Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GamingPRO review (Page 26)

Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GamingPRO review

Graphics cards 1049 Page 26 of 26 Published 2020-02-05 12:15 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Reviews

Conclusion

Final words and verdict

As mentioned it was a bit hard to see this product being actually faster than the reference product, however, at Ultra HD we reached on average a 2% faster performance delta. For RTX modes on + a bit of DLSS, you likely will end up in the 2560x1440 region. So overall that's not bad. The 2080 Super was positioned 100 bucks lower, and this Palit card might be among the most affordable SKUs available in the market, we expect it to sit at $749,-

Aesthetics

With a dark PCB and overall design, the cooler once powered on just looks pretty okay, it only has very little RGB at the top of the card. The advantage is that the card is totally black. And that simply sits well in any PC. The card has a closed backplate, that can potentially trap heat but then again, it doesn't run that hot either. The flip-side is that they can look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. I have to admit, this is looking very nice but looks are always personal, of course. So in the end, on looks, you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality.

Cooling & Noise Levels

The card tops out at roughly 73 Degrees C while gaming. So that's not bad at all, the acoustics I'd rate at 38 DBa which is not silent, but could be described as a card you can hear softly. We doubt you'd ever notice the card once mounted into a chassis. We've heard no noticeable coil whine. But I do want to note that any graphics card at a high-enough FPS can make some coil-whine.

Overclocking

Anything and everything is regulated by NVIDIA these days. Speaking, in general, you can expect another 10% of extra perf out of the card when you bump up the graphics memory and GPU a bit on ti's clock frequency as demonstrated. Both traditional overclocking, as well as the OC Scanner functions, bring us close to that value. In retrospect though, you have to remember, that the 'older' RTX models could also be tweaked to 15~16 Gbps on that GDDR6 Micron memory. The new 2080 Super models have Samsung GDDR6 and it certainly is faster overall as well as tweaking. We could even hit 18 GHz, stable.

Concluding

Quite honestly I was not expecting new revisions of the 2070 and 2080 SUPER this time of the year, but Palit thought otherwise. The GamingPRO OC edition is that more affordable solution with a more beefy cooler. It ends there though as the performance increase of this OC model is marginal at best. Tweaking perf, however, end up at an extra 9%, let's round that to 10% compared from reference performance. And that brings it into the same performance bracket as all other RTX 2080 SUPER cards we have tested to date. You'll receive a card offering comfortable temperatures and very decent acoustics (albeit not 100% silent). The performance is of course very high overall, only one product can trump the 2080 Super, and that is the 2080 Ti with that astounding price tag. The RTX 2080S in this revision is positioned at a 749 USD price bracket, and really should not be much higher in retail even with pimped up AIB cards. Not only did NVIDIA make the card faster (Super opposed to regular), but they also made is cheaper as well. This card offers good solid shader performance, and for a bit of fun and giggles, you get to play around with RTX/DLSS if you desire. While we can still argue the relevance of features like DLSS and RTX you do need to realize that the industry is at a turning point, hardware-based ray tracing is coming, whether that is NVIDIA, AMD or Intel. You re paying a price premium to be that early adopter with a handful of games to actually test it on. But you can't blame NVIDIA for pioneering with technology. The factory tweak that Palit applies is very small, which did not yield a big difference at all. Tweaking wise the card did not disappoint though albeit we have been wondering what that power limiter could not be increased. None the less we did reach that 10% extra performance though. Realistically the 2080 Super is plenty fast for any gaming up-to Ultra HD based on shading performance and that's because AMD has not released big NAVI just yet. With Raytracing enabled you'll be in the 1080p or 1440p range. Overall we can recommend this product as it ticks the right boxes, while not extraordinary this, simply put, is a good product if priced right.