MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z 11 GB

[The King]

Was expecting more OC performance from the Samsung memory, but I guess this is a good thing at the end of the day since there seems to be no real advantage of Samsung VRAM over Micron VRAM like with DDR5.

 

[W1zzard]

Was expecting more OC performance from the Samsung memory, but I guess this is a good thing at the end of the day since there seems to be no real advantage of Samsung VRAM over Micron VRAM like with DDR5.

The difference is around 100 MHz

 

[The King]

The difference is around 100 MHz

The ASUS 2080 Ti Strix card hit 2065Mhz with Micron memory vs 2090Mhz with Lightning with the Samsung memory, so that's a 25mhz difference.
Yes, I know this will vary and no two cards will OC the same etc...

I have 7 GTX 1070s all with micron VRAM all different brands 2 Asus Strix OC, 2 Gigabyte Windforce and 3 MSI Amour cards and all of them are barely stable with +400Mhz on the VRAM,
no were close to the 2290Mhz you got when you tested the Msi GTX 1070 Quick Silver with Micron VRAM. You stated then from that one sample review, there was no real disadvantage from having a GTX 1070 with micron VRAM. I can state from my more than one sample of GTX 1070s with micron VRAM, that there is a big difference when compared to the Samsung GTX 1070 versions.

The general feeling most people give off when they have a GPU with Micron VRAM is that they wished they had Samsung instead.

I was hoping this not be the case with the newer GDDR6 VRAM versions and that the difference between Micron and Samsung should not be so great in terms of Overclocking VRAM performance.

 

[EarthDog]

The general feeling most people give off when they have a GPU with Micron VRAM is that they wished I had Samsung instead.

Last gen, yes.

 

[W1zzard]

The ASUS 2080 Ti Strix card hit 2065Mhz with Micron memory

That card seems to be an outlier. I tested other RTX cards with Samsung and the difference does seem to be around 100 MHz there too. It's 5%, really not enough to lose sleep about

 

[maukkae]

Those thermals and fans are out of control! It's like a totally different card compared to what Guru3D measured.

Yours: 75°C & 2000rpm
Guru3D: 67°C & 1400rpm

Seems like it's quite a risk to purchase.

 

[Mescalamba]

Those thermals and fans are out of control! It's like a totally different card compared to what Guru3D measured.

Yours: 75°C & 2000rpm
Guru3D: 67°C & 1400rpm

Seems like it's quite a risk to purchase.

Sample variation probably. Or bad TIM application, or both.

Temp definitely doesnt look like I would expect (on par with ASUS creation).

While this super-ultra version is fun to look at, I would appreciate review of stuff like..

RTX 2070 MSI AERO 8G

Cause its one of cheapest 2070, which still has quite a bit of power (probably). And thus is actually sorta realistic to buy it. In case you dont want second-hand 1080 Ti (which apart tensor cores is ofc better buy).

And if you ask why this one? Well MSI is atm kinda respectable brand. Their HW doesnt tend to die too frequently (unlike certain unnamed manufacturers), so.. that.

 

[Deleted member 177333]

As usual with the MSI Lightning model - just a beautiful card, but (2) major downsides with his model that make it basically non-considerable for me - 1.) Price. It's about $600 overpriced which is mostly due to NVidia's ridiculous pricing on Turing 2.) The cooler is unacceptable. Any card that touts overclocking, voltage and power design upgrades, etc. like the Lightning model does should have an option of a FC Waterblock.

 

[Tolga]

Good old times hah , i remember my GTX 780 Lightning overclock 1450mhz with custom water cooling + 3rd party program 1.4v

Next gens nvidia blocked voltage and TDP increase? why should i buy this card now

 

[Pumper]

So much for $1000 non FE 2080Tis.

 

[EarthDog]

So much for $1000 non FE 2080Tis.

those would be reference models....not the highest ssd t of high end.

 

[Pumper]

those would be reference models....not the highest ssd t of high end.

And yet the cheapest non FE cards are over $1250.

 

[EarthDog]

FE is not reference.

 

[Pumper]

Fact is that there are no GPUs cheaper than FE at $1200 when nvidia promissed that 2080Tis will start at $1000 and nvidia never specified that the price point does not include non reference models.

BTW, do reference models of the RTX cards exist? I don't think so, as the only stock nvidia cooler is the FE one and the rest of GPUs use custom cooling solutions, thus every single RTX GPU in non reference.

 

[EarthDog]

Inflated market.

https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16814126261

There's a 2080ti from asus that is blower/reference. Its 3rd party so price is high.

 

[GlacierNine]

Priced at $1,600, the MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z is definitely not cheap, but not outrageously expensive either (compared to other options above $1,000).

Can we maybe not participate in the normalising of absolutely absurd GPU pricing? The mining boom is well and done, and yet GPU pricing is still absolutely ridiculous.

In 2009, at launch I could buy an HD5870, the fastest single GPU card on the market, bar none, for £299.
In 2016 I could buy a GTX 1080 for £520 at launch.
Right now the cheapest 2080Ti I can buy is £1049.99.

This, while the performance increases are also smaller now - The HD5870 was 37% faster than the card it replaced, the HD4870, according to TPU's own Review, and the GTX 1080 was 41% faster than the 980 at 4K, or 36% at 1080p.

The RTX 2080 on the other hand is Only 24% faster than the previous generation card at the same level. The Ti is even worse, being only 19% faster than the previous generation Ti.

And that's without taking into account Nvidia's muddying of the waters by moving their entire product lineup up an entire price class while retaining the naming.

Also, because I know someone will bring this up - No, the value of the currency is not the reason for this.

In 2009, £299.99 was equivalent to £380.99 in 2018
In 2016 £519.99 was equivalent to £660.39 in 2018
and yet in the first month of 2019, Nvidia is charging £1,099.00 on their own web shop for the 2080Ti, and £749.00 for the 2080.

We've seen real-terms-prices nearly double since 2009 while the generational performance gap hasn't widened year-on-year, and this generation the gap has actually shrunk by nearly half for two cards at the same relative position in the product stack.

It's honestly beyond a joke and I think any respectable member of the tech press should be doing far better than simply accepting that "High end graphics cards now cost two thirds more than they did 2 years ago after adjusting for inflation, and 188% percent of what they cost 10 years ago, for half of the performance increase per generation".

 

[Joss]

Can we maybe not participate in the normalising of absolutely absurd GPU pricing?

Agree.
And thank you for taking the time to gather those price and performance gains comparisons. That should be the job of tech reviewers.

 

[GlacierNine]

Agree.
And thank you for taking the time to gather those price and performance gains comparisons. That should be the job of tech reviewers.

To be fair they're very quick and dirty, and I didn't take the time to properly consider whether the modern equivalent of an HD5870 should be a 2080 or a 2080Ti. On the one hand, the 2080Ti is, like the HD5870 was, the fastest single-die-on-a-PCB consumer card you can buy. On the other hand, so is the RTX Titan, but that came later and is a very unique product, perhaps more analogous to the HD5970, which was the single-card-crossfire version of the 5870. Muddying waters even further is that the Ti cards traditionally come later and as a performance bump to an existing flagship, and the 2080 would normally be that flagship.

It doesn't matter a whole lot - All 3 of them are disproportionately more expensive compared to the HD5870, even after adjusting for inflation, but I honestly could have chosen any of the 3 and it would simply have lessened the blow or made it much worse when I calculated the percentages.

The bottom line is, in 2019, GPU buyers are getting taken to the cleaners for a lot more cash, and getting nowhere near enough in return.

 

[phill]

For me personally, so much money for not enough gain unless you might be able to use it with a phase cooler or LN2... It's a solid performer no doubt but like with all 1080 Ti's and 2080's and everything else, whatever Nvidia seem to be doing to limit the overclocking for the core, 100Mhz over stock isn't hardly enough for me to go and buy a few...

Like with my 1080 Ti SC's I have, I would have prefered to get the 1080 Ti FTW3 cards, but the difference in price and the difference in performance wasn't enough at the time for me to get them. I still have a 1080 Ti at the end of the day but it might be a few % behind the top cards costing a load more...
The RGB for me is a bit of a put off point as well. But then when you use it with LN2, I'm not sure that's even a consideration...

 

[londiste]

@W1zzard on Page 33 power limits graphs shouldn't 2080Ti FE be highlighted in blue?

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard on Page 33 power limits graphs shouldn't 2080Ti FE be highlighted in blue?

Indeed, fixed. Thanks!

 

[GlacierNine]

I decided to do a more thorough analysis.

First off, the inclusion of TITAN cards *really* throws a wrench in these figures, even when only including the GTX TITANs that were marketed as gaming cards - They're just way out of line with everything else in terms of both price and performance. That's why the first chart I'm going to post doesn't include them, so that we can draw some more realistic conclusions from the data, and not have it muddied up by Titans being so chaotic in terms of their cost and their performance increase over a previous card.

Secondly, the performance change figures I'm using, are all from TPU's "Performancy Summary" pages in the respective reviews of each card. I have deliberately not used the average summary however - I have only used TPU's highest resolution summaries, in order to eliminate as much variance due to CPU or game as possible.

Some caveats - Firstly, yes, there's no such card as an HD580. I meant the GTX580. Secondly, this chart is not adjusted for inflation. You'll need to do that for yourselves if you want more data. I've done it for a couple of examples below however.

You can, of course, draw your own conclusions, but what strikes me is that between September 2010 and June 2015, we saw a tripling in performance and an RRP increase of 71% - Accounting for inflation over the same period, actually only 55% over a little under 6 years.

Since then, we've seen performance jump to 210% of a 980Ti, but that's come with a price increase of 74%, and that's not over 6 years, it's over only 3.

That's at RRP for Reference Design cards and doesn't include TITANs. If I add in the Titan RTX, (Which TPU didn't test but Toms Hardware says is 6% faster than 2080Ti) then we've got 223% of the performance of a 980Ti, but with a 363% price increase after adjusting for inflation.

However you slice it, and even discounting the fact Pascal as an architecture really was a surprisingly huge leap forwards, the truth is, customers in 2019 are spending more money, for a smaller relative improvement than they used to see for their extra dollars, and the price increases are themselves getting steeper.

 

[EarthDog]

However you slice it, and even discounting the fact Pascal as an architecture really was a surprisingly huge leap forwards, the truth is, customers in 2019 are spending more money, for a smaller relative improvement than they used to see for their extra dollars, and the price increases are themselves getting steeper.

Thanks... good to see something we already knew in print!

 

[Deleted member 177333]

Yep thanks to Glacier for taking the time to dig all those numbers up. NVidia's simply being greedy and limiting their customer base, which isn't a good practice if you want people to keep buying your products. My last 3-4 generations of cards have been NVidia and I had planned on buying a couple 2080 Ti cards this year until I read the reviews and saw the asking price. Even as a frequent NVidia customer, I am glad they are being bent over by the stock market right now. Only time will tell if they adjust some of their business practices or not. If not, I'll be either buying a different brand of cards next time I upgrade, or buying 2nd hand market cards once pricing is in a range I deem acceptable.

 

[Mescalamba]

Everyone is fked over on stock market right now, mostly cause stock market is about to deep dive from a cliff. Losing some stock price isnt atm that much tied to performance of company, more to general sentiment and well.. deep dive incoming.