Best RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards | The complete guide

How we choose

Choosing the right components for our best of guides, whether it’s the best monitors for under $300 or best gaming headsets, is never an easy task.

It requires hours of product research, performance benchmarking, and user feedback to get anywhere close to a definitive conclusion. If you aren’t tech-savvy and struggle to put time aside to go through the above requirements, you may end up purchasing a GPU that isn’t right for you or your build.

Fear not though, friends! Here at WePC, we like to take the stress of all that research away and transform it into an easy-to-follow, complete buyers guide. That’s right, our team of PC enthusiasts has done all the hard work, so you don’t have to.

How we test

Testing the products we recommend is a huge part of the overall selection process in our best of guides. It’s a way to make sure what we recommend is the absolute best option in its specific category. To be sure a product is “the best,” it must show excellent performance in our tests and display better qualities over the competition it faces.

Most of the products we recommend here at WePC have gone through a strict testing process that involves everything from price and looks to performance and efficiency. Each product is pushed to the limit to see how it performs under intense stress to make sure it warrants the top spot.

Doing this enables us to provide you with the most accurate review of how the product performs and, ultimately, whether it’s worth your hard-earned cash.

With that, let’s discuss some of the areas that we feel are worthy of consideration when buying a 2080Ti.

Things to consider

Let’s be honest; the 2080Ti is not a cheap GPU. Even though it’s one of the best performing graphics cards in the consumer marketplace, it’s also one of the most expensive too.

That being said, we recognize that people may want to do a little bit of independent research before taking our recommendations to the checkout. It’s only natural.

Understanding how a product works and what to look for is something we take very seriously. We try to educate people on these areas as often as possible so they can make their own informed decision.

So, with that, let’s take a look at the areas we feel you should consider before purchasing the best 2080Ti.

Price

Whether you’re buying the latest gaming monitor or a high-end GPU, price is always one of the most important aspects of any hardware component, even more so when we’re talking about a product that can set you back in the region of $1,500.

The price of a high-end 2080Ti and a low-end one can differ in the hundreds, meaning your budget can be stretched massively if you don’t choose the right one. For that reason, we always recommend making a price comparison before you start your research.

We’ve tried to display which GPUs showcase good value and which don’t to make price one less thing to think about.

Performance

We’re going to touch on the 2080Ti’s performance a little further down the article, but in short, it’s probably the second most important factor when choosing your hardware.

We all want the best performing hardware we can afford; however, understanding the connection between price and performance is a key area that should be considered beforehand.

The 2080Ti, for example, is a hugely expensive card. That being said, it’s also the most powerful consumer card on the market, and by a long way. Does it show good value for money, though? Absolutely.

The performance also comes down to resolution, in-game FPS, multi-tasking, and other graphically demanding work tasks such as mining.

Make sure your build lives up to your card’s performance output before buying to ensure you aren’t going to be bottlenecked by other components. There is nothing worse than a build that isn’t in perfect sync.

Cooling

Just like performance, cooling gets touched on in more detail after our product reviews. However, cooling is a crucial area to consider when purchasing a GPU.

All GPU’s come with their own cooling solution which, in theory, should dissipate the cards rated TDP. There are ways to increase your GPU’s cooling, such as water-cooling and better case fan CFM, though.

Have a look at what heat your card produces to make sure you aren’t building the world’s most expensive radiator.

Size

When we refer to size, we’re talking about the GPU’s physical dimensions.

Now, you might be thinking at this stage, why should I care about size? I have a GPU, and it fits fine. Well, that GPU probably isn’t a 2080 Ti.

A 2080 Ti is much, much bigger than generic GPUs. They are much more powerful, meaning they need a much bigger cooling setup and heatsink.

Always check to make sure your case can accommodate your GPU so you don’t end up with a hugely expensive GPU that can’t be used.

Understanding The Specs

Understanding the product specs is a major part of any component purchase. I mean, if you don’t understand the specs, how are you meant to know how well the product will perform?

For that reason, the following section is going to outline each of the major GPU specifications and what it means. This should hopefully give you a better understanding of how GPUs work and perform.

Clock Speeds

Fear not folks, clock speeds aren’t that scary. In fact, they’re pretty easy to understand when you get your head around them.

Clock speed, or clock rate, is the speed in which your microprocessor (in this case, the GPU chip itself) runs. It basically refers to how fast your GPU performs instructions. Each GPU is clocked at a different speed, meaning each one can perform tasks at different rates. However, clock speed does not have a direct correlation with in-game performance. That, unfortunately, comes down to several various factors.

VRAM

VRAM is your GPU’s video RAM (random access memory). It has a direct impact on how well your graphics card performs and how much data it can read at any one time.

VRAM works in the exact same way as your computer RAM; it stores data that your GPU can access at any time in any order. The more VRAM you have, the more access you have to data without having to go via the CPU.

Higher-resolution game formats require more VRAM as do tasks like anti-aliasing. Luckily, every 2080Ti comes with 11GB of GDDR6 VRAM, which is the most you will find on a consumer card in today’s market.

How Does The RTX 2080Ti Perform

Performance is ultimately the most important aspect of any product, even more so when we reference GPUs. This is thanks to modern game publishers and how they develop the latest game titles.

Historically, games would draw most of their power from the CPU. That, however, is no longer the case. GPU’s now take the brunt of the games demand and are essential to a smooth running experience.

That being said, the 2080Ti doesn’t disappoint when it comes to raw performance. It is hands down the best consumer graphics card on the market right now and outperforms everything in its wake.

The new NAVI architecture GPUs are going to have to do something very special if they want to start pushing the 2080Ti for the top performance spot. If the new Ryzen range is anything to go off, though, you wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that happen. I suppose only time will tell.

The RTX 2080Ti can easily manage frame rates of up to 60+ FPS while running on ultra settings, perfect for 4K gaming, and easily outshines its competition. Furthermore, 1440p gaming on this card will easily land you 120+ FPS across the most demanding games out there. Even enabling ray-tracing won’t slow this thing down. It truly is the mother of all cards right now.

Cooling Your GPU And How Much Difference It Makes

As you can see from the list above, cooling differs when comparing GPUs with each other. Outside of our list, cards come with a variety of different cooling solutions, which range from 3-fan to 1-fan and even water-cooling.

For most, this probably isn’t a huge factor in their decision-making process, but it should be. If your card becomes too hot, you’ll start to experience thermal throttling, which will reduce performance exponentially.

If you aren’t familiar with thermal throttling, it occurs when your GPU takes on intensive workloads, like gaming, and generates a wave of heat, which in turn affects the performance of your card. To stop this from occurring, your card needs to be equipped with a powerful cooling configuration.

For me, the best option for cooling is a water-cooled setup.

A water-cooled GPU will lose its fans and replace them with a more effective water-block, which allows cold water to be in almost direct contact with the card. This, however, is a costly premium, so it won’t be available to all consumers. If it is, I would definitely recommend it, though.

A more realistic option is a triple-fan aftermarket cooling option like all of the cards in our list above. These do a tremendous job of keeping your card cool while under gaming/workload pressure.

Is It Worth The Hard Eaned Cash?

For me, that’s an easy question, and the answer is yes, absolutely.

The only problem with these graphics cards, and this question, is how expensive they actually are. The cheapest we could find right now is around $1,000. I know, pricey.

However, if you’re looking for the absolute best gaming experience, there is no substitute. AMD currently offers nothing that gets close to the performance power of the 2080Ti.

Maybe when they do, we’ll see a sudden drop in market price. Whether AMD can produce something of that quality is yet to be answered, though.