2080 ti lightning z review: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z 11 GB Review

MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z Review

Written by

Matthew Lambert

January 21, 2019 | 13:00

Tags: #deep-learning-super-sampling #dlss #extreme-overclocking #geforce-rtx-2080-ti #gpu #graphics-card #liquid-nitrogen #ln2 #overclocking #rtx #rtx-2080-ti #tu102 #turing

Companies: #msi #nvidia

1 — MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z Review2 — Test Setup3 — 3DMark and VRMark4 — Battlefield 15 — Deus Ex: Mankind Divided6 — Middle-Earth: Shadow of War7 — Total War: Warhammer II8 — Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus9 — World of Tanks Encore10 — Power and Thermals11 — Overclocking12 — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

Manufacturer: MSI

UK price (as reviewed): £1,439.99 (inc. VAT)

US price (as reviewed): Currently unavailable

With the RTX 2080 Ti having been available for about four months now, we’re starting to see the second wave of third-party cards that go above and beyond the “regular” air-cooled models. The Asus Matrix, EVGA Kingpin, and MSI Lightning Z were all shown off at CES 2019, for example, and it’s the latter we’ve managed to get our hands on for today’s review. For MSI, the Lightning series has always been about pushing the GPU in question to the limit with quality components, high-end cooling, and nods towards extreme overclocking – and a very high price tag to match. For this generation, MSI is bringing Lightning solely to RTX 2080 Ti.

Most third-party RTX 2080 Ti cards are hefty, but this one is monstrous. Measuring 328mm long, it barely fits inside our Corsair Air 740 chassis without impeding the front fan. It weighs a staggering 1.85kg, and MSI has rightly included a dual-slot metal support beam to help prevent sag and PCIe slot damage. This does the job nicely and should screw over any other cards/brackets you happen to have in those lower slots provided you have long enough screws.

MSI has splashed the plastic cooler shroud with gold-coloured brushed metal highlights and carbon fibre patterning, which may prove divisive but is perhaps appropriate for a £1,440 graphics card — it’s certainly a unique look too. The use of real carbon for the backplate is a really nice touch, meanwhile, and keeps the card feeling sturdy. The NVLink connector, however, is left exposed other than the plastic protective cover the card is packaged with; a little carbon cover the match the backplate would have been nifty.

As you can see in the header image, RGB LEDs are built into the two edge fans but not the central one – an add choice. More RGB lighting is found along the top edge and on the backplate, and as usual you can use MSI’s Dragon Centre software to customise it all with a variety of settings. Doing so in a way that doesn’t clash with the gold, however, might prove tricky. The top edge also has a little monochrome OLED display which can be set to output custom animations – now MSI is just asking for trouble.

A boost clock of 1,770MHz is almost 15 percent higher than the GPU’s reference specification (1,545MHz) and puts the Lightning Z in amongst the highest-clocked cards on the market. Zotac has one at 1,815MHz, but there aren’t many reaching these heights. That said, having a high clock set in BIOS and being able to maintain high clocks under load are two different things, so we’ll look at that later. The 11GB of GDDR6 sadly has no overclock and is left at 14Gbps.

We know from our own efforts that Turing GPUs tend to chew through power when pushing clocks higher, and that seems like it’s going to be the case here. MSI says it can consume 350W out of the box and outfits it with a whopping three eight-pin PCIe connectors. Coupled with the PCIe slot, that’s a maximum wattage of 525W – way above 350W, but the headroom makes sense given the target audience of extreme overclockers that often like to perform hardware-level modifications to bypass the power/voltage limits.

To that end, the card has a dual-BIOS switch, with one side marked as ‘Original’ and the other as ‘LN2’ i.e. liquid nitrogen. In LN2 mode, the card is said to have no power limitations, with MSI claiming there’s actually no need to perform mods to unlock full power. We don’t have the facilities or bravery to test this out, so we’ll leave that to the pro overclocking scene. The clock speeds in LN2 default to reference, which we guess is fine since they’re going to be tweaked anyway, but something that’s very odd is that the semi-passive capabilities of the fans (known as Zero Frozr in MSI parlance) only kick in when using LN2 mode. This implementation of Zero Frozr should be called Zero Sensr, because anyone using LN2 will have removed the cooler/fans anyway. We have requested an explanation but so far we’ve not heard back.

MSI is using reference display outputs on this card: three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b, and one USB-C connector with VirtualLink support.

Three large Torx 3.0 fans supply airflow. These are MSI’s latest and greatest GPU fans said to generate 15 percent more air pressure at equivalent noise levels than the previous generation. They have double ball bearings in the motors and an alternating blade design with one blade optimised for accelerating airflow and the other for driving it downwards.

The heatsink is one of the biggest we’ve ever seen. A large copper baseplate feeds eight separate copper heat pipes, which then weave their way through two separate aluminium fin stacks. The copper is all nickel-plated to give it a pleasant silver sheen, and MSI uses fins with different heights supposedly to optimise airflow through them. A discrete close-quarters contact plate is also used to directly draw heat away from crucial VRM components, and impressively both this and the carbon backplate have integrated flat heat pipes. It really would be difficult to ask MSI for anything more from the cooling solution, though we do feel a card like this is always going to be better served by water-cooling. On that note, there is so far no official word from MSI or other third parties about water blocks appearing for this card.

The giant PCB plays host to a whopping 19 power phases, all controlled digitally for maximum accuracy. 16 serve the GPU (three more than Founders) and three serve the memory (same as Founders). Whereas most cards only offer a modicum of voltage control (i.e. only for the GPU cores), this one has separate controls for the GPU, memory, PCIe (PLL or PEXVDD), and 1V8 (1.8V) – or rather it will have these controls, because at the time of testing this functionality doesn’t work even in the latest ‘Beta 10’ version of MSI Afterburner.

On a related note, you’ll find voltage check points built into the PCB for each of these voltages, with four V check-point cables also supplied for taking advantage of these.

Graphics processor Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 1,350MHz (1,770MHz boost)
Pipeline 4,352 stream processors, 544 Tensor Cores, 68 RT Cores, 272 texture units, 88 ROPs
Memory 11GB GDDR6, 14Gbps effective
Bandwidth 616GB/s, 352-bit interface
Compatibility DirectX 12, Vulcan, OpenGL 4.5
Outputs 3 x DisplayPort 1. 4, 1 x dual-link DVI-D, 1 x HDMI 2.0b, 1 x USB-C VirtualLink
Power connections 3 x eight-pin PCIe, top-mounted
Size 328mm long, 143mm tall, triple-slot
Warranty Three years

Nvidia admits DLSS experience is suboptimal

Working on better quality at lower res.

February 19, 2019 | 10:57

Unreal Engine 4.

22 gets DirectX Raytracing support

In ‘early access’ form, anyway.

February 13, 2019 | 10:53

Battlefield V to get DLSS support in its next patch

Turing owners rejoice.

February 11, 2019 | 10:20

MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

Review: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z — Graphics

Nvidia’s new-and-improved GeForce Founders Edition has put AIB partners in a quandary. Creating a card that’s as sleek as the FE is easier said than done, and justifying a premium for a custom cooler is proving to be a tough nut to crack. What’s the answer? Well, on top-end SKUs, Nvidia’s partners can take the no-holds-barred approach with premium models that throw caution to the wind. Enter the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z.

This is the card for those who care not about cost, and simply want more of everything. While the reference Founders Edition occupies just two slots and measures a mere 267mm in length, MSI’s bad boy eats three slots for breakfast and extends to 340mm. It also happens to stand 160mm tall while tipping the scales at just over 1.85kg, but hey, that just means more card for your money, right?

And of course, we are talking a fair bit of money. £1,440, to be exact. Sounds ludicrous, but it’s actually cheaper than either the Asus ROG Strix OC, EVGA FTW3 Ultra Gaming or Zotac AMP! Extreme. The catch, and it’s one worth knowing about, is that the air-cooled Lightning Z is dearer than MSI’s own watercool-ready Sea Hawk EK X, available for £1,334. We’re of the opinion a heavily-overclocked 2080 Ti would benefit from liquid cooling, but we’re intrigued to see how the Lightning Z fares in terms of real-world speeds, temps and noise.

We’ll get to the all-important benchmarks shortly, but first, let’s talk about MSI’s new Lightning Z aesthetic. For 2019, it’s gold trim, RGB fans and a carbon backplate that not only looks the part but aids cooling and is sturdy enough to provide an impressive level of rigidity. Despite the hefty weight, the card exhibits hardly any sag when installed in our test platform, though if you’re worried about the weight, MSI does include a coordinating metal bracket as part of the bundle.

The gold highlights are a nice touch, though they don’t quite fit in with our test platform, but the jury is out on the RGB fans. MSI has added addressable LEDs to the tips of certain fan blades, resulting in cool effects that vary depending on both setting and fan speed, however there are two immediate drawbacks. Firstly, the central fan isn’t illuminated, which looks a little odd, and more importantly, MSI has switched off the ability for the fans to turn off when idle. Why? Because the lights wouldn’t look pretty if they happened to be stood still.

RGB fans on a graphics card are a bit of a mystery in most systems where you can’t actually see them, and as a triple-slot solution, the Lightning Z isn’t the easiest to mount vertically. Fortunately, it does look neat when installed horizontally. The RGB-backlit lightning bolts on the backplate are a nice touch, the vivid bar across the top is both bright and vibrant, and then there’s the OLED dashboard. This small display reads ‘Game On’ when temperature is below 60ºC or ‘Good Job’ when temps climb higher, and can also be used to display live memory usage or GPU frequency when configured via the Dragon Center app. If you prefer, it’s even possible to upload your own image or animation.

MSI obviously isn’t even trying to be as sleek as the Founders Edition. Lightning Z is about as ostentatious as they come, but that’s no bad thing for those users who crave maximum overclocking potential and heightened out-the-box frequencies. With that in mind, MSI’s heatsink is outfitted with eight heatpipes, a heatspreader covers the MOSFETs and vital components, and there’s another heatpipe lining the carbon backplate. Not to mention three of the firm’s best Torx 3.0 fans.

Keeping the goodies coming, MSI’s custom PCB sports a trio of eight-pin power connectors, so you’re never going to be short on juice, and the 19-phase delivery subsystem is about as impressive as it gets. All this suggests a tasty factory overclock and Lightning Z obliges by shipping with a boost clock of 1,770MHz, representing a near-15 per cent hike on the GPU’s default speed of 1,545MHz. The 11GB of GDDR6 memory, however, operates at the standard 14Gbps.

The out-the-box speeds are among the highest we’ve seen, but the idea is for enthusiasts to go further. To that end, there are dedicated voltage-check points for GPU, memory, PLL and 1V8, and though unavailable at the time of writing, MSI tells us its Afterburner overclocking utility will be updated to support overvoltage on all four fronts for maximum wiggle room. There’s even a dedicated BIOS to help you tinker. Switch over to the secondary ‘LN2’ mode and boost clock falls back to 1,545MHz, but the power limit rises to 350W, paving the way for you to experiment. Strangely, a 0dB fan mode is available in the LN2 BIOS.

Other than the three-storey configuration, there are no surprises in terms of I/O, with MSI sticking to the default selection of HDMI, USB Type-C and a trio of DisplayPort. It’s a monster card alright, let’s now run some numbers to see if Lightning Z can leave the Founders Edition trembling in its wake.

MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z — review and test

Introduction
Just recently, our resource published a couple of notes about the upcoming flagship of MSI video cards, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z — pictures and specifications. But today we are posting a full-fledged review and tests of this TOP; and the exclusive approach of the manufacturer in all aspects. It should be mentioned that the Lightning line is represented by two models, the first with the letter “Z”, the second without it, the difference of which lies only in the factory overclocking of the GPU: 1770 MHz and 1575 MHz, respectively; memory somehow strange again «bypassed» side. In all other respects, the cards are absolutely identical, well, except for the price. nine0004

Table of contents:

MSI’s RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z card is priced at no less than $1600, which is a kind of record at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the chips and bells and whistles provided by MSI will be able to justify such means: the TRI-FROZR cooler, the info display, the cool Phantom of Lightning RGB lighting, of course, really top-end overclocking and a la carbon back panel. As well as compare performance with NVIDIA’s Founders Edition.

Other custom options on RTX 2080 Ti:

ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti OC Edition
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Duke 11G OC
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio
Zotac RTX 2080 Ti AMP
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti XC Ultra Gaming

Specifications

nine0054 799 $

nine0054 4352

	Price	Shaders	Blocks	Core frequency	Acceleration	Memory frequency	GPU	Transistors	Memory
GTX 1080	470 $	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB GDDR5 256 bit
RX Vega 64	570 $	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB HBM2 2048 bit
GTX 1080 Ti	675 $	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12200M	11GB GDDR5X 352bit
RTX 2070	$499	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB GDDR6 256 bit
RTX 2070 FE	$599	2304	64	1410 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB GDDR6 256 bit
RTX 2080	699 $	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB GDDR6 256 bit
RTX 2080 FE	2944	64	1515 MHz	1800 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB GDDR6 256 bit
RTX 2080 Ti	1000 $	4352	64	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB GDDR6 352 bit
RTX 2080 Ti FE	1200 $	64	1350 MHz	1635 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB GDDR6 352 bit
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z	1600 $	4352	64	1350 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB GDDR6 352 bit

Packaging and contents

Scope of supply:

itself

Stylized Reinforcing Bracket
6-pin to 8-pin adapter
Voltage cables
User Manual
Driver disc

Card

The card looks simply gorgeous, the main message of the color theme of the Tri-Frozr cooler is “carbon” with gold accents, which is really impressive, it simply exudes quality. Pay attention to the Torx version 3.0 fans, the side versions of which differ from the central version, both in size and in the presence of additional flaps on the blades and RGB lighting. The backplate is made of carbon-like material. With dimensions of 328 x 143 x 63 mm, the device may not fit in some compact cases. It is worth mentioning the weight, which reaches almost 2 kg — 1815 grams. nineThe 0004

RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z features fully adjustable RGB lighting on the side as well as on the backplate, where stylized zipper cutouts add to the theme of the product.

Three slots are required to install the card (full 3 slots).

Connection options:

x3 DisplayPort 1.4a
x1 HDMI 2.0b
x1 VirtualLink

With the «Turing» microarchitecture, NVIDIA has also updated the display engine to support DisplayPort 1.4a with Display Stream Compression (DSC) from VESA. This combination allows you to support 8K@30Hz using a single cable or 8K@60Hz with DSC enabled. For the context of DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard published in April 2018.

At CES 2019, NVIDIA officially announced that all of their graphics cards will now support VESA Adaptive Sync (aka FreeSync). Although only a small number of FreeSync monitors have been fully tested with G-SYNC, users can enable this feature in the NVIDIA Control Panel, whether the monitor is certified or not.

The auxiliary power configuration consists of three 8-pin connectors that offer a total of 525 watts. The manufacturer recommends a power supply with a minimum power of 650 watts. nine0004

With Turing, NVIDIA is using NVLink as the physical layer for its next generation of SLI technology. NVLink provides enough bandwidth for multi-GPU rendering of 8K 60Hz, 4K 120Hz. This is a point-to-point link between GPUs, so latencies will be lower than data transfer via the PCI-Express bus.

MSI couldn’t bypass the BIOS on Lightning products and provides two to choose from, although the second BIOS does not seem to be «quiet» with low turntable curves at all, no, it is simply optimized for liquid nitrogen. nine0004

There are four ports on the back of the card for measuring voltages with a digital multimeter.

The front (at installation) side has a small information board — a display that is initially configured to play only some of the default animations, however, the user can configure the information display to display key parameters such as temperature, as well as custom animations.

Teardown

Two 8mm and six 6mm tubes thread through a ton of heatsink fins, probably the most efficient thermal solution of any RTX 2080 Ti card I’ve tested so far. nine0004

As soon as the main part of the cooler is removed, the black molded base board is exposed, which is involved in cooling the VRAM chips and VRM circuits.

A very interesting solution turned out to be a rear pseudo-carbon socket, the resistance of which is below 5 ohms. Attempts to scratch this material led to the idea that the socket was definitely not made of metal, and certainly not of plastic. By the way, on its reverse side adjacent to the PCB, there was a place for a copper tube with thermal pads, which, most likely, is also designed to take an active part in cooling important elements on the reverse side of the board itself. Without the backplate, the temperature is about 1 degree higher. nine0004

Users planning to disassemble should definitely take into account the thin cable that runs from the OLED display to the circuit board. Do not try to get it right away, first you need to lift the black plastic contact lock up, and only then disconnect it.

The next page will have a more detailed examination of the PCB layout and VRM configuration.

PCB Pictures

These pictures are for volt modders and people who want to see finer details on a PCB. nine0004

PCB analysis

The GPU VRM circuitry is 16-phase and is controlled by a Monolithic Power Systems MP2888A controller.

In turn, the memory VRM appears to be 3-phase and is controlled by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2884A controller.

MSI could not help but use GDDR6 memory chips manufactured by Samsung, bearing the model number K4Z80325BC-HC14. After all, they have much better overclocking potential than the Micron chips that are used in most graphics cards based on the RTX 2080 Ti. The memory is designed to operate at a frequency of 1750 MHz (14 Gb / s effective GDDR6 speed), which in fact will demonstrate manual overclocking. nine0004

NVIDIA TU102 is the largest «Turing» chip manufactured in 12nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with 18.6 billion transistors and 754mm² die area.

Test configuration

Test configuration — VGA Rev. 2019.1
Processor	Intel Core i7-8700K @ 4.8 GHz (Coffee Lake, 12MB Cache)
Motherboard	ASUS Maximus X Hero Intel Z370
RAM	G.SKILL 16 GB Trident-Z DDR4 @ 3867 MHz 18-19-19-39
Accumulator	2x 960 GB SSD
Power:	Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 850W
Cooler	Cryorig R1 Universal 2x 140mm fan
Operating system	Windows 10 64-bit October 2018 Update
Drivers	NVIDIA: 417. 71WHQL AMD: Radeon 19.1.1 Beta
Display	Acer CB240HYKbmjdpr 24″ 3840×2160

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Battlefield V

Civilization VI

Darksiders 3

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Divinity Original Sin II

Dragon Quest XI

F1 2018

Far Cry 5

Ghost Recon Wildlands

Grand Theft Auto V

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Hitman 2

Just Cause 4

Monster Hunter World

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Rainbow Six: Siege

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Strange Brigade

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Wolfenstein II

Performance Summary

Performance/Watt

Performance/$

Power consumption

Changing the VRM configuration could not but lead to an increase in consumption even in non-game modes, although the absolute values are not significant here.

What’s actually surprising is that average gaming power consumption isn’t much different from the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition — I expected a lot more. But if you look at the peak values, it becomes clear that MSI has increased the power limit for its monster a lot, trying to offer extreme lovers to squeeze the maximum of additional performance. nine0004

The maximum power in Furmark’s test fully justifies the presence of a third 8-pin connector, as the consumption in this mode exceeds 400 watts.

Temperatures

GPU temperatures (comparison)
	Idle	Load	Gaming Noise
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z	40°C	74°C	36 dB
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti XC Ultra Gaming	50°C	71°C	35 dB
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming	42°C	62°C	38 dB
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming (OC BIOS)	42°C	64°C	40 dB
Zotac RTX 2080 Ti AMP	37°C	65°C	39 dB
ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX	37°C	65°C	36 dB
ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX (quiet BIOS)	46°C	75°C	31 dB
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio	53°C	74°C	36 dB
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Duke	53°C	71°C	34 dB
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition	42°C	77°C	37 dB

Noise level

MSI has removed the idle stop function of the RTX 2080 Ti Lightning, but with 26 dB the card will merge with other system cooling components. However, given the gigantic heatsink, it remains a mystery why MSI did not dare to use a stop fan.

Taking into account the specialization of the card, and looking at the noise levels in gaming, we can safely say that everything is in order. Yes, relatively little success compared to the Founders Edition, but you should remember about the top-end overclocking out of the box. nine0004

Overclocking

The maximum manual VRAM overclock of our sample was 2090 MHz (+19%), and the GPU received +115 MHz to the base frequency, thereby increasing the maximum Boost level from 1995 MHz to 2100 MHz (+5%).

nine0050

	Max. GPU Clock	Max. Memory Clock
Maximum overclocking (comparison)
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z	2100 MHz	2090 MHz
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming	2115 MHz	2010 MHz
EVGA RTX 2080 Ti XC Ultra Gaming	2070 MHz	1960 MHz
Zotac RTX 2080 Ti AMP	2145 MHz	2000 MHz
ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX	2115 MHz	2065 MHz
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio	2085 MHz	2005 MHz
MSI RTX 2080 Ti Duke	2115 MHz	2005 MHz
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition	2110 MHz	1945 MHz

Overclocking Efficiency

Using the obtained clock speeds, a short Unigine Heaven test was run to evaluate the gain.

Actual, actual gain in 3D performance from manual overclocking was 9.8%!

Clock speeds

To perform this kind of test, the card is first allowed to idle for some time to reach thermal equilibrium. This is followed by an instantaneous 100% gaming load and key parameters are recorded, which gives a rough idea of how the card behaves when its fan speed increases at the same time as the temperature rises. When the temperature reaches a stable point, that is, its increase does not occur within 2 minutes, the load stops and data is recorded during the cooling process. nine0004

Volt-Frequency Analysis

The graphics card uses NVIDIA’s dynamic overclocking engine, GPU Boost 4.0, which will adjust frequency and voltage based on load, temperature, and other related factors.

The graph below shows all combinations of GPU frequency and GPU voltage at 1920×1080 resolution. Constructed points allow you to arrange them to indicate more commonly used values. Light colored markers indicate that the frequency/voltage combination is rarely used, and darker dots more often. nine0004

Frequency Profile

	GPU frequency	Memory frequency	Clock GPU Voltage (measured)
Desktop	300 MHz	101 MHz	0.712 V
Multi-Monitor	300 MHz	101 MHz	0.712 V
Blu-ray Playback	330 MHz	101 MHz	0.712 V
3D Load	1560-1995 MHz	1750 MHz	0.906-1.068 V

Power limit

All NVIDIA graphics cards have been given a BIOS-defined power limit to limit power consumption by adjusting the Boost frequency accordingly. There is also a second limit that determines the maximum TDP setting limit for custom overclocking, i.e. how far the power slider can go. In the second chart, the value (+xx%) shows the percentage increase from the tested card’s default power limit to the highest manual setting available — the slider’s adjustment range. nine0004

Rating & Review

According to MSI, the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z will be priced at $1,600.

Best box overclocking

Significant performance improvement over Founders Edition

Much faster than GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Significantly increased power limit

Upgraded VRM

Very energy efficient for gaming

Additional temperature sensors

Stunning RGB lighting

Info display

Voltage measuring points

RTX Technology

Dual BIOS with LN2 support

Deep learning feature set

DLSS new efficient method AA

Carbon backplate with copper tube

Anthem/Battlefield V to choose from

Support for VESA Adaptive-Sync, HDMI 2. 0b, DisplayPort 1.4, 8K

Very high price

nine0012 Without blocking fans
Memory without overclocking

Requires Windows 10 Fall 2018 Update

MSI’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z graphics accelerator is a true flagship without any exaggeration. This is truly the first custom product that offers a significant performance boost among all six RTX 2080 Ti-based cards tested so far. All previously reviewed models offered at best 4% additional performance over the Founders Edition, and here as much as 8%, and that’s out of the box. Now let’s quickly compare the latest implementation of Lightning Z with the rest of the most powerful solutions at the moment. The younger brother in the face of the RTX 2080 is 38% behind, the top card of the last generation GTX 1080 Ti is 51% behind, and the best from AMD, Vega 64, is exactly twice as much, while consuming the same amount. Thus, in the aggregate of the results shown, this is a unique member of the RTX 2080 Ti family of cards, recommended for gamers who want to get 60 frames per second in the latest games, setting 4K resolution and the highest detail settings. nine0004

The new monstrous Tri-Frozr 3-slot cooler with three fans does a great job of keeping temperatures and noise levels down. True, MSI deprived the flagship of the function of stopping the fans, but here the key point is rather the specifics of the card, because it was 100% designed for overclockers, and not to achieve record low levels of noise and temperatures in gaming; in general, they are all right. Quite curious was the decision of the back panel of a material similar to carbon fiber, but most likely a mixture of epoxy and carbon. However, it also proved to be glued to the cooling functionality of the device, offering an interesting solution with thermal pads and a copper tube, although the gain was only 1°C (with and without a backplate), MSI still deserves credit for the originality of the idea. And who knows, maybe soon in this «area» (the reverse side of the PCB) there will be some breakthrough. nine0004

The $1,600 MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z is definitely not cheap, but it’s not the most expensive, of course, only when compared to other options that cost over $1,000. Take for example the Titan RTX, which is slightly faster just because of more shaders, costs $2,500, so there’s still some headroom. Yes, the more affordable RTX 2080 Ti products start at $1,300, but they don’t boast that kind of factory overclocking and come with much weaker cooling systems. Many overclockers will find the implementation of MSI RGB questionable, however, perhaps this will contribute to the emergence of an entirely new layer of clients. In any case, money will not be a deciding factor for hypothetical Lightning Z buyers.

Acknowledgment for reviewing and testing W1zzard.

Sincerely, procompsoft.ru

Where to buy