Introduction

NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 20-series in September this year, with support for several new technologies like machine learning and RTX Raytracing. This feature is so big for NVIDIA that it has changed the naming of their GeForce cards from "GTX" to "RTX".

NVIDIA RTX is a near-turnkey real-time ray-tracing model for game developers that lets them fuse real-time ray-traced objects into 3D scenes that have been rasterized. Ray-tracing the whole scene in existence isn't quite possible yet, but the results with using RTX are still better-looking than anything rasterizing can achieve. To even get those few bits of ray tracing done right, an enormous amount of compute power is required. NVIDIA has hence deployed purpose-built hardware components on its GPUs that sit alongside all-purpose CUDA cores, called RT cores.



EVGA's RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra comes with a custom PCB design sporting a powerful 16-phase VRM for the GPU. Also included is a dual BIOS feature and a fan header that's synchronized with the GPU's fan speed, so you can run a case fan at higher speeds only when the card gets warm. EVGA has bumped the board power limit up to 300 W, which is the highest we've seen so far (matching the MSI RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio). Cooling capabilities have also been improved a lot: the card features a triple-slot, triple fan cooler.

Priced at $1349, the card is not cheap—$150 more than the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, but the EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra has 120 MHz higher Boost Clock.