Late last month 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. This jump in performance shrunk the gap between the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, which makes the original RTX 2080 less attractive to potential buyers, especially at its current price point. That's why NVIDIA is giving the RTX 2080 the +1 treatment, too. The RTX 2080 Super is based on the same TU104 GPU that powers the RTX 2080, but uses all shaders available in the silicon. NVIDIA is also bumping their memory clocks up to 15.5 Gbps, which helps with performance, too.

Using the same PCB as the Founders Edition with only tiny changes, the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Black is a close-to-reference design. EVGA chose not to include an overclock out of the box with their card, which means performance is pretty much identical to that of the FE. At 1440p, the EVGA RTX 2080 Super is 7% faster than the original RTX 2080, which widens the gap to the RTX 2070 Super to 13%, restoring the balance in this market segment. NVIDIA's flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti, is 14% faster than the RTX 2080 Super. AMD's fastest, the now end-of-life Radeon VII, is 16% behind, and the new Navi-based RX 5700 XT is 22% slower—not even close. Performance numbers of the RTX 2080 Super are good; the higher FPS rates definitely help improve the gaming experience at 4K. While not a 4K60 max details card, it is good enough for solid 4K gaming with decent frame rates if you are willing to sacrifice some details settings (depending on the game). Its high performance will also help gamers looking to drive a high-refresh-rate monitor beyond 60 Hz on 1440p at the highest details.

Unlike many other custom designs, the EVGA RTX 2080 Super Black uses a dual-slot cooler design, which makes it more compact than the competition and ensures it will fit into all cases. Of course, the reduced thickness affects thermal performance. We measured very similar temperatures as on the Founders Edition (77°C vs 78°C). Noise levels are slightly higher with 38 dBA, but the difference is small enough to not be noticed in daily usage. Still, at those noise levels, the card isn't as quiet as competing cards, some of which are almost whisper-quiet during gaming. Unlike the Founders Edition, the EVGA Super Black comes with the idle-fan-stop feature, which shuts off the card's fans completely in idle, productivity, and light gaming. Unfortunately, EVGA doesn't include a backplate with their card, which slightly reduces the overall look and feel of the card—I somehow feel a backplate is mandatory in this price segment.

EVGA chose to use the same power limit as on the Founders Edition, which is probably due to the limited heat capacity of the cooler. They did raise the manual adjustment power limit though, so you can eke a little bit of extra performance out of your card. The power limiter does complicate overclocking a bit because you can no longer dial in the exact clocks you want to overclock to. Still, our manual overclocking tests show good results, leading to a 7.5% real-life performance improvement. Especially the Samsung 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips overclock extremely well, reaching 2290 MHz in frequency. Wondering why NVIDIA chose to clock the cards at 15.5 Gbps even though the memory chips themselves are guaranteed to run at 16 Gbps, I reached out to them and got the response that "this is related to the PCB design of the original 2080 board. On the 2080 Super we reach max stability at 15.5, while leaving some OC headroom".

Like all other NVIDIA RTX cards, the RTX 2080 Super includes support for raytracing hardware acceleration. With only a few titles so far, I'm not sure if it's the most important technology to have today, but I am convinced that with their close ties to developers, NVIDIA will do everything they can to push this technology forward, which will ultimately result in an improvement of fidelity in games. Console makers Sony and Microsoft are also working on raytracing for their next-gen hardware, which will definitely help adoption rates, too. The RTX 2080 Super has additional RT cores and higher performance overall, which will help cushion the performance hit from raytracing.

EVGA is pricing their RTX 2080 Super Black at the same $700 price point as the NVIDIA Founders Edition, which means there's no premium for the added fan-stop capability, but you're losing the backplate and the looks of the Founders Edition. Considering that EVGA uses the NVIDIA reference PCB, a slightly cheaper-to-manufacture cooler and no backplate, I'd think that this card should retail for a price slightly below the Founders Edition, maybe $680. This would certainly attract buyers who don't need all the bells and whistles that other custom designs offer and just want to maximize price/performance. In order to offset the cost a little bit and show off the benefits of their RTX technology, NVIDIA includes a two-game bundle with all RTX Super cards consisting of Control and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which both support raytracing.