ASUS RoG STRIX RTX 2080 Ti Graphics Card Review

Peter Donnell / 6 years ago

Final Thoughts

How Much Does it Cost?

I think the RTX market is still somewhat in turmoil after the launch, Black Friday, CyberMonday, and Christmas deals. So finding real prices can be a real pain. Right now, it’s down to £1294.46 on Amazon, which is a lot, but pretty reasonable for a card in this class. I have seen it listed as high as £1500 this week, so keep your eyes out for the good deals. This is an expensive GPU, but it’s still one of the more competitively priced high-end RTX 2080 Ti cards.

Overview

ASUS has a long history of class-leading and award-winning hardware, not only in their graphics cards, but with motherboards, peripherals, and more. They have a strong reputation and a huge following of loyal fans that expect the best from ASUS hardware. This often means that ASUS can command a pretty strong price for their hardware too, especially on the Republic of Gamers (ROG) branded hardware. If today’s review is anything to go by, that phase getting what you pay for holds true though, this may be expensive, but its performance validates a lot.

Performance

Everything on this card has been fine-tuned to deliver excellent performance. The power delivery has been beefed up to 2 x 8-pin headers, running through an improved power phase design, higher quality capacitors, etc. Then you have that massive triple Axial fan cooler, with a much larger heatsink helping keep things cool. A thick full-metal backplate, with plenty of ventilation, keep the card straight and the PCB cool too. Overall, all these little details mean that ASUS can stick a huge overclock on these cards, ensuring it delivers big performance, and it’s clearly worked.

Build Quality

As I said, from the fans to the backplate, the card is a premium quality product all the way through. It runs fast, but still delivers temperatures and acoustics that are well within reason. I love that they put a black metal bracket on the back, although black screws would have really nailed that design choice. The inclusion of things like the fan connections for your chassis fans is awesome too. They’re not a new idea, but one I would like to see on more GPUs in the future.

Should I Buy One?

You can go out right now and spend £1500 on a flagship RTX 2080 Ti. However, given the ASUS card is already expensive at just under £1300, and already overclocked to high heaven, I doubt you’ll see any graphics card deliver a performance improvement worth the extra £200. This is a powerful, stylish and well-made card from a highly respected brand name; a great choice for any enthusiast gamer building an extreme PC.