NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Super is now available in both the Founders Edition and custom design variants. While it seems surprising at first that NVIDIA is releasing a new model in a market segment with zero competition, 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.

EVGA's RTX 2080 Super FTW3 Ultra comes with a sizable overclock out of the box for a rated boost clock of 1845 MHz, which is 30 MHz higher than the Founders Edition. Overall, when averaged over our benchmarks at 4K resolution, this results in only a 3% performance improvement over the NVIDIA reference—not a lot. The RTX 2080 Super FTW3 is 10% faster than the original RTX 2080, which widens the gap to the RTX 2070 Super to 19%, 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 18% behind, and the new Navi-based RX 5700 XT is 27% 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.

EVGA is reusing the PCB and cooler design of their RTX 2080 FTW3, which is a perfectly fine choice. Unlike the Founders Edition, the card uses a large triple-slot, triple-fan cooler, which can achieve the best temperatures we've seen on any RTX 2080 Super so far. Unfortunately, EVGA didn't use all that cooling potential to quieten the fans down as well. Overall, the card runs at the same gaming noise levels as the Founders Edition—other custom designs are doing much better here. An almost mandatory capability EVGA includes is the idle-fan-stop feature, which shuts off the card's fans completely in idle, productivity, and light gaming.

EVGA's feature list is actually ticking a lot of checkboxes. The card comes with a dual BIOS feature—the second BIOS called "OC" turns off idle fan stop and makes the fan curve a little bit more aggressive (not by enough to make any real-life difference); it's also useful to guard against a failed BIOS flash. A pin header near the back of the card provides a fan signal that is synchronized with the GPU fans, which allows you to run a case fan at the same speed as the graphics card fans. This comes in especially handy when paired with idle fan stop as it reduces case noise levels even further since the fans will only ramp up when gaming. If you have additional RGB hardware, you can pair it with the RTX 2080S FTW3 using another pin header in a similar location. Last but not least, EVGA is including their iCX technology on the FTW3, which is built upon nine additional thermal sensors that have been placed in important locations throughout the PCB and can be monitored using EVGA's Precision software.

Just like on all other Turing cards, power efficiency of the RTX 2080 Super is excellent. EVGA did increase their card's board power limit by 20 W, which helps net a little bit of extra performance because NVIDIA's Boost algorithm can boost higher for longer. What's surprising is that the FTW3 is actually more power efficient than any other NVIDIA card we tested to date. It looks like EVGA picking a 12+2 VRM power design did pay off. What also helps without any doubt are the low temperatures, as any silicon chip will run more efficiently at low temperatures. The manual power limit adjustment range is generous, going up to 351 W, which is higher than on any other RTX 2080 Super custom design we've reviewed so far.

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 ultimately will 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 asking $790 for their GeForce RTX 2080 Super FTW3 Ultra, which is a $90 increase over Founders Edition pricing and simply too much. Just performance alone won't justify the pricing as it is 13% more expensive for 3% performance gained. The much better cooler makes a big difference. Temperatures are lower and fan stop is included, too. The iCX sensors definitely add a few more bucks, but I can't imagine it'll be that much. The card will also face tough competition from other top-of-the-line RTX 2080S cards from other vendors, which are priced more competitively. But since they're all out of stock, I guess charging a premium at this point in time is expected. 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 Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Control, which both support raytracing.