MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X TRIO review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase

We begin with our usual pages that show the ins and outs of this graphics card with photos, all taken with an in-house photo-shoot of course.  The Gaming X Trio series is a more premium product line and MSI has been focussing on the overall design. What is that metal bar you wonder?  It's not needed to actually use it, but if you move around the PC for say a LAN party, you could use the included metal strut to really secure the card. It is not needed for sagging or anything as the PCB is reinforced internally as well.

The triple fan edition of the MSI Gaming X Trio graphics card is powered by NVIDIA's more high-end offering in Turing, the A revision TU104 graphics processor. These cards are fitted with 8 GB GDDR6 memory running at an effective data rate of 14 Gbps. 

While the card should be in the 600~700 USD/euros range, the lowest price we spotted it at (at the time of writing this article) was a very steep € 829,-. The inflated prices are mostly due to limited stock availability. The card is based upon a nice matte black PCB and uses two power headers (both 8-pin). As you can see it has thick cooling, that's 2.7 slots, but that does offer really good performance in cooling capacity and acoustics with that new TwinFrozr revision design. 

The card this has a triple-fan design, that creates increased airflow and if you have a bit of surplus, you can lower fan RPM. So the three fan design actually makes this high-end class product extremely silent. The card has a single HDMI port and three DisplayPort connectors as well as a new virtual link connector for VR purposes. 

NVIDIA Founders card reference clocks:

• Boost: 1800 MHz / Base: 1515 MHz
• Memory 14.0 Gbps GDDR6 (effective data-rate)

• Boost: 1860 MHz / Base: 1515 MHz
• Memory 14.0 Gbps GDDR6 (effective data-rate)

 
The card has one HDMI port and three DisplayPort connectors as well as a new virtual link connector for VR purposes. The GeForce RTX series has DisplayPort 1.4 connectors 1.4a Ready, enabling support for 8K displays at 60Hz. This card includes three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0b connector, lacking and we do miss it, the dual-link DVI connector.