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Launching alongside our review of the new RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition, today we are also looking at a high-end custom card from MSI. The Gaming X Trio ships with a triple-fan cooler, factory overclocked core and custom PCB, so it's ticking all the right boxes on paper. It also has a MSRP of £752.99 here in the UK, making it almost £85 more expensive than the Founders Edition. Is it worth buying?
It seems MSI is being quite cautious with its factory overclocks of late. A couple weeks ago we reviewed the 2070 SUPER Gaming X Trio and were quite disappointed with its relatively meagre 30MHz factory overclock, but MSI has not pushed the boat out further with this RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio, as the clock speed again has only been factory overclocked by 30MHz.
Pricing is also interesting, as the £752.99 MSRP is certainly a heck of a lot of money, and it works out at a 13% increase over the £669 MSRP. The 2070 SUPER Gaming X Trio came in at £569, or 20% more than the £475 MSRP – so, in relative terms, this 2080 SUPER model is less of an increase over the MSRP than its 2070 SUPER counterpart.
| GPU | RTX 2080 SUPER | RTX 2080 (FE) | RTX 2070 SUPER | RTX 2070 (FE) | RTX 2060 SUPER |
| SMs | 48 | 46 | 40 | 36 | 34 |
| CUDA Cores | 3072 | 2944 | 2560 | 2304 | 2176 |
| Tensor Cores | 384 | 368 | 320 | 288 | 272 |
| Tensor FLOPS | 89 | 85 | 72 | 63 | 57.4 |
| RT Cores | 48 | 46 | 40 | 36 | 34 |
| Texture Units | 192 | 184 | 160 | 144 | 136 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| Rays Cast | 8 Giga Rays | 8 Giga Rays | 7 Giga Rays | 6 Giga Rays | 6 Giga Rays |
| GPU Boost Clock | 1815 MHz | 1800 MHz | 1770 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1650 MHz |
| Memory Data Rate | 15.5 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| Total Video Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 496.1 GB/sec | 448 GB/sec | 448 GB/sec | 448 GB/sec | 448 GB/sec |
| TGP | 250W | 225W | 215W | 185W | 175W |
As for specification of this card, the 2080 SUPER uses a full implementation of the TU104 GPU. That means it has a slightly higher core count than the original RTX 2080, with 3072 CUDA cores versus 2944 on the original.
The memory has also been tweaked, with Nvidia using new 15.5Gbps GDDR6 VRAM with the 2080 SUPER, when all the other RTX-series cards use 14Gbps memory. This results in an 11% improvement to total memory bandwidth, with the 2080 SUPER memory giving 496.1 GB/s.
Lastly, as for power, despite being a factory overclocked card, the Gaming X Trio retains the same 250W total graphics power (TGP) rating as the Founders Edition, putting it 10W less than the RTX 2080 Ti.
