Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 vs. RTX 2080: Which GPU Is Right for You?
Nvidia’s hyped-up RTX graphics cards have finally hit laptops, but do they live up to the high standards that the company has set? A performance boost is always welcome, and the concept of ray tracing is incredibly intriguing, but do those perks make it worth spending hundreds of extra dollars on your gaming notebook? That’s what we’re here to find out.
In order to accurately test the performance difference between an RTX 2080 and a GTX 1080 GPU, we’re using the GTX-powered 2018 model of the MSI GT75 Titan and its RTX-powered 2019 successor. They’re each outfitted with an overclockable 2.9-GHz Intel Core i9-8950HK processor, 32GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD with a 1TB 7,200-rpm hard drive. The only difference between them is in their GPUs: the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 with 8GB of VRAM vs. the RTX 2080 with 8GB of VRAM.
Here’s how they stack up.
GTX 1080 vs. RTX 2080: Benchmark results
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| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GTX 1080 | RTX 2080 | Premium Gaming Laptop Average |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider (Very High, 1080p) | 67 fps | 76 fps | 61 fps |
| Hitman (Ultra, 1080p) | 95 fps | 140 fps | 93 fps |
| Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Ultra, 1080p) | 98 fps | 112 fps | 83 fps |
| Metro: Last Light (Ultra, 1080p) | 80 fps | 95 fps | 62 fps |
Nvidia RTX Features and Price Difference
The two key features that Nvidia’s RTX chips boast are ray tracing and DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling).
Ray-tracing technology allows any source of in-game light to mimic the properties of a light source in real life, resulting in photo-realistic shadows and reflections.
Meanwhile, DLSS is artificial intelligence that actively adjusts the resolution in a game to maximize frame rates in areas where resolution isn’t as important and to maximize resolution when the scene calls for it. For example, if you’re sprinting in a first-person shooter, you don’t need high resolution for a hazy scene, but if you’re stopped in the middle of a vibrant forest, the higher resolution will be utilized.
The GTX version of the GT75 Titan costs $3,999, while the RTX version runs for $4,199, which means you’re paying an extra $200 to add some ray tracing and DLSS to your life. However, that price also accounts for an upgrade to a 4K display.
While this technology may very well shape the future of gaming, it’s not fully here yet. Ray tracing is currently available in only one game, Battlefield V, and will have support down the line from another 10 games, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus and Control.
DLSS is also available in Battlefield V and will be supported in 19 more titles, such as Anthem, PUBG and Hitman 2.
RTX may be worth getting solely so you’ll be ready for this advanced tech in future games, but are the increased benchmarks worth the purchase now?
Rise of the Tomb Raider
On the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on Very High at 1080p, the RTX 2080 hit 76 frames per second, surpassing the 67 fps from the GTX 1080, which marks a 13.4 percent improvement. The average for premium gaming laptops ($2,000 and up) is 61 fps.
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| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GTX 1080 | RTX 2080 | Premium Gaming Laptop Average |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider (Very High, 1080p) | 67 fps | 76 fps | 61 fps |
Hitman
The RTX 2080 scored an impressive 140 fps on the Hitman benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), whereas the GTX 1080 was stuck in the double digits, at 95 fps.
MSI’s latest GT75 Titan improved over last year’s model by a strong 47.4 percent and crushed the 93-fps category average.
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| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GTX 1080 | RTX 2080 | Premium Gaming Laptop Average |
| Hitman (Ultra, 1080p) | 95 fps | 140 fps | 93 fps |
Middle Earth: Shadow of War
The GT75 Titan showed a much smaller performance increase of just 14.3 percent on the Middle-earth: Shadow of War benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), as the RTX 2080 ran the test at 112 fps compared to the GTX 1080’s 98 fps. However, they both made it past the 83-fps premium gaming laptop average.
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| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GTX 1080 | RTX 2080 | Premium Gaming Laptop Average |
| Middle-earth: Shadow of War (Ultra, 1080p) | 98 fps | 112 fps | 83 fps |
Metro: Last Light
On the Metro: Last Light benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), the RTX 2080 nailed 95 fps, soaring over the 62-fps category average and achieving an 18.8 percent increase from the GTX 1080’s 80 fps.
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| Row 0 — Cell 0 | GTX 1080 | RTX 2080 | Premium Gaming Laptop Average |
| Metro: Last Light (Ultra, 1080p) | 80 fps | 95 fps | 62 fps |
Which Nvidia GPU Should You Get?
When ray tracing and DLSS inevitably make their way across the gaming landscape, the difference between having an RTX or GTX GPU on your gaming laptop will become much more apparent.
The problem is we currently don’t have even a handful of games that make use of this technology.
Still, with an average 15.5 percent increase in frame rates and the occasional 47.4 percent outlier, RTX graphics offer a solid improvement over GTX — enough so that the RTX 2080 could be worth an extra $200, depending on how much you value the performance boost.
Overall, the RTX 2080 offers more features and a better value than the GTX 1080, especially if you want to future-proof for the next generation of PC games.
Credit: Laptop Mag; Nvidia
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Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and form of a laptop as well as all sorts of cool tech.
You can find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a hoarder’s dream of laptops, and when he navigates his way out to civilization, you can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He’s the best at every game and he just doesn’t lose. That’s why you’ll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-like challenge.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 vs. GTX 1080
With the hype surrounding ray tracing, artificial intelligence, and Nvidia’s claims of up to six times the performance improvement, the RTX 2080 is an enticing GPU. If you have an older GPU, the decision may be easier, but gamers who already have last generation’s GTX 1080 flagship will have to weigh any potential gains against the cost.
Contents
- Performance
- Features
- The GTX 1080 is far more practical
Even if you’re not looking at playing games with ray tracing, there’s still plenty of upside with the new RTX 2080 cards once developers add more support for the card.
With the RTX chips, current titles will see modest performance gains, but if you’re upgrading your entire setup, complete with a 4K gaming monitor, you’ll also be able to benefit from smart features like upscaling and improved image quality. All that comes at a cost, and we’ll help you decide whether these gains are worth the $250 premium for the RTX 2080.
Performance
Nvidia
Nvidia claims that the RTX 2080 can deliver up to 50 percent performance improvement when compared to older GTX 1080 cards, but our results were mixed. Although the RTX 2080 easily beats the GTX 1080 in our benchmarks, it didn’t quite top the GTX 1080 Ti. The RTX 2080 fared better than the non-Ti GTX 1080 in our 3DMark Sky Diver and Time Spy tests, but results for the Fire Strike tests were within range. When compared to the GTX 1080 Ti, the results delivered by the RTX 2080 was within range. The higher Time Spy results achieved by the RTX card is significant, given that this particular benchmark evaluates DirectX 12 gaming.
When we compared the three cards using gaming tests, such as Civilization VI or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, we found similar results, with the RTX 2080 besting the GTX 1080, but performance was either slightly worse or on par with the GTX 1080 Ti. For example, in Deus Ex, the RTX 2080 scored 70, 66, and 38 FPS using the game’s Ultra settings on 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. Meanwhile, the Ti variant of the GTX 1080 generated better scores of 98 and 70 FPS on lower resolutions, and it matches the RTX 2080’s score of 38 FPS on 4K.
The non-Ti variant performed slightly worse with scores of 26 and 58 FPS on the lower resolutions, but the GTX 1080 does better than the RTX 2080 with a score of 71 FPS at 4K, suggesting that the performance of the RTX 2080 in Deus Ex falls somewhere between the GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti. Results were also similar with our Civilization VI and Battlefield 1 tests.
Until we see more games developers take advantage of the RTX chip’s new capabilities, we can likely expect the RTX 2080 to perform somewhere between the base GTX 1080 and the higher end GTX 1080 Ti.
Once games take advantage of features like ray tracing, deep learning super sampling (DLSS), and other AI-enabled improvements, then can we expect the RTX 2080 to show even better performance results. At launch, there won’t be any new games that take advantage of ray tracing, but 25 titles will come with DLSS. When DLSS is enabled, gamers should see smoother graphics.
Features
| RTX 2080 | GTX 1080 | |
| Architecture | Turing | Pascal |
| CUDA cores | 2,944 | 2,560 |
| Base speed | 1,515MHz | 1,607MHz |
| Boost speed | 1,800MHz | 1,733MHx |
| Boost speed (FE model) | 1,635MHz | 1,800MHz |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR5X |
| Memory speed | 14Gbps | 10Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 448G | 320Gbps |
With only modest real-world performance gains on current titles compared to the older GTX 1080 cards, early adopters of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 are essentially investing in Nvidia’s vision for the future of graphics.
This vision is delivered by the new Turing architecture, which fuses next-generation shaders with real-time ray tracing and all-new AI capabilities. This should translate to greater details, more realistic scenes, and smoother rendering with the RTX chip.
For gamers who already own a high-end GTX 10-series card, ray tracing will be the biggest draw to Nvidia’s new cards. Ray tracing is a feature that Nvidia has been working on for ten years, and it allows game developers to render scenes with photorealism in real-time by showing how light is absorbed, refracted, or reflected off of objects. This cinematic effect is popular on computer-generated imagery in movies, and now it’s being done dynamically throughout a game thanks to the built-in RT Cores.
Because Nvidia packaged a dense number of cores on the RTX series — the RTX 2080 ships with 46 RT cores and 368 Tensor Cores — the die is also considerably larger than the GTX series, measuring 754mm compared to 471mm. With this much power, Nvidia had to add a second fan to the RTX cards to keep things running cool.
The RTX 2080 supports dual-8K 60 FPS HDR displays. While the resolution won’t be mainstream for some time to come, native HDR support is beneficial for gamers to spot more details in shadows. If you’re buying a VR headset for the first time, the RTX supports a single-cable VRLink connection, allowing video, data, and power to flow through a USB-C cable.
The GTX 1080 is far more practical
Nvidia’s RTX 2080 — along with the RTX 2080 Ti — represents Nvidia’s gaming flagship GPU at the moment, and the card’s pricing reflects its status in the lineup. The GeForce 2080 Founders Edition is currently priced at $800, with pricing for the RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition stretching to $1,200. That’s a lot, even for the top-of-the-line models. By comparison, the 1080 Ti debuted at just $700 at launch.
The GTX 1080 Founders Edition currently retails for $550, representing a $250 savings compared to its RTX counterpart. If you can wait, prices for the RTX series are bound to drop further once the RTX series ships.