Following Nvidia’s big event, Asus has revealed a cluster of new GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 graphics cards, some of which are available to pre-order now, ahead of an on-sale date of mid-September.
The graphics card manufacturer has three separate lines of products for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080: the Asus Turbo, Asus Dual and Asus ROG Strix.
Let’s start at the top end with the Asus ROG Strix GPUs (the Ti variant is pictured above), which sport a smart new fan design that allows for more airflow and better cooling, without any increase in noise levels, the firm claims.
The Strix models also benefit from what Asus calls ‘auto-extreme technology’, essentially a new manufacturing process for the company which allows all the soldering on the board to be completed in a single pass, which should make for a more reliable GPU overall.
As for the Asus Dual GeForce RTX models, these also get better cooling with new wing-blade fans (which utilizes tech developed for the Strix cards). Both the Strix and Dual GPUs have a 2.7-slot footprint, meaning they effectively take up three slots, with the extra space used to bolt on a larger heatsink (50% larger in the case of the Dual, 20% bigger for the ROG Strix).
That should mean more room for pushing your GPU with an overclock, naturally, although less room inside your PC’s case.
Turbo tricks
As for the Asus Turbo GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and 2080, these GPUs have been fine-tuned to improve the overall airflow going through the card, so they can run better in systems which have multiple GPUs (or cases in which airflow is poor or restricted, for that matter).
In other words, the GPU’s shroud allows more air in, even if it’s jammed up against another card or the side of the PC case. Again, the fan has been improved with an 80mm IP5X (dust resistant) model.
Asus will sell both standard and OC (overclocked) models of the Asus ROG Strix and Asus Dual, but just the former for the Asus Turbo. Across all cards, the base and boost clock of the standard RTX 2080 is 1350MHz and 1545MHz respectively, with the Ti bumping things up to 1515MHz and 1710MHz respectively – with the OC speeds still to be revealed.
Four cards are available to pre-order in the UK from eBuyer, Overclockers and Scan, with the recommended price of the Asus Dual RTX 2080 Ti weighing in at around £1,340 (around $1,720, AU$2,335), and the Asus Turbo RTX 2080 Ti costing £1,275 (around $1,635, AU$2,220).
If you’re after the non-Ti version, then the Asus ROG Strix RTX 2080 can be reserved now for £1,006 (around $1,290, AU$1,750), or you could hit up the Asus Dual RTX 2080 for £885 (around $1,135, AU$1,540).
So yes, these new offerings are far from cheap GPUs, as you might have anticipated (despite some pre-release rumors holding otherwise). For the full breakdown of yesterday’s big Nvidia GeForce RTX launch, head here, and to recap, these cards should be available mid-September (September 20 was the date mentioned by Nvidia yesterday).
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