Let’s find out if the 2080Ti really is one thousand better than the much loved 1080Ti we’ve been poking at recently by throwing it against a wall of thirty games and seeing if it sticks.
Welcome to Esk Computers, I’m Scott and today on the desk of Esk, let’s see how well the 2018 flagship navigates the stormy waters of modern gaming.
We’ve spent a fair bit of time on the channel recently looking at the legendary 1080Ti, and while that still has the horsepower to get playable results out of today’s games, the lack of driver support can scupper it as we saw with Forza Horizon 6, and if games going forward insist on ray tracing, like Doom: The Dark Ages, well, there’s not much the card can do about that.
Maybe the 1080Ti’s successor is ready to pick up that mantle. The 2080Ti released at the tail end of 2018, about a year and a half after the 1080Ti. The past is a foreign country, and GPU generations were much shorter then. I may be incorrect in my memory, but I think most grounded gamers raised an eyebrow at Nvidia’s claims of how world-changing the flagship ray-tracing feature was going to be, and raised them further at the claims of decently but not massively improved rasterization performance that at the time 100% of games were using. The short term gains seemed questionable, particularly for the new MSRP of one thousand yankee dollars, a huge jump from the seven hundred the 1080Ti was priced at.
I’m still open to having my mind changed on the utility of ray and path tracing in games, but we are coming up for a decade since the sound and fury of that launch and still all I’ve seen is slightly nicer reflections in puddles at the expense of at best halving the framerate. This is a separate rant, but it’s tied into why the 1080Ti has earned enduring respect, and the 2080Ti, well, hasn’t.
Let’s find out if we’re being unfair to the poor lad. It’s still a powerful card, it’s still getting driver updates and bug fixes, and provides at least the minimum support for ray tracing to get everything running, so it should still put up a solid fight against the horrors of modernity.
It’s based on the based on the TU102 GPU, which has 4352 shaders, 272 texture mapping units, and 88 ROPs, 544 machine learning tensor cores and 68 raytracing acceleration cores. According to the datasheet it runs at 1545MHz, although in reality they’ll run closer to 2000MHz as long as you’re keeping it cool. It has a still sufficient 11GB GDDR6 with a monster memory bandwith of 616GB/s, which helps a lot. It’s rated at 250W.
I picked this EVGA 2080Ti Black up for about £185, albeit without the fans and shroud, so a bit of creative cable tying was required to slap some fans on it. Admittedly, it looks 100% Jankenstein, with an equal level of Janktacularity when bodged into the 9800X3D test bed with 64GB of 6400Mhz DDR5. It’s grotesque, but it only gets up to 70 degree Celsius on a fifteen minute Furmark test, so apologise to the horrible monster. Go on, do it. Thank you. Apology accepted.
I’d say you’re looking at about £220ish on the current used market for a 2080Ti, and £110ish for a 1080Ti, if you can hang on for a decent deal in both cases. Some eBay buy it now prices or more sought after models can add another 50% to those figures, so not an exact science, but close enough to ask the question if the 2080Ti is worth twice as much the 1080Ti. We can answer this by rubbing it up against the same games we’ve just finished testing the 1080Ti with, and seeing what falls out.
My capture card limits me to 1080p unfortunately, as certainly in the older games the 2080Ti ought to deal with 1440p and 4K resolutions well enough. For now, as we did with the 1080Ti we’ll see what it’s capable of at 1080p High settings, and if it’s not hitting 60fps averages or thereabouts we’ll see what it takes to get us there. I’ve let the NVidia app do its automated overclocking thing, allowing a very slight 5% increase to the voltage and the power draw, which ought to give around 100Mhz extra on the clock speeds and 200MHz on the memory clocks, at the expense of a extra few degrees Celsius.
We’ll keep the format the same, which means testing it against games from its 2018 release onwards.
A bit of a formality, but for the sake of science, here’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the Highest settings where in gameplay it’s getting 187 average fps, with 1% lows of 168 and 0.1% lows of 161 fps. That’s about 40 odd percent faster than the 1080Ti.
Next, it’s Red Dead Redemption 2 with everything cranked to Highest settings, giving us 87 average fps, with 1% lows of 74 and 0.1% lows of 68fps, that’s about 36ish% better than the 1080Ti.
Final Fantasy XV at its Highest settings sits at the engine’s frame cap of 120 fps, with some room to spare, with 1% lows of 116 fps. The 1080Ti was sitting at 106 fps. I think starting Afterburner’s framerate logging causes the 0.1% lows of 9 fps, as without that running there’s none of those dips. Regardless uncomplainable performance in 2018, onwards to 2019.
Control at Ultra settings now, and with no ray tracing to compare with the 1080Ti, it gives us 97 average fps, with 1% lows of 79 and 0.1% lows of 47 fps. so, that’s about 45% faster than the 1080Ti. With the Medium ray tracing setting enabled, it drops to 77 average fps, with 1% lows of 26 and 0.1% lows of 14 fps, so a noticeably worse feeling game that’s not much better looking in my opinion.
Metro Exodus at Ultra settings with it’s default ray tracing gives us an average of 110 fps, with 1% lows of 86 and 0.1% lows of 78 fps. Can’t really complain about that, although I’d be lying if I said I noticed it. With raytracing off, we get a stonking 228 average fps, with 1% lows of 137 and 0.1% lows of 90 fps. Much better. That’s about 65% better than the 1080Ti result, although I think this was a less of a demanding area.
Star Wars: Fallen Order next, here at Epic settings, where it’s getting 143 average fps, effectively hitting the 144 fps engine cap most of the time, same as the 1080Ti. It’s getting slightly worse 1% lows of 92 and 0.1% lows of 19 fps, but I assume that’s just due to getting the data in a slightly different area.
Quake II RTX of course barely ran at all on the 1080Ti, what with it relying on raytracing and all, but that’s sort of the point of the RTX 2000 series. We’re now getting 103 average fps, with 1% lows of 91 and 0.1% lows of 27 fps. A literal order of magnitude better, but it’s not exactly a fair fight.
Cyberpunk 2077 in boring old raster mode at Ultra settings gives us 129 average fps in gameplay, with 1% lows of 88 and 0.1% lows of 69 fps, that’s about 50% up on the 1080Ti.
Upping the tempo now with the Ray Traced Ultra settings, but using Conventional Neural Network DLSS rather than Transformer model as is recommended for older cards. This pretty much halves our framerate with 67 average fps and 1% lows of 52 and 0.1% lows of 41 fps. Again, I’m not sure that juice is worth the squeeze.
Just for fun, the RT Overdrive path tracing setting gets us 32 average fps, with 1% lows of 26 and 0.1% lows of 20 fps, and feels utterly terrible to play. This is what I imagine gaming with a concussion feels like.
Cor blimey guvnor it’s Watch Dogs: Legion at Ultra settings, giving us 112 average fps, with 1% lows of 59 and 0.1% lows of 52 fps. That’s about 50% higher in average fps compared to the 1080Ti, although the 1% and 0.1% lows are practically identical so to be honest it feels pretty similar in gameplay.
Horizon Zero Dawn at Ultimate quality settings gives us 131 average fps, with 1% lows of 106 and 0.1% lows of 59 fps, that’s about 43% faster than the 1080Ti. Unsurprisingly that’s 2020’s crop effortlessly dealt with, so onwards to 2021.
Forza Horizon 5 at Ultra settings is no challenge at all, getting 147 average fps, with 1% lows of 122 and 0.1% lows of 52 fps. That’s about 35% more than the 1080Ti.
Resident Evil Village also smashes out the frames, with its Max settings giving 259 average fps, with 1% lows of 176 and 0.1% lows of 83 fps. It’s a 66% improvement over the 1080Ti. Using its Ray Tracing preset, which actually drops a lot of the eye candy from the Max setting, it gets 147 average fps, with 1% lows of 112 and 0.1% lows of 65 fps. Which I suppose is good, by ray traced performance standards, but I think this looks worse than non-RT Max settings, and plays worse. Still not convinced about this RT lark.
Mildly obscure survive-em-up Icarus next, where at Epic settings with FSR disabled, we get 71 average fps, with 1% lows of 51 and 0.1% lows of 28 fps That’s 22% faster than the 1080Ti. It seems to hide it’s raytracing options behind a DirectX12 mode that advises a 3070 or better, which the 2080Ti probably is but I’m just not that excited to try it. The non-RT mode works fine, but I wouldn’t want to go much lower on framerate and, well, you’ve seen the pattern.
This brings us to 2022, and A Plague Tale: Requiem at Ultra settings, which is giving us 86 average fps with 1% lows of 69 and 0.1% lows of 38 fps. That’s 38% better than the 1080Ti and clearly some very good performance.
Next up is Elden Ring, at Max settings here, where it averages 60 fps, which is the unmodded game’s framerate cap with 1% lows at 55 and 0.1% lows at 39 fps, so at the same settings it’s the same performance as the 1080Ti because of that cap. Adding Maximum Ray tracing to the mix drops a little to 50 average fps, with 1% lows of 40 and 0.1% lows of 10 fps, so a less fluid game but for once I do think this improves the lighting quite noticeably compared to without it. I’d need to dial it back a bit to get it a bit less stuttery but I like this, and it’s maybe the only game today I’d make that trade off.
Spider-Man Remastered at Very High settings with RT reflections off, is giving us 219 average fps swinging around outside, 80% better than the 1080Ti. 1% lows were 168 fps, with 0.1% lows of 44 fps. Combat sections out in the streets were giving 234 average fps, and I think this engine caps out at 250 fps, so can’t say fairer than that.
Without RT reflections in this lab we get 213 average fps, and with them turned on to their highest settings we get 140 fps average, quite a hit for a slightly shinier floor. Still, it’s not like 140 fps isn’t a very big number, so maybe shouldn’t complain.
Onwards to 2023, and the oft-maligned Starfield, which is the first game in our last round of tests that the 1080Ti couldn’t get to 60 average fps at High settings. The 2080Ti, again with dynamic resolution and upscaling off gets us close, with 59 average fps while bothering these innocent colonists, with 1% lows of 50 and 0.1% lows of 45, so quite playable indeed for a game that’s really keen for you to use upscaling. The average is only 18% better, but the order of magnitude better .1% lows make this a much smoother experience. It actually gets almost identical performance in one of the game’s bigger cities, which is unusual.
Magic-based Doom clone Immortals of Aveum next. Annoyingly I didn’t make a proper note of what the 1080Ti was running at, but my best guess at it is High settings, a step down from its highest Ultra settings, with FSR disabled, and here I’m getting get 82 average fps, with 1% lows of 60 and 0.1% lows of 31, which I think is 45% better than the older card.
Here’s Avatar: Far Cry of Pandora at High settings, again with no upscaling or framegen, and we’re getting 65 average fps, with 1% lows of 53 and 0.1% lows of 40 fps. That’s 35% better than the 1080Ti.
Alan Wake 2 was troublesome for the 1080Ti, and very tough to get near 60fps even at very reduced settings. On the 2080Ti, at High settings, with no RT and upscaling we are getting 60 average fps, with 1% lows of 53, and 0.1% lows of 13 fps. So, arguably we’re getting that 80 class performance here that the 1080Ti couldn’t deliver, this being 71% faster performance.
Tuning on High RT at the same native resolution tanks the framerate to 15fps, so that’s no good. Dropping to low RT gives 28 average fps, so we’ll need to do a whole bunch of upscaling if we want to get back near 60. All the way down to Performance DLSS it turns out, that’s 960×540 resolution, where we get 55 average fps, with 1% lows of 48 and 0.1% lows of 42. Still not convinced by this RT lark, DLSS is, I grudgingly admit, pretty good, but it’s not magic and this is a quarter of the pixels. There’s always framegen I suppose, but I’d rather not rely on that to get to sixty fps.
At any rate, while 2023’s crop was where the 1080Ti started to need reduced settings to remain near the 60fps target, the 2080Ti is still going strong as we head into 2024, although arguably it’s a much less rosy picture if you were expecting this Ray Tracing capable card to be, well, capable of Ray Tracing while giving a decent framerate.
That said S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at High settings and native resolution makes use of Raytraced Lumen lighting, and is giving us 68 average fps, with 1% lows of 46 and 0.1% lows of 22 fps, so comfortable enough to play and 61% better than the 1080Ti.
I’m still waiting for a better sale price on Black Myth: Wukong, so this is just the benchmark tool where at High settings, without any RT or upscaling, its giving 66 average fps, up 73% from the 1080Ti. Letting it recommend its own settings, it selects the same but with frame generation on. Sounds boring, let’s instead add Medium RT, 80% DLSS resolution and no frame gen. This gave a decent 51 fps but with, well, let’s just say some slight graphical glitching. Barely perceptible, really. It was like this with any upscaling method enabled. Turning that off and dropping to low RT fixes this, but drops us to 33 average fps, and I don’t think looks much better.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II at higher settings look amazing but is rather demanding. At High settings and native resolution, so no upscaling, we get 51 average fps, with 1% lows of 45 and 0.1% lows of 42 fps, so that’s 70% better than the 1080Ti, and just about good enough that I wouldn’t be dropping settings on this, although it will quite easily get past 60 fps with some minor tweakage.
Heading into 2025 next, and from this point on with the 1080Ti we were dropping settings a lot so I’ll stop the direct comparisons. Silent Hill f here is at Quality preset, so largely Very High settings, where it’s getting 67 average fps with 1% lows of 55 and 0.1 % lows of 48, so that’s hard to complain about.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater next, where at High settings, Native resolution we’re getting 50 average fps, which for a game capped at 60 fps isn’t too far away from as good as you can get. 1% lows were 42 and 0.1% lows were 39 fps. A touch of upscaling or dropped settings will get you to 60 fps but this looks good and plays well at High settings.
Doom: The Dark Ages of course wouldn’t even launch on a 1080Ti. This is High settings, native resolution, and it’s knocking out a nice 69 average fps with 1% lows of 57 and 0.1% lows of 52 fps. So, ray tracing and decent performance. iD does it again, sure hope Microsoft doesn’t fire the only people that can make a decent engine to save money.
This brings us to 2026, and Resident Evil Requiem at High graphics quality, upscaling off and Low RT quality gets 122 average fps in this admittedly not too demanding interior scene, with 1% lows of 97 and 0.1% lows of 77 fps, but clearly there’s plenty of headroom for a great experience at high settings here.
Speedwalking simulator Death Stranding 2 next, at High with no upscaling, and we’re getting 91 average fps, with 1% lows of 70 and 0.1% lows of 62 fps, so again the 2080Ti is handling this with ease at 1080p.
Forza Horizon 6 of course could have ran okay on a 1080Ti, but it crashed a whole lot. Ultra settings plus ray tracing is, it turns out, a bit much for the 2080Ti, the benchmark getting 15fps. High settings with ray tracing seems more promising at 67 fps, so let’s run with that. This intro run around Tokyo gets an average of 86 fps, with 1% lows of 73 and 0.1% lows of 62 fps, so there seems to be no issue with this, and not a single crash. Smashing.
So where does this leave us with the 2080Ti in the back nine of 2026? Well, it’s sort of exposed the limitations of my capture set up, mainly, as there’s not many problems getting reasonably high refresh rates at high settings at 1080p in practically any of these games, so if that’s how you setup is configured, this card is still doing you well.
That doesn’t seem like an outlandish expectation of a monitor setup if you bought it when the 2080Ti came out, but if you’ve moved on to a 1440p or 4K display, well, that’s a different set of testing needed that unfortunately I didn’t have time for this week, even if I did have a capture card that could handle it.
Still, we have at least proven it’s capable of delivering a high end experience at 1080p in 2026, so at the very least it has actually matched the longevity of the 1080Ti. It delivers a decent jump in pure raster performance over the 1080Ti, and a very substantial jump in modern games that are layering in ray traced elements. Given the price increase, we’ll need to look again in a couple of years to see how it’s performing to see if it’s delivered the same long term value, but it looks promising given the relative stagnation of the gaming scene lately.
The graphics card market, both new and old, is, well, bad, and has been for some time. It’s overshadowed a little bit at the moment by the RAM and Storage markets which very rapidly swung from record lows to record highs, but those same DRAM pressures have been hitting GPUs for some time.
As such, getting something this powerful at the £220ish mark is pretty tough, particularly new. You can get the Intel Arc B570, which is a card I like quite a bit at the £180 it used to go for, but at the £240 it will cost you today it is less performant, with 1GB less VRAM, and I think it’s 50:50 whether it stops getting driver updates before the 2080Ti.
The 5060 can be had for about £300 and should be roughly as performant as the 2080Ti, if you have the correct PCIe support on your motherboard, but with 8GB it’s maybe not as futureproof despite being so much newer, and quite a bit more expensive. At the time of writing this, there’s not an AMD graphics card below £300 available on either Overclockers or Scan, so team Red is out of contention completely.
Checking out the sold listings on eBay between £180 and £250, I’m not sure there’s an common option I unambiguously prefer. The 3060 12GB is the only one I see that doesn’t lose out in VRAM, but is otherwise a good bit slower. The 8GB 3070 shows up in this price range often, again less VRAM but longer driver support, I presume, and roughly the same performance, so it’s an option at least.
Infrequently the 16GB 7600XT from AMD appears in the search results, a very close match in performance and more VRAM, so worth considering. If you can find the 12GB 6700XT at this price range it should also be on your shortlist and you might, very rarely, be able to get a 10GB 3080 in this price band. These three are I think the only options I’d pick over the 2080Ti, everything being equal, but it’s not a slam dunk.
The 2080Ti is still a very capable card in 2026, and I’m not entirely sure there’s a much better value card on either the new or used markets right now that, at least for the moment, plays every new game and still gets driver support and bug fixes. Whether that says more about the current market or the 2080Ti is something I’ll leave for you to ponder.
Maybe I’ll need to revisit this card at 1440p or 4K, if I ever get a way to record the results, but until then, if you have any questions or want further details please leave a comment down below, and if you enjoyed this videotronic missive then consider subscribing. Until next time, take care of yourself, and each other.