While all the major graphics card brands revealed their RTX 20-series lineup last month, Gigabyte was saving its best for last. Now, the company is finally ready to present the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G to the world.
In you haven't been keeping up with the Turing architecture, the RTX 2080 is based on the TU104 die produced under the 12nm FinFET node. It has 2,944 CUDA cores, 46 dedicated RT cores for ray tracing and 368 Tensor cores for AI applications. The RTX 2080 also features 8GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 14GHz across a 256-bit memory interface. The Founders Edition has a 1,515MHz base clock and 1,800MHz GPU boost rate. Unfortunately, Gigabyte decided to keep the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G's speeds a secret for now.
The Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G comes equipped with Gigabyte's latest Windforce Stack 3X cooling system and, believe us, it's pretty stacked. The graphics card is 59.9mm thick and has a triple-slot design. The massive RGB-lit cooler is responsible for cooling the GPU, memory and MOSFETs. Heat is transferred via composite pure copper heatpipes to an enormous heat sink. It's quite impressive that Gigabyte was able to cram three double ball-bearing 100mm fans into the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G and still keep its length to 290mm.
The fans on the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G employ Gigabyte's patented Alternate Spinning technology. According to the manufacturer, fans that spin in the same direction produce opposite airflow. Essentially, what this does is generate turbulence in the airflow and reduce heat dissipation. Gigabyte's simple answer to the problem is to turn the middle fan in the opposite direction, which purportedly helps reduce turbulence and improve the airflow. As usual, Gigabyte has also incorporated its 3D Active Fan feature so that the fans remain off until the graphics card's temperature reaches a certain limit.
On a hardware level, the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G flaunts a 12+2 phase power delivery subsystem, Ultra Durable chokes and capacitors and an aerospace-grade coating to prevent dust, moisture and corrosion from building up on the graphics card's PCB. Due to the size of the graphics card, Gigabyte has given it a metal backplate to reinforce the card's structural integrity. There's also an Aorus logo with RGB lighting to add some flair to the backplate.
As like the Founders Edition, the Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G gets its power from a pair of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors. However, Gigabyte has given the graphics card a huge upgrade on the display connector end. The Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G has seven outputs at its disposal. There are three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, three HDMI 2.0b ports and a USB Type-C port for Nvidia VirtualLink.
The Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Xtreme 8G is backed by a four-year warranty, but owners must register the graphics card within 30 days of purchase. Gigabyte didn't reveal the graphics card's pricing or availability.
