Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition Review: Faster, More Expensive Than GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

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High Dynamic Range: Improving Performance and Input Latency

Nvidia’s previous-generation Pascal architecture needed to do some processing on high dynamic range content moving through its pipeline, resulting in a quantifiable performance hit with HDR enabled. Turing incorporates support for this processing and tone mapping natively in the pipeline. The implication, of course, is that GeForce RTX-class cards don’t incur the same penalty.

To test this theory, we forced our Acer Predator X27 to 60 Hz and set Windows to run at 10-bit RGB output (confirmed through the display’s OSD).

Battlefield 1

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Interestingly, turning on HDR10 in Battlefield 1 eliminated a lot of the stuttering we’re used to seeing at the beginning of our benchmark run. As a result, all three cards demonstrate a higher 99th percentile frame rate in HDR mode than when they’re in RGB-SDR.

This also helps push average performance up a bit on the GeForce RTX cards. The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti benefits as well. However, because its frame rate in HDR mode is lower through most of the test (as evidenced by the gold line in our percentile chart), average performance lags the SDR result slightly.

Destiny 2

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In the case of GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080, and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, using HDR exacts a notable slow-down in Destiny 2. With the featured turned on, all three cards range between 93% and 94% of the frame rates we measured in SDR mode.

Far Cry 5

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The hit isn’t as severe in Far Cry 5, though both GeForce RTX cards are affected slightly.

Forza Motorsport 7

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Minor performance impacts on the GeForce RTX cards contrast sharply with what happens to GeForce GTX 1080 Ti when you turn on HDR in Forza Motorsport 7.

The influence of HDR affects each of these games differently. Battlefield 1 and Far Cry 5 are great showcases of brighter whites (at least in our outdoor benchmark scenarios), while Destiny 2’s intro scene exhibited notably more depth in its contrast between fire and shadow. Regardless of whether Turing handles HDR content better than Pascal, don’t underestimate the experiential difference high dynamic range has on gaming (this applies to you too, Radeon owners).

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Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
91 Comments Comment from the forums
  • wh3resmycar
    failure, this is a failure.

    this gtx20 series looks like it won't be worth it.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    What? No “just buy it” in your conclusion.

    Considering Founders edition usually starts about $100 more that standard edition. Plus, it is new to market. If a 2080 can be had for $100 more than a 1080 Ti. The price is as expected.
    Reply
  • tojumikie
    another price-panicked pundit
    Reply
  • Krazie_Ivan
    2080 should have been the 2070, as it barely beats a 1080ti and is the TU104 die. and given the 30mo since Pascal launch, we should almost be looking at 3000 series benches. combine those two with the insane pricing, and Turing/RTX is a huge disappointment. DLSS could be nice and i'm glad Nvidia is pushing for RT development, but there's not enough positives here to justify the costs. $380 2080 / $500 2080ti (and relabel them to match their die codes, like Keplar-Pascal)... otherwise, no thx.
    Reply
  • chaosmassive
    thank you for your thorough review on these cards,
    finally the card has been demystified and indeed for the price is it not worth the buy considering 1080 ti in such a low price..

    turned out I dont need ray tracing in my life before I die.
    Reply
  • shrapnel_indie
    After seeing the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti serve up respectable performance in Battlefield V at 1920x1080 with ray tracing enabled,
    Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for another day to measure RTX 2080’s alacrity in ray-traced games. There simply aren’t any available yet.

    Odd... either ray tracing graphics games are available or they're not. You can't test what isn't available for testing... and RT for BF5, last I heard was a zero-day patch... (or was it the modifications to RT that was supposed to improve FPS to acceptable levels.)
    Reply
  • cangelini
    21333311 said:
    After seeing the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti serve up respectable performance in Battlefield V at 1920x1080 with ray tracing enabled,
    Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for another day to measure RTX 2080’s alacrity in ray-traced games. There simply aren’t any available yet.

    Odd... either ray tracing graphics games are available or they're not. You can't test what isn't available for testing... and RT for BF5, last I heard was a zero-day patch... (or was it the modifications to RT that was supposed to improve FPS to acceptable levels.)

    They're not available, but we've seen Battlefield 5 in action with ray tracing enabled ;)
    Reply
  • WINTERLORD
    wait a minute the 2080 has only one RT core and the 2080 has 72 RT cores? I think there may be an error in the review. update spoke to soon i think that means 1rt cluster...

    first page says " TU104 is constructed with the same building blocks as TU102; it just features fewer of them. Streaming Multiprocessors still sport 64 CUDA cores, eight Tensor cores, one RT core, four texture units, 16 load/store units, 256KB of register space, and 96KB of L1 cache/shared memory. "
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    21333069 said:
    failure, this is a failure.

    this gtx20 series looks like it won't be worth it.

    I think sales will determine that and if history is anything without stiff competition from AMD I am sure they will sell just fine especially once the AiB cards come out.

    21333082 said:
    What? No “just buy it” in your conclusion.

    Considering Founders edition usually starts about $100 more that standard edition. Plus, it is new to market. If a 2080 can be had for $100 more than a 1080 Ti. The price is as expected.

    Chris has never been like that.

    That said, the pricing should be decent for AiB after a few months. When they launch they get price gouged. Still I would have loved a GTX 1080 price number. That GPU outperformed the 980 Ti by a good margin and was cheaper at launch.

    Maybe AMD will come out with something sometime soon. Otherwise we wont see pricing drop. That or AMD will take advantage of the pricing increase and up theirs too.
    Reply
  • hixbot
    Such a shame 2.5 years after pascal launches, performance per dollar does not improve.
    Reply