ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 ROG STRIX Gaming OC Review: Fast, Quiet, Pricey

Name: ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 ROG STRIX Gaming OC Edition
Brand: ASUS

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, September 28, 2018, 01:15 PM EDT

ASUS RTX 2080 ROG STRIX Gaming OC - Setup, Scientific Analysis, LuxMark

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards represented in this article on a Gigabyte Aorus X299 Gaming 7 Pro motherboard powered by an Intel Core i9-7980XE 16-core processor and 32GB of G.SKILL DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default settings and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's clock was manually dialed in to ensure optimal memory performance at the processor's maximum supported speed of 2666MHz (without overclocking), and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

We should note that the AMD Radeon RX Vega card was tested in its default "Balanced" power mode throughout. Power Saver (slower) and Turbo (faster) power modes are also available with Vega, which would affect performance, noise output, and peak power consumption.

HotHardware's Test System

Intel Core i9 Powered

Hardware Used:
Intel Core i9-7980XE
(2.6 - 4.2GHz, 18-Core)

Gigabyte X299 Gaming Pro 7
(Intel X299 Chipset)

Radeon RX Vega 64
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Titan Xp
EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra
MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio
GeForce RTX 2080
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
ASUS RTX 2080 ROG STRIX Gaming OC

32GB G.SKILL DDR4-2666
Samsung SSD 860 Pro
Integrated Audio & Network

Relevant Software:
Windows 10 Pro x64

NVIDIA Drivers: v411.51
AMD Drivers: Crimson v18.9.1

Benchmarks Used:
SiSoft SANDRA GPGPU
LuxMark v3.1
Unigine Superposition
VRMark
3DMark "Fire Strike"
3DMark "Time Spy"
Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War
Rise Of The Tomb Raider
Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Wildlands
Strange Brigade
Final Fantasy XV
FarCry 5

SiSoft SANDRA 2018

Scientific Analysis Benchmark

SANDRA's Scientific Analysis benchmark uses OpenCL (AMD) or CUDA (NVIDIA) and runs though an array of General Matrix Multiply (GEMM), N-Body Simulations (NBDY),and Fast Fournier Transformation operations and reports the overall speed in GFLOPs. An aggregate result is generated as well...

The ASUS RTX 2080 ROG STRIX has the same clocks at the MSI card we tested, but it manages to pull ahead slightly here in every test.

LuxMark v3.1

OpenCL Benchmark

LuxMark is a cross-platform, OpenCL-accelerated 3D rendering benchmark. It's a tool based on the open source LuxRender physically-based spectral rendering engine, which accurately models the transportation of light and supports high dynamic range. LuxRender features a number of material types to allow rendering of photo-realistic and artistic scenes. LuxRender is free software, licensed under the GPL, that offers plugins for content creation suites like Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D and 3DS Max.

The memory clock has a major impact on performance in Luxmark, hence the very tight grouping of RTX 2080 cards, despite the range of max boost clocks offered by the cards tested here. The ASUS RTX 2080 ROG STRIX Gaming OC's GPU is clocked higher than the Founder's Edition, but it actually trails by the slimmest of margins on two of the three tests.