Introduction

The Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming Pro OC is the company's newest affordable custom-design RTX 2080 Super offering. Not long ago, we reviewed the company's flagship card based on this chip, the RTX 2080 Super White GameRock Premium. The RTX 2080 Super is an interesting SKU that sits between two popular SKUs, the RTX 2070 Super that is the go-to for 1440p gaming with ray-tracing and the de facto flagship, the RTX 2080 Ti, which is sought after for 4K gaming with details maxed out and ray-tracing added to the mix.

The RTX 2080 Super, launched at $700, displaces the original RTX 2080 and maxes out the company's "TU104" silicon. With 20% more compute muscle than the RTX 2070 Super and faster memory, the RTX 2080 Super is possibly designed for high refresh-rate 1440p gaming with ray-tracing thrown in, and 4K gaming with reasonably high settings and moderate ray-tracing settings. For the 1440p crowd, it offers future-proofing in two directions—the ability to hold on to the card for a good 3-4 years or the ability to upgrade to a 4K display a couple of years down the line.



NVIDIA created the RTX 2080 Super primarily because the RTX 2070 Super was too close for comfort to the original RTX 2080 at its $500 price point (almost $200 cheaper). The RTX 2070 Super was necessitated by AMD's introduction of the Radeon RX 5700 XT that outperforms the original RTX 2070. NVIDIA needed something to sell at $700, particularly something that's 4K-capable, but probably didn't want to tap into the expensive "TU102" silicon. Maxing out "TU104" and making its memory faster was a way out. The RTX 2080 Super features 3,072 CUDA cores, 192 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, besides 384 tensor cores and 48 RT cores. The reference RTX 2080 Super ticks at 1650 MHz core, 1815 MHz GPU Boost, and 15.5 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory.

The Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming Pro OC offers slightly overclocked speeds of 1845 MHz GPU Boost compared to the 1815 MHz reference, while leaving all other clock speeds untouched. Unlike the GameRock WGRP, the Gaming Pro OC sticks to the standard height and is only little more than two slots thick. Its cooling solution features an aluminium fin-stack heatsink that runs the entire length of the card, which is ventilated by three fans that turn off when the GPU is idling. Palit is pricing the RTX 2080 Super Gaming Pro OC at $720, a $20 premium over the reference design.