Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition Graphics Card Review

Overclocking, Noise, Heat and Power

It would be unreasonable to expect the Founders Edition to hit overclocks as high as the 3rd party cards. It doesn’t have as big a cooler or power delivery as some of the more expensive aftermarket models. However, this edition does come with a fantastic cooler, a factory overclock, and a little headroom of its own. So let’s give it a go!

The RTX 2080 Fe managed a respectable 170 MHz increase on the core clock. Not as high as some of the other cards which hit 185 MHz, but still pretty decent overall. The memory maxed out with +700 MHz, which again not far from the +750 MHz some of the third party cards reached. The overclock say the score hit 23486, which is actually a little down from our non-overclocked result. However, the graphics score did increase to 28227. Overall, I would put that down to heat more than anything, and more air in, more performance out is going to be the key to success. It could also be that I got a sample that just didn’t overclock that well.

3DMark Firestrike

Acoustic Performance

One way the FE does excel is acoustics, with the dual fan system providing much lower noise than their older 1080 Ti blower type cooler.

Stock

Overclocked

Thermal Performance

It’s also an efficient cooler, with peak temperatures hitting 70c. A little higher than the larger coolers of the 3rd party cards, but still great for a cooler of this size.

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Overclocked

Power Consumption

Finally, the power consumption. Now, this confuses me, as it’s higher than the aftermarket cards. However, we’ve had reports of the new GPUs running a little rich, and expect future driver updates to address this. Take these results with a fe wpinches of salt, and we’ll retest in the coming weeks.

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Overclocked