590 at some point


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## Space Lynx (Nov 7, 2018)

Really looking forward to the 590 review, especially if you can OC it for us and show us a few extra games than normal, 1080p only, like on 144hz monitor, lets face it... won't be 1440p worthy. but it prob will be the 1080p king for bang for buck, especially since most peoples monitors at that rez will have freesync already

Keep up the good work W1zzard!


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## xkm1948 (Nov 7, 2018)

What is your experience using EVGA’s X1 OC scanner? I find it quite buggy.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 7, 2018)

xkm1948 said:


> What is your experience using EVGA’s X1 OC scanner? I find it quite buggy.



I have read on OCN and other sites similar reports, that MSI Afterburner manual OC is still most stable route to go.


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## EarthDog (Nov 7, 2018)

The OC scanner works fine across the 5 cards I have tested so far. It gives a GENERAL idea of where the core craps out. So far, using the OC Scanner yielded stable results in my experiences with it with little meat left on the bone. Do tell though what you mean by 'buggy'... hard to say anything without details. 

I manually overclock or adjust as needed with it as well. I do not have any issues with OC Scanner or MSI AB when overclocking. Though MSI AB doesn't really support these cards so the functionality is pretty limited to power limit, core and memory overclocking (read: no voltage adjustment, one fan spins, etc). I would call MSI AB more buggy (read: lack of support), personally...unless there is another version out in the last week or two?



> show us a few extra games than normal


Really? Like the dozen and change isn't enough???????????????!!!


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## Space Lynx (Nov 7, 2018)

EarthDog said:


> T
> 
> Really? Like the dozen and change isn't enough???????????????!!!



LOL oh man I am sorry, I was thinking o Guru3D's overclocking review section of cards, got the websites confused. It's been a long day of grind, sorry lol

TPU as always king in reviews. I have a bad habit of checking multiple sites though to compare results, and yes I am aware it is a waste of time.


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## jabbadap (Nov 7, 2018)

lynx29 said:


> LOL oh man I am sorry, I was thinking o Guru3D's overclocking review section of cards, got the websites confused. It's been a long day of grind, sorry lol
> 
> TPU as always king in reviews. I have a bad habit of checking multiple sites though to compare results, and yes I am aware it is a waste of time.



It's not a waste of time, one should always compare results between different reviews to get whole picture of the product. So you have good habit not a bad one


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## Victor Do (Nov 7, 2018)

I am just curious is it something wrong why the msi rtx 2080 ti duke have lower power limit have more coreclock overclock than the msi rtx 2080 ti x trio in term of max coreclock


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## N3utro (Nov 7, 2018)

Their card have the exact same frequency when overclocked than a regular founders edition, so the exact same performance, yet they sell them 150$ more than a FE.

Plus the FE fan of the 2080ti is already a good model which makes the custom EVGA fan less efficient than compared to the previous gen FE coolers.

So by your point of view 150$ for no increased performance is worth an "editor's choice award"? I find your lack of objectivity... Disturbing.


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## Victor Do (Nov 7, 2018)

N3utro said:


> Their card have the exact same frequency when overclocked than a regular founders edition, so the exact same performance, yet they sell them 150$ more than a FE.
> 
> Plus the FE fan of the 2080ti is already a good model which makes the custom EVGA fan less efficient than compared to the previous gen FE coolers.
> 
> So by your point of view 150$ for no increased performance is worth an "editor's choice award"? I find your lack of objectivity... Disturbing.


Actually the cooling is improving though. Jayztwocent tested it out, the temp on GPU on Oc is lower which give a bit of extra headroom. But still i don't understand how the asus strix and msi duke 2080ti version OC coreclock is higher than the Msi 2080ti x trio when they have lower power head room. Misleading information here.


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## neatfeatguy (Nov 7, 2018)

Victor Do said:


> Actually the cooling is improving though. Jayztwocent tested it out, the temp on GPU on Oc is lower which give a bit of extra headroom. But still i don't understand how the asus strix and msi duke 2080ti version OC coreclock is higher than the Msi 2080ti x trio when they have lower power head room. Misleading information here.



Same reason why one CPU, say 8600k, overclocks better than another 8600k. 

You can throw more voltage into one and she just won't overclock as well as the other. I've had multiple GPUs (same manufacturer, same model card with the exact same BIOS on both) and one would overclock well, the other wouldn't.


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## W1zzard (Nov 7, 2018)

Victor Do said:


> Actually the cooling is improving though. Jayztwocent tested it out, the temp on GPU on Oc is lower which give a bit of extra headroom. But still i don't understand how the asus strix and msi duke 2080ti version OC coreclock is higher than the Msi 2080ti x trio when they have lower power head room. Misleading information here.


Silicon lottery, it's the biggest factor these days. I test every card the exact same way


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## Victor Do (Nov 7, 2018)

Anyway even though I preordered but it was never in stock. Just quick question, is the Seasonic 760 XP2 platinum enough to OC I9 9900K at 5.0ghz and MSI RTX 2080Ti X Trio to 2000Mhz on the Gigabyte Aorus Z390 Master motherboard ?


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## Blueberries (Nov 7, 2018)

Going by W1zzard's tests here on TPU we see a larger power draw, 3dB louder fan curve, and a ~4% greater FPS in 4k testing for a $150 premium over the FE.

Sorry, I like EVGA and appreciate their efforts here but unless you plan on overclocking the poop out of this for benchmark scores you're really not getting the best "bang for your buck" here.


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## NiscoBiscuits (Nov 7, 2018)

Top on *Page: 36- Overclocking & Power Limit*.
I would like to see the temps of EVGA's iCX sensors for *Idle* -* Full load* - *OC full load*.


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## Jerozzz (Nov 8, 2018)

As is par for the course for EVGA (as it has been for over the past decade), the FTW cards are not possible to purchase due to being sold out everywhere. When they become available at the retail price from a vendor or from EVGA, they sell out within less than an hour. The only way to purchase is to use the alert system and set up some kind of alarm and keep your phone on you and powered on at all times, or eBay, where you can expect to pay $2,000 or more per card, that is when someone who was lucky enough to actually buy one decides they'd rather have an extra ~$700 - $800 than the EVGA FTW version of the card.


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## bug (Nov 8, 2018)

Jerozzz said:


> As is par for the course for EVGA (as it has been for over the past decade), the FTW cards are not possible to purchase due to being sold out everywhere. When they become available at the retail price from a vendor or from EVGA, they sell out within less than an hour. The only way to purchase is to use the alert system and set up some kind of alarm and keep your phone on you and powered on at all times, or eBay, where you can expect to pay $2,000 or more per card, that is when someone who was lucky enough to actually buy one decides they'd rather have an extra ~$700 - $800 than the EVGA FTW version of the card.


Well, besides the custom engineering that goes into these, you have to understand these are the highest tier binned chips. Probably well below 10% make that cut, so I'm not surprised they're hard to come by.
Me, I've always found their SC line to offer the best bang for my buck. Then again, I'm only overclocking out of curiosity, I have no desire to set any record.


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## @man_daddio (Nov 8, 2018)

ZeroFM said:


> Stop review 2080Ti , nobody care about this crap for 1% people


Well first of all the card is not crap. Second, I'm far from being in the 1% but I decided I wanted to put out for a top card this time around which is my first. I'm glad that I waited this long to do so because at least I know this card will do the job I needed to do for quite some time. And most people don't even need to look at these reviewers to find out what's what if they just do the work themselves. Just a little bit of self education would make you less dependent on having to look at every reviewer these days when you can just look at data sheets yourself and kind of interpret what that means. Most reviewers today anyway just want to poke at everything. you can easily look down the list of available cards out there and pick out which ones are most likely ones that will work for you without looking at any reviews.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 8, 2018)

@man_daddio said:


> Well first of all the card is not crap. Second, I'm far from being in the 1% but I decided I wanted to put out for a top card this time around which is my first. I'm glad that I waited this long to do so because at least I know this card will do the job I needed to do for quite some time. And most people don't even need to look at these reviewers to find out what's what if they just do the work themselves. Just a little bit of self education would make you less dependent on having to look at every reviewer these days when you can just look at data sheets yourself and kind of interpret what that means. Most reviewers today anyway just want to poke at everything. you can easily look down the list of available cards out there and pick out which ones are most likely ones that will work for you without looking at any reviews.



funny people say its the 1%, yet they prob have friends they consider poor who smoke ciggs, which costs well over $1200 for a years usage. or drink alcohol for that matter. i do neither of those bad habits, so technically a 2080 ti is free if i look at it that way. LOL


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## wolf (Nov 9, 2018)

What a card. Great review as always W1zz

I keep hearing that this generation is a failure, but every time I check most if not all 2080Ti's are sold out/very limited stock - so they're moving, even at AU's inflated prices, so seems like Nvidia got it just right when it comes to making and selling cards.

So a failure? doesn't look like it from a business standpoint.


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## ppn (Nov 9, 2018)

People have the fear of missing out, if that is your definition of success then yes. They will understand when 7nm hits the market that it was not very wise to buy 12nm. but it will motivate the company to move forward so it is support well needed.


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## wolf (Nov 9, 2018)

ppn said:


> People have the fear of missing out, if that is your definition of success then yes.



People always miss out, high end stuff wasn't 'cheap' before RTX.


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## DarthJedi (Nov 9, 2018)

W1zzard said:


> Silicon lottery, it's the biggest factor these days. I test every card the exact same way



Would you be so kind as to tell us how you actually maintain a reliable test of maximum overclock? TimeSpy Extreme run without freezing? Is there a better way.
For example, if one has access to five card and flashes same BIOS to all five. The most reliable way to test maximum oc i.e. silicon quality is by what test?


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## trog100 (Nov 10, 2018)

naxeem said:


> Would you be so kind as to tell us how you actually maintain a reliable test of maximum overclock? TimeSpy Extreme run without freezing? Is there a better way.
> For example, if one has access to five card and flashes same BIOS to all five. The most reliable way to test maximum oc i.e. silicon quality is by what test?



with my palit card timespy is only a starting point.. its a good starting point but the core clocks have to be lowered for genuine "everything" stability.. i cant help but think most review max overclocks are a tad on the optimistic side.. 

incidentally the review card is listed at £1450 pre-order on scan UK.. its probably the best money can buy for benching scores.. but it dosnt come cheap even by the 2080ti standards..

there is no quick and easy way to find the genuine max stable overclocks..

trog


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## DarthJedi (Nov 10, 2018)

trog100 said:


> with my palit card timespy is only a starting point.. its a good starting point but the core clocks have to be lowered for genuine "everything" stability.. i cant help but think most review max overclocks are a tad on the optimistic side..
> 
> incidentally the review card is listed at £1450 pre-order on scan UK.. its probably the best money can buy for benching scores.. but it dosnt come cheap even by the 2080ti standards..
> 
> ...



It might be that Palit GamingPro OC is a binned chip so it'll probably be good, but in Germany it's also expensive. Having Palit here and it can survive TSE at about ~2055-2100 and 16000 memory with GB/FTW3 BIOS. Not even hot at 66°C and 100% fans.
Starting point I guess, but it runs nice.


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## trog100 (Nov 10, 2018)

just for perspective Scan UK has the Palit OC at £1200 it was much higher.. £250 less than the review card..  i paid £1150 for my palit OC  from Ebuyer..

trog


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## Vlada011 (Nov 12, 2018)

neatfeatguy said:


> $1350 for a single GPU? Holy crap.
> 
> In all honesty, I think I spent about that much for my entire computer build that I'm currently using.....let me price it out quick:
> SSD: Free - had $95 in Amazon gift cards
> ...




No words. First time that I don't wish new NVIDIA Series.
If they launch NVIDIA Turing TITAN that will be little better difference, but nothing spectacular.
Only their price is for specific profile of people who not care about price and money.

Full market of used GTX1080Ti with 2 years warranty.
Maybe RTX2080Ti new worth more, much more. But she not worth i9-9820X over.
And who decide to buy RTX2080Ti instead GTX1080Ti used and i9-9820X is not normal person from my perspective.

They are very very tricky people. 
They measured Pascal Founders vs Turing Founders and that's like you measure overclocked RTX2080Ti Strix with Pascal FE.
Reviews should be looked on this way GTX1080Ti FE vs RTX2080 Turbo or RTX2080Ti Turbo.

If you own GTX1080Ti factory overclocked that's like you have RTX2080 FE. 
Only you can't downscale 4K monitor on 1080p and Enable RT to get playable fps and you have little more video memory but that difference is not so important.


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## Vlada011 (Nov 16, 2018)

Only I must admit it's Cool graphic card.
I must remember 2018, year when everything change for me who bought 15 years high end GPU.
From 2018 I couldn't afford any more systematic price increase every year for 100$ and than suddenly 500 euro more than Pascal.
GTX1080Ti costed 900 euro, RTX2080Ti is up to 1500 euro.
Many people who don't understand that now will understand sooner or later.


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## SpitFlyer (Jan 5, 2019)

Thanks W1zzard - I liked the depth of detail and commentary in your review.

  What I did miss, though, was a test-result for a *flight simulator*.  Out of the multitude of programs tested, the closest you got to a flight sim, I think, was the F1 racing sim.  I'm building a fresh PC and the main driver in choice of components is Flight-sim use.  It's all built apart from the graphics card, so I have a keen interest in what you wrote.  I'm really struggling to decide between 1080 Ti and 2080 Ti (cost is what is holding me back) (EVGA  2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra is what appeals to me, but it's a scary price!).
  The point is, your tests show comparisons of FPS for a range of cards and some of the values reach 300+.  I don't think that the human eye/brain can appreciate the difference between 300 and 100 (correct me if I'm wrong here, but surely we wouldn't have got away with (or still be using) standard cinema values of 25 to 30+ if higher values were very much more pleasing).  I appreciate that these high-value comparisons are probably there only to show how very good the top cards are _BUT_ I need to know what the cards do for the situation I'm going to be in.
  I think the *DCS World F/A-18* will probably look no better at 150 FPS than at 60 (60fps is what I've seen quoted often), so *spending the extra £500 would be wasted*.
Are there any guidelines which indicate how the flight sim compares with any of the games that you used?  I'm wondering about something like "loading imposed by XYZ game is similar to" this flight sim.
Thanks again for all the good stuff you _did_ provide in your review


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## EarthDog (Jan 5, 2019)

SpitFlyer said:


> but surely we wouldn't have got away with (or still be using) standard cinema values of 25 to 30+ if higher values were very much more pleasing).


Motion blur is what makes it acceptable. How a PC renders games is a bit different and not natural. There are great articles covering this phenomenon as well. 

Flight sims will vary wildly by the game itself. Some can use a few cores, some cannot so it will likely vary significantly. Also with FSX, the scene matters, etc...23 games or whatever is, I believe, the most on the web and gives a good idea of performance all around. It will be tough to provide an analog considering other things vary.


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## DarthJedi (Jan 5, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Motion blur is what makes it acceptable. How a PC renders games is a bit different and not natural. There are great articles covering this phenomenon as well.
> 
> Flight sims will vary wildly by the game itself. Some can use a few cores, some cannot so it will likely vary significantly. Also with FSX, the scene matters, etc...23 games or whatever is, I believe, the most on the web and gives a good idea of performance all around. It will be tough to provide an analog considering other things vary.



Yes, motion blur, which rarely works in games. One game that had it nice, maybe two, was Crysis 3 and DOOM (2016) - both had a usable, pleasing MB.


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## SpitFlyer (Jan 9, 2019)

I started this quest ("what is the right graphics card for my new PC that I'm building?") with DCS World flight sim in mind.  Looking at several forum threads they all used FPS in-game as a quality/performance criterion.  This was pushing me towards an EVGA 2070 - thinking it would give adequate FPS (who can see the difference between 70 and 100 fps?).  _Now_ I've remembered that the GPU can also be programmed for user-specific tasks (e.g use in crypto-mining).  I've already downloaded the SDK from Nvidia and it has a demo program for multi-body gravitational dynamics calcs. (I'm interested in gravitation, so this will be very handy   ).

This casts a new light on the things governing the choice: 2080 Ti has nearly TWICE the CUDA cores that the 2070 has. The ratio of Tensor cores is nearly 2 also. The ratio of RT cores is nearly 2 also!  Well known are the 11/8 ratio of RAM (37% up) and the 352 / 256 ratio of memory controller bit-values (also 37% up).  When you're writing your own program, not restricted to a large software-system written for a wide range of users (e.g. a flight sim) you can be sure to utilise all the resources on the card!  Hence the FPS values quoted may be irrelevant.

The only problem is that it costs ~£1500 here in the UK!
When I've done some more research on the SDK and what it can produce / what you can actually program the card to do, I might just take the plunge! If it is capable of all that one might hope it can do, then I'll bite.
Does anyone have any info on this kind of thing: where I would be best starting the search?  Nvidia is an obvious one, but maybe other forums?
Thanks in anticipation


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## W1zzard (Jan 9, 2019)

SpitFlyer said:


> When I've done some more research on the SDK and what it can produce / what you can actually program the card to do, I might just take the plunge! If it is capable of all that one might hope it can do, then I'll bite.
> Does anyone have any info on this kind of thing: where I would be best starting the search? Nvidia is an obvious one, but maybe other forums?


What's your skill level when it comes to programming? CUDA is what you want to learn. Or any Matlab/Simulink experience? I'd guess most simulation/calculation packages support GPU computing, so you won't have to reinvent the wheel.


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## SpitFlyer (Jan 10, 2019)

W1zzard said:


> What's your skill level when it comes to programming? CUDA is what you want to learn. Or any Matlab/Simulink experience? I'd guess most simulation/calculation packages support GPU computing, so you won't have to reinvent the wheel.



Hello W1zzard
Skill level in programming?  Well that's a good question 
In some respects you could say it's "professional" in as much as I used to earn a living doing it.  The _qualification_ to that is that it was as an adjunct to doing antenna engineering.  I did a few courses but the programmimg was as much self-taught as schooled.  That said, I've produced some fairly extensive programs in a variety of languages:
Algol; FORTRAN (IV to Visual FORTRAN95);  APL; VBA (Excel and Access); C++
and extra-high-level languages such as PVWAVE and National Instruments "Labview" and the HFSS electromagnetic simulator suite.  I've only come into contact with Matlab in a "glancing" sort of way (fairly trivial tasks).  I've not really done any machine code.  Given enough incentive (and reference/tutorial material) I think I could get a demo system running and then do some expansion to embellish it.

I notice that CUDA stands for Compute Uniform Device Architecture - I guess there's a language of the same name for making it work.  Is that part of the SDK package available from Nvidia?  I get the impression that that SDK runs in MS Visual Studio.  Do you know much about all this stuff yourself?  I'm really just starting on this path, so any pointers or advice would very welcome.


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## W1zzard (Jan 10, 2019)

SpitFlyer said:


> I notice that CUDA stands for Compute Uniform Device Architecture - I guess there's a language of the same name for making it work


You can use CUDA through various languages, it's more of a programming concept than a language itself, start at NVIDIA's developer site: https://devblogs.nvidia.com/even-easier-introduction-cuda/


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## Excalibour00 (Aug 11, 2019)

Is there a comparison between this version (2080 ti ftw3 ultra) and the EVGA black edition? Just curious if the price difference is justifiable. 

Thanks


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