You have decided that you are going to buy a high-end graphics card , but as usual, you will have doubts about which model to invest your money in. For this reason, in this article we are going to make a technical comparison of two of NVIDIA‘s high-end graphics cards: RTX 2070 SUPER vs RTX 2080 SUPER . Is the RTX 2080 SUPER worth the premium compared to the RTX 2070 SUPER?
In this comparison we are not going to assess which of the two graphics cards is better, since by definition the RTX 2080 SUPER is superior to the RTX 2070 SUPER. What we are going to do is put them face to face and assess whether the price premium that the RTX 2080 SUPER has is worth it. Currently, these are the prices they have in stores, selecting a Gigabyte model that is the cheapest in this case in both models.
As you can see there is a price difference of about 215 euros between these graphics cards (something that more or less coincides with the $ 200 difference in their launch prices according to NVIDIA), so now what you have to assess is, does it deserve Is it worth paying more for what the RTX 2080 SUPER will give you in exchange? Let’s see it in the technical comparison.
Technical comparison: RTX 2070 SUPER vs RTX 2080 SUPER
| RTX 2070 SUPER | RTX 2080 SUPER | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Turing | Turing |
| Lithographic process | TSMC 12 nm | TSMC 12 nm |
| GPU | TU104-410-A1 | TU104-450-A1 |
| Die size | 545 mm² | 545 mm² |
| Transistors | 13.6 billion | 13.6 billion |
| SM / CUs | 40 | 48 |
| Shaders | 2560 | 3072 |
| TMUs | 160 | 192 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 |
| RT Cores | 40 | 48 |
| Tensor Cores | 320 | 384 |
| L2 cache | 4096 KB | 4096 KB |
| Base Clock | 1605 MHz | 1650 MHz |
| Boost / strong> Clock | 1770 MHz | 1815 MHz |
| VRAM Amount | 8 GB | 8 GB |
| VRAM type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| VRAM Clock | 1750 MHz (14 GHz effective) | 1937 MHz (15496 effective MHz) |
| Bus | 256 bit | 256 bit |
| VRAM bandwidth | 448.0 GB / s | 495.9 GB / s |
| FP32 performance | 9,062 TFLOPS | 11.15 TFLOPS |
| PCIe version | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| TDP | 215 W | 250 W |
| Feeding | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
| NVLink / SLI / Crossfire | NVLink | NVLink |
| Maximum temperature | 95ºC | 95ºC |
| Video outputs | 1x HDMI 3x DisplayPort 1x USB Type-C |
1x HDMI 3x DisplayPort 1x USB Type-C |
| Launch price | 499 USD | 699 USD |
| Release date | July 2019 | July 2019 |
Based on the technical specifications, it is quite clear that the RTX 2080 SUPER is a graphic that will give us better performance , especially in games. Not only is it faster, but it has more Shaders, VRAM bandwidth and has more RT and Tensor Cores for Ray Tracing. Of this there is no doubt.
As for the heatsink, both use the same in the case of reference models as well as custom models, such as the one we have given as an example of Gigabyte. Here the TDP of the graphics comes into consideration, since the RTX 2070 SUPER has a theoretical consumption of 35 W less , so it will consume less energy, will heat less and therefore the heatsink fans will make less noise.
How superior is the RTX 2080 SUPER?
In terms of relative performance, the RTX 2080 SUPER is on average 13% higher than the RTX 2070 SUPER . According to our own empirical tests (you can see the review of the RTX 2080 SUPER and the RTX 2070 SUPER on our website), here is an example in 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra:
12.08% higher is shown here. Another example, this time in a game (Shadow of the Tomb Raider) at Full HD resolution with maximum graphics.
The difference in performance between these RTX 2070 SUPER vs RTX 2080 SUPER here is 7.56% nothing else, but the thing changes when we raise the resolution, rising to 15% in the best case.
So what graphics card should you buy?
As we indicated at the beginning the price difference between the two graphics cards is just over 200 euros, and the performance difference is on average 13% in favor of the RTX 2080 SUPER. We are talking about graphics that already belong to the high range, so it really is not too much difference in money to pay.
If we had to choose one of these two graphics cards, we believe that the RTX 2070 is a better option since the performance difference between the two does not justify the price increase, except that you intend to play at 4K resolution with everything at maximum , in which case it would be more worth investing in the RTX 2080 SUPER since we will need every FPS we can squeeze for this resolution.