Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super review – Real upgrade, small update or just a side kick?

1 - Einführung und Übersicht 2 - Tear Down: Platine und Kühler 3 - Benchmarks 1920 x 1080 Pixel 4 - Benchmarks 2560 x 1440 Pixel 5 - Benchmarks 3840 x 2160 Pixel 6 - Leistungsaufnahme im Detail 7 - Temperatur, Takt, Infrarot 8 - Lüfter und Lautstärke 9 - Zusammenfassung

The fact that the RTX 2080 is being sprinkled up a bit is one thing, because so far, according to distributors and board partners, this card has not really been the most sought-after model in the RTX series. Now there is the full expansion of the TU104, which can perhaps move a little closer to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. But overtaking without catching up has never worked and so you will probably be happy if this RTX 2080 Super for raytracing and higher resolutions brings at least a little more puff.

But what is more important is what is really hidden behind the GeForce RTX 2080 Super, what you can expect from it and what you might not expect from it. Because in the end only the result counts and so new is the chip again not, only this time finally also complete and complete.

Whether this GeForce RTX 2080 Super can still fill the function that an RTX 2080 often in vain was aiming for – you will have to see it. The will is somehow already there, only the buyer has to play along (and of course also the price, logically). After all, in the end, it is nothing more than a drilled-up RTX 2080, which for understandable reasons cannot be called Ti, but must be absolutely super. Which then probably explains the comical name-climbing that Nvidia had to come up with.

The TU104-450 of the GeForce RTX 2080 Super

Similar to the larger TU102, TSMC manufactures the TU104 on its 12 nm FinFET node. But a transistor number of 13.6 billion leads to a smaller, "only" 545 mm2 die-area. Of course, this also saves costs in the end. However, Turing Junior still surpasses the 471 mm2 of the GP102 as the flagship of the last generation and comes quite close to the size of the GK110 in the original GeForce GTX Titan.

The TU104 is made up of the same building blocks as the TU102; but there is only a little less of everything. The streaming multiprocessors still have 64 CUDA cores, eight tensor cores, an RT core, four texture units, 16 load/storage units, 256 KB of register memory, and 96 KB of L1 cache/shared memory. The TPCs also still consist of two SMs and a PolyMorph geometry engine. But there are now only four TPCs per GPC and the six GPCs are distributed across the processor. Therefore, a fully functional TU104 has a total of 48 SMs, 3072 CUDA cores, 384 tensor cores, 48 RT cores, 192 texture units and 24 PolyMorph engines.

A correspondingly narrower back-end implements the connection via eight 32-bit GDDR6 memory controllers (256-bit aggregate) connected to 64 ROPs and 4 MB L2 cache. However, Nvidia gives the GeForce RTX 2080 Super the slightly faster memory at 16 Gbps, instead of the 14 Gb/s of the smaller models. Unfortunately, the TU104 also loses one of the two x8 NVLink connections of the TU102, which then limits the whole to an x8 connection and 50 GB/s bidirectional throughput.

Unboxing and technical data

Compared to the GeForce RTX 2080 FE, the map also has a slight visual change, with the reflective surface on the cover being a great fingerprint file. As with the RTX 2080 FE, the connectors rely on three DisplayPort ports and an HDMI 2.0 port. The USB Type-C jack is also at the start, NVLink is also available at the top of the board. The rest is as usual and for the details there is also the complete tear down.

Front

Back

Bottom

Top

End

Slot Panel

Front Bottom

Box

A first overview gives us here GPU-Z:

The table gives a nice overview of the technical data of the current GeForce RTX Super and the older comparison models:

Test system and measurement methods

The test system and the methodology are well known, but since I am now independently testing here in Germany, the test system has also been upgraded again without having to take into account colleagues.

If you are interested, the summary in table form quickly provides a brief overview: