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Perhaps you’re building your very first gaming PC, or maybe it’s just time to upgrade your graphics card. Either way, it’s a big deal. Every component is important when it comes to building a capable gaming rig, but there’s something special about the GPU.
Special—but also expensive. Unless you’re working on a tight budget, your graphics card upgrade could cost anywhere from around $500 to over $1000. Deciding which card to go with is tough, especially with so much money on the line.
Two of the best high-end GPU options under $1,000 right now are Nvidia’s RTX 2080 and GTX 1080 Ti. Both of these cards are beasts, and both come with hefty price-tags. But which one comes out on top?
First things first, let’s take a look at the specs for each card. It’s worth noting that specs can differ depending on which card you actually choose in the end, since manufacturers often overclock and make other tweaks.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
- GPU Architecture: Pascal
- Frame Buffer: 11 GB GDDR5X
- Memory Speed: 11 Gbps
- Boost Clock: 1582 MHz
Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080
- GPU Architecture: Turing
- Frame Buffer: 8 GB GDDR6
- Memory Speed: 14 Gbps
- Boost Clock: 1710 MHz
Performance
Both the RTX 2080 and the GTX 1080 Ti are extremely fast, but there are some differences worth noting. The RTX 2080 utilizes faster GDDR6 memory, for one thing. And while both cards offer similar performance benchmarks, the RTX 2080 offers a boost at higher resolutions, handily beating the GTX 1080 Ti in 4K gaming.
While HDR isn’t a huge factor for most gamers, if you are planning to game in 4K with HDR, the RTX 2080 outperforms the GTX 1080 Ti across the board. With 4K HDR monitors still astronomically expensive, however, this is likely not a huge factor.
Ray Tracing
Ray tracing is where you really start to notice the difference between the GTX 1080 Ti and the RTX 2080. Nvidia has been touting the benefits of ray tracing in games ever since the RTX line debuted, and it is impressive. Ray tracing essentially mimics the way actual rays of light work, making it far more realistic and visually stunning. Here’s a demo of ray tracing in Metro: Exodus which will help you understand how it works and what it means for gaming:
The RTX 2080 has dedicated RT and tensor cores that allows the card to render real-time ray tracing in games. The RTX cards utilize both traditional rasterization and real-time ray tracing to achieve lighting effects in games that simply aren’t possible on the GTX 1080 Ti, since it lacks the dedicated hardware required to make ray tracing possible. Theoretically, the GTX line of GPUs can perform real-time ray tracing—they just can’t do it and maintain anything resembling a playable framerate.
The other advantage the RTX 2080 has over the GTX 1080 Ti is Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) thanks to the GPU’s tensor cores which bring machine learning to consumer graphics cards. DLSS essentially uses AI to smooth out rough edges in games. This works as well as, if not better, than traditional anti-aliasing, but without the huge performance hit that entails. In other words, you can get smoothed out edges without anti-aliasing and with a much better framerate—sometimes as much as 20 or more frames-per-second, depending on the game.
This a big deal, and a clear point in favor of the RTX 2080. Even if you don’t think ray tracing is everything it’s cracked up to be, the sheer performance gains thanks to DLSS makes it the better card, and the one with more longevity. Not every game will support ray tracing and/or DLSS, but more and more titles are and it’s safe to assume that support will continue going forward. Games like Battlefield V, Control, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and more all support this technology, and it shows. Upcoming titles like Cyberpunk 2077 also support ray tracing.
Here’s the current list of titles that support DLSS:
- Ark: Survival Evolved
- Atomic
- Dauntless
- Final Fantasy XV
- Fractured Lands
- Hitman 2
- Islands of Nyne
- Justice
- JX3
- Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
- Remnant: From the Ashes
- Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- The Forge Arena
- We Happy Few
- Darksiders III
- Deliver Us The Moon: Fortuna
- Fear the Wolves
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- KINETIK
- Outpost Zero
- Overkill’s The Walking Dead
- SCUM
- Stormdivers
That’s a pretty good list of games, but clearly many titles don’t support DLSS—at least not yet.
So the RTX 2080 has two clear advantages over the GTX 1080 Ti. While both cards perform similarly in traditional gaming especially at 1080p, the RTX 2080 has enough of a performance advantage to tip the scales in its favor. Which leads us to the most important question: What does each card cost?
Price
Once again, the cost of each card depends on which version you choose to go with, since various manufacturers offer different versions of each GPU. The short answer is that the RTX 2080 is currently cheaper than the GTX 1080 Ti. You can find a decent RTX 2080 just south of $700, like this MSI RTX 2080 for $669 at Newegg. You can spend more than that, also. This ASUS RTX 2080 will set you back $799, but it’s overclocked and comes with premium fans and RGB lighting.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t even find a new GTX 1080 Ti for sale at Newegg under $1,000. There are some at Amazon in the $900 ballpark, like this EVGA GTX 1080 Ti for $980. Again, this is a terrific card with great cooling technology and fancy RGB lighting, but it’s $300 more than many RTX 2080 GPUs, and doesn’t have ray tracing or DLSS support. This M 1080 Ti is a bit less expensive at $930, but still quite a bit more expensive than the RTX 2080.
Verdict
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 is a better card utilizing newer technology and offering better, faster performance than the GTX 1080 Ti and usually at a much lower cost. There will be some games that perform better with the GTX 1080 Ti, but that advantage is not worth hundreds of dollars. Even more expensive RTX 2080′s like this Gigabyte Windforce model ($790 at Amazon) cost significantly less than the cheapest 1080 Ti’s on the market.
