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

If you are a hardware enthusiast, then MSI's Lightning series will need little introduction. Designed to offer ‘balls to the wall' performance, with not a thought for power consumption or physical limitations, these cards are often the best in their class. Today we look at the latest in this high-end family – the RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z, with an MSRP of £1439. If you just want the best of the best, regardless of the cost involved, is this the card for you?

If you thought £1099 was asking a lot for the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition, then you will probably just laugh at the £1439 MSRP for MSI's RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z. Matters aren't helped by the fact that, at the time of writing, the cheapest we have seen it on sale for is £1499 as stock appears to be very low, though MSI is optimistic it can get more stock into the retail channel shortly.

Even so, RTX 2080 Ti was never about offering good bang for buck – it's about getting the absolute fastest card you can, regardless of cost. In that sense, the Lightning Z makes several improvements to eke out even more performance – including upping the boost clock to 1770MHz, beefing up the GPU power delivery, and delivering quite possibly the largest cooler we have ever seen on an aftermarket graphics card.

GPU	RTX 2080 Ti (FE)	GTX 1080 Ti	RTX 2080 (FE)	GTX 1080	RTX 2070 (FE)	GTX 1070
SMs	68	28	46	20	36	15
CUDA Cores	4352	3584	2944	2560	2304	1920
Tensor Cores	544	N/A	368	N/A	288	N/A
Tensor FLOPS	114	N/A	85	N/A	63	N/A
RT Cores	68	N/A	46	N/A	36	N/A
Texture Units	272	224	184	N/A	144	120
ROPs	88	88	64	64	64	64
Rays Cast	10 Giga Rays/sec	1.1 Giga Rays/sec	8 Giga Rays/sec	0.877 Giga Rays/sec	6 Giga Rays/sec	0.65 Giga Rays/sec
RTX Performance	87 Trillion RTX-OPS	11.3 Trillion RTX-OPS	60 Trillion RTX-OPS	8.9 Trillion RTX-OPS	45 Trillion RTX-OPS	6.5 Trillion RTX-OPS
GPU Boost Clock	1635 MHz	1582 MHz	1800 MHz	1733 MHz	1710 MHz	1683 MHz
Memory Clock	14 Gbps	11 Gbps	14 Gbps	10 Gbps	14 Gbps	8 Gbps
Total Video Memory	11GB GDDR6	11GB GDDR5X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5
Memory Interface	352-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	616 GB/sec	484 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	320 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	256 GB/sec
TDP	260W	250W	225W	180W	185W	150W

While the number of SMs, CUDA cores, RT cores and Tensor cores is the same for every RTX 2080 Ti, Nvidia did things a bit differently for the clock speed of its flagship graphics card. That's because the reference boost clock for an RTX 2080 Ti is actually 1545MHz, while Nvidia's sells its own Founders Edition cards with a factory overclock of 1635MHz. That means MSI's Lightning 2080 Ti, with a 1770MHz boost clock, is actually 225MHz faster than reference speeds, and is still 135MHz faster than the Founders Edition.

This clock speed increase, coupled with beefed up VCORE power delivery, contributes to MSI rating the Lightning Z's power consumption at 350W – 90W higher than the 260W TDP of the 2080 Ti Founders Edition. More power means more heat, hence the reason MSI has opted for the triple slot, triple fan cooler used with this card.

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