The Nvidia GeForce GTX 2080 is real, except that it is actually called the RTX 2080 and is actually the mid-tier card in Nvidia's latest RTX 2000 maps.
If that is a little baffling for you, it is because Nvidia has released the RTX 2080 alongside the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 Ti. Yes, that's right, this time a Ti model card is available at the launch, instead of a renewal of the middle generation.
All new cards from Nvidia were announced on Gamescom as part of the keynote of GeForce Gaming Celebration from Nvidia. We all had an idea of what to expect from the keynote thanks to the Siggraph showcase from Nvidia, a week earlier, in which the strength of the company's new Turing GPU architecture was outlined. The core of the RTX capabilities is the possibility for real-time ray tracing, a technique that accurately maps the direction of travel from a fixed point. Traditionally this costs a lot of horsepower and a lot of time to replicate, and it is the kind of technique that many animation companies like Pixar and Dreamworks use to display their GCI worlds.
The difference is that Nvidia's standard consumer card can do that now – and it hopes to transform the face of video games with its new technology. Read on to learn all about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080, RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 Ti.
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Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Gamescom reveal:
If you want to see the revealing presentation of Nvidia yourself, you can include the Twitch stream below.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 price: How much does the RTX 2000 series cost?
In addition to the announcement of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2000 series, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed the prizes for each of the cards. Unsurprisingly, they are more expensive than the GTX 1080 series was on the release, but, arguably, they are more reasonably priced due to the strength that is offered after such a short turnaround period.
As with the GTX 1000 series, you can click cards directly from Nvidia under the "Founders Edition" brand or pick up cards from Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY and Zotac. If you opt for Nvidia's set of Founders Edition cards, look for £ 569 for the RTX 2070, £ 749 for the RTX 2080 and as much as £ 1,099 for the RTX 2080 Ti.
If you are not behind the fancy Founders Edition cards, Nvidia has set reference prices that other manufacturers can sell. A standard RTX 2070 costs $ 499 (£ 390); an RTX 2080, $ 699 (£ 545) and an RTX 2080 Ti $ 999 (£ 779). UK prices for non-Founders Edition cards have not yet been announced by individual manufacturers, so the listed prices are only direct conversions. I expect the 2070 will land at £ 400 – £ 450, the 2080 to land at £ 550 – £ 600 and the 2080 Ti at £ 800 – £ 850, which means the Founders Edition cards at a rough £ 150 – £ 200 more than a standard card.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Release Date: When are the RTX 2000 series on sale?
Preorders for the Founders edition cards of Nvidia are currently open, with expected deliveries from September 20 for the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. The RTX 2070 ends up somewhere in October, but no specific date has yet been given.
It is not yet known when third-party manufacturers will sell their cards, but it is expected that they will probably land around the same date on 20 September.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 specs: what makes the RTX 2000 series special?
Nvidia claims that the RTX 2000 series of cards "offers up to 6x the performance of previous generation graphics cards", which is a rather lofty claim, given how powerful Pascal powered GTX 1080 and its 1000 series were.
For those of you who want raw-technical specifications, the RTX 2070 would offer more performance for ray tracing than Nvidia's own Titan Xp card released last year. However, the RTX 2080 Ti is the real flagship consumer card in Nvidia's Turing chips series. Clocked at 1,350 MHz with 4352 CUDA cores and 11 GB GDDR6 RAM – this is not a card to sniff. The regular RTX 2080 is clocked to 1.515MHz with 2944 CUDA cores and 8GB GDDR6 RAM and even the RTX 2070 is a powerhouse at 1.410MHz and 2304 CUDA cores in addition to 8GB GDDR6 RAM. Each card is also designed to be overclocked, allowing you to pump even more power out of each card.
Nvidia also recommends a 650 W power supply for your rig, because a single RTX 2080 attracts 215W of power.
In terms of output, Nvidia has equipped each card with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2 and a USB Type-C VirtualLink port, allowing you to connect VR headsets directly to the card so that both USB and HDMI signals can travel along one wire. Nvidia's cards are also capable of 8K resolution (7.680 x 4.320 pixels) at 60Hz – although two DisplayPort 1.4 cables are required.
You will also find the supported standard Ansel, G-Sync, HDR and NVLink technology.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 features: why is ray tracing so important?
The big breakthrough for the RTX 2000 series is how Nvidia & # 39; s Turing architecture is now able to perform real-time ray tracing. This technique, long regarded as the holy grail of video game development, allows developers to create worlds that feel grounded while light reacts and bounces, just as you would expect in the real world.
For Nvidia, real-time ray tracing is the benchmark on which these new cards are scored and so – for them – traditional benchmarking tools are simply no longer enough. One argument is that the GTX card offering is not built for ray tracing, so a direct comparison in terms of performance is not fair – it is a reason why the company has not mentioned TFLOPS numbers, but instead opts for RTX-OPS (average of card performance over various operations such as shading and ray tracing) and Giga-rays per second – a measure of how well the maps can be tracked in real time.
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The demo's on stage were certainly very impressive, with lights on Battlefield V really impressive. In the future, Nvidia says that more games will receive support for ray tracing, teasing support in at least 21 games, including Hitman season 2, We Happy Few, PUBG and Final Fantasy XV.
Over time it is clear that more developers will come on board, as Nvidia leads the graphics market, especially for games. Not only does it have the contacts in studio & # 39; s to make it happen, but it also works with Microsoft to integrate ray tracing into its latest DirectX release, DirectX Raytracing (DXR) for Windows 10. Epic Games also works the integration of ray tracing technology in Unreal Engine so that developers can easily use their power.
A video that was shown earlier this year and that shows real-time ray tracing in Unreal Engine gives you an idea of what to expect from games running on a GTX 2080 in Unreal.
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