MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z 11GB Review – The £1500 RTX!

1. Introduction2. MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy (1080p, 1440p, 4K)5. 3DMark Port Royal (1440p DXR)6. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1080p, 1440p, 4K)7. Far Cry 5 (1080p, 1440p, 4K)8. Ghost Recon: Wildlands (1080p, 1440p, 4K)9. Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, 1440p, 4K)10. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, 1440p, 4K)11. Battlefield V w/ DXR (1080p, 1440p, 4K)12. Final Fantasy XV w/ DLSS (4K)13. Clock Speed14. Temperatures15. Acoustics16. Power Consumption17. Overclocking: 3DMark and Games18. Overclocking: Thermals, Acoustics, Power19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

For our temperature testing, we measure the peak GPU core temperature under load, as well as the GPU temperature with the card idling on the desktop. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.

Thermal performance of the Lightning Z is also impressive – it peaked at just 70C under full load, making it one of the coolest cards on our chart. It's not the lowest result we've ever seen from a 2080 Ti, but accounting for the very high out of the box speeds, and increased power, it's still an impressive result.

This is re-iterated by our thermal gun, where we saw the side of the card peak at just below 64C, while the 73C hot spot on the rear of the card is also nothing to worry about. The temperature directly behind the GPU core was just under 63C, too – suggesting the copper heatpipe is indeed helping keep the heat away from the rear of the GPU core.

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