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Review: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC

by Tarinder Sandhu on 26 September 2018, 14:00

Tags: Gigabyte (TPE:2376), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadxsd

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Conclusion

...all that said, the Gaming OC is a sensible card that does most things well.

The GeForce RTX 2080 is the first premier GPU of the Turing family that Nvidia's partners have been let loose with. It is reasonable to assume that everyone coming out of the gate right now is using a derivative of the reference PCB and putting their cooling on top.

For Gigabyte, that looks like the established Gaming OC cooler on top of three heatsinks that effectively cover all the hot-running stuff underneath. Good care has been taken with ensuring there's decent contact everywhere - VRMs, inductors, memory, back-sided components - and the under-load temps and noise are both solid plus points here.

Performance is just where you would expect an AIB card's to be, that is, about the same as the Founders Edition. That translates to 4K60 for most games, though the gap between this card and the GTX 1080 Ti is alarmingly small on today's titles.

Gigabyte could improve this model with a PCB-mounted OC switch, wider RGB implementation, and, if we're being picky, a nicer-looking shroud made of aluminium instead of the plastic widely in evidence here.

All that said, the Gaming OC is a sensible card that does most things well. Pricing is outside of Gigabyte's control, for now at least, so £800 is about par for the overclocked course.

Bottom line: a decent card in most respects, the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC is a safe bet for anyone looking for a no-frills GPU based on the latest Turing architecture.

The Good
  
The Bad
Silent when idling
Runs cooler than FE
Quiet under load

  
Price
Not much faster than GTX 1080 Ti
RGB implementation is basic



Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming OC

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The reviewed card is available from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.


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HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Posted by Tunnah - Wed 26 Sep 2018 14:41
Considering 1080Ti can be bought for 650 quid, you'd have to be a right muppet to buy one of these.
Posted by Stu C - Wed 26 Sep 2018 15:21
£580 gets you a 1080Ti at OcUK right now.
Posted by Gh0sty - Wed 26 Sep 2018 16:43
RGB implementation is basic, well that's some good news!
Posted by mikeo - Wed 26 Sep 2018 17:42
And I got my MSI 1080 TI Gaming the other week from OCuk for £599. And the only difference between this and the extreme version of the same card, is an amended BIOS with slightly higher clocks. And as MSI don't bin the GPU's. It's just a matter of installing Afterburner and sticking the clocks up to the same as the extreme version. Plus there's even more head room on top of this. So this I would have thought puts this card even closer performance wise (at least in current games) to the RTX 2080. The fans are unbelievably quiet, 70% before you start to hear them! And thank God, no noticeable coil whine. Happy days.

PS. Just out of interest. I ran Time Spy at QHD and got 9,985. So with a bit more tweaking still to do with clocks on my card, I suspect I should be able to equal the score of the RTX 2080.

While I'm sure the RTX 2080 is a nice card. £800 seems a lot to pay (I suppose £599 is as well really!) for the hope that the new bells and whistles will get universally adopted and provide a decent performance boost to pull away from the top tier previous gen card. And of course by then, the next generation of graphics cards will be just around the corner. Got to laugh really.
Posted by Spud1 - Wed 26 Sep 2018 23:43
Tunnah
Considering 1080Ti can be bought for 650 quid, you'd have to be a right muppet to buy one of these.

Not really - its the other way around. Judging a brand new card which still has it's very first driver release and none of it's new tech activated is a bit daft. Give it a month or two until we start to see DLSS support and that performance gap is very likely to leap upwards. At that point the proposition is much more appealing. Regardless right now if you are looking to upgrade your GPU and you *don't* have a 1080ti, then the RTX2080 is the one to go for (assuming you can't afford/justify the ti ofc :) ). It's the ideal card for ultra settings 1440p gaming.

However, you would be a bit of a muppet to pay £800 for one of these when for £50 less you can get a FE card with near identical performance (to the point where it doesn't matter - £50 for 15mhz higher boost and an uglier casing? hmm).

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