PNY GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XLR8 in test – with 300 Watt limit, reference board and sufficient reason

You can drive it with the power limit up to the maximum allowed 380 watts, or sit back relaxed in noble modesty. And always with the knowledge that the last watt from the can only leads to more heat and noise, but not really to more gaming performance. And so PNY runs the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XLR8 factory with 260 watts and lays out the rest of the card accordingly cheaper.

This, of course, did not result in a super-OC card (which no longer exists with the RTX) nor a 1.8-kilo heavy cooling fuel, but a balanced compromise of effort, benefits and, in the end, probably also costs. It's certainly bigger, heavier and visually even more brutal – but not everyone really wants that. There are certainly some things that this card can't do, but you don't pay for it. And that's where she starts to get interesting again.

 

Unboxing and functionality

At 1045 grams, the card is quite light, which doesn't have to be negative yet, but already gives a glimpse of certain things. With 30.7 cm from the outer edge slot panel to the end of the cooler, it is already quite long, but measures only 10.7 cm from the top edge slot panel to the top edge of the graphics card housing. As a real dual slot card it is only 3.5 cm thick and the 0.5 cm for the backplate must also be taken into account.

Otherwise, the map is visually more of a grey mouse, as PNY has simply saved itself the usual RGB combat illumination and any color combat paints. The black ABS radiator cover with the anthracite-coloured light metal cover in brush look is minimalistic but well-designed. The backplate is pure optics and has no cooling function

PNY delivers the card with two external 8-pin ATX power supply connectors. This card has got a maximum power limit (not to be confused with the Power Target) of 300 watts in the firmware, the standard Power Target is at a reasonable 260 watts.

The GPU-Z-Screenshot then tells us the rest of the details:

Technical data and comparison maps

At the end of this introduction, the maps of the new generation and those of the old generation in direct tabular comparison:

 

Test system and measurement methods

We have already described the new test system and the methodology in detail in the basic article "How We Test Graphics Cards, as of February 2017" and therefore refer to this detailed basis for simplicity. Description. So if you want to read everything again, you are welcome to do so. However, we have again improved CPU and cooling to largely exclude possible CPU bottlenecks for this fast card.

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