R E V I E W // A O R U S G E F O R C E R T X 2 0 8 0 T I X T R E M E
TESTING CONFIGURATION
INTEL Core i7 8700K @ 5.2GHz
ROG MAXIMUS XI GENE
G.Skill Trident F4 DDR4 3200 C14 @
4500MHZ C16
CORSAIR Force LE 960GB SSD
CORSAIR AX1500i
Windows 10 x64
(BIOS 0905)
GAMING GEAR AWARD
AORUS GEFORCE RTX
2080 TI XTREME
ERP $1299.99 | WEBSITE w w w.aorus.com
I
t’s been almost eight months
since NVIDIA brought to us the
most powerful RTX GPU (barring
the TITAN SKU). In that time, we’ve
seen all sort so variations on the
founder’s edition, all claiming to offer
better performance at the same or
sometimes lower price.
Gigabyte with the Xtreme
model is making similar if not
identical claims with their version
of what is undoubtedly the most
powerful gaming graphics card
money can buy at present.
That said, we’ve had several
drivers since release and of course
performance and stability has
improved. That’s to say, the RTX 2080
Ti today performs measurably better
than it did upon release so even these
24 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019
figures within this review are only
representing a moment in time.
Performance will continue to improve .
Now that we have that out the way,
let’s talk about the AORUS RTX 2080 Ti
Xtreme. Much like the other Xtreme
models, this is the 2nd most expensive
SKU from GIGABYTE, with only the
waterforce SKU commanding a higher
price. If that is a little too steep for you
maybe this one will do.
Instead of just selling the reference
or founder’s edition model with a better
cooling complex, GIGABYTE has
partially redesigned the PCB. What you
get for that is two PCI-Express 8-pin
power connectors, one would have
expected maybe three power plugs
given that this is the Xtreme model, but
this configuration curbs the card's
draw to a maximum of 375Watts
(limited to 366W via software slider).
Plenty of power for the TU104 GPU,
but when you crank up the clocks
(especially with adequate cooling), you
may hit that limit sooner than you’d
think as the GPU draws
a tremendous amount of power.
As you’d expect, a UP9512 VRM
controller drives 16 power stages.
Standard affair and what you find on
the vast majority of cards including
the founder’s edition. There aren’t any
readily available tools for this
controller but you could try out Elmor’
labs EVC tool which with some
modifications on the card may allow
you Vcore control via the software.
You’ll not get far though,
if only because of the power limits