Published: December 20, 2019 | Source: ASUS | Author: Tom Logan

ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti White Edition Review

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Conclusion

It’s products like the Strix RTX 2080 Ti White Edition that make us pleased we’re an independent website without an editor demanding a word count. If the regular black Strix OC makes you reach for the credit card, then this is faster, and in white. Pretty much the fastest air cooled Turing GPU card we’ve tested, with only the water-cooled Gigabyte Aorus Extreme found beating it in our graphs. It’s everything you would expect from an ASUS ROG product.

You want more?

ASUS deserve some plaudits for understanding that not all users want a black graphics card, but neither should those who prefer the white hue in their system be short-changed with an average product. So often if you’re determined to have a particular colour you are limited in product choice, and therefore the manufacturers know they have a captive audience and so don’t really make the effort. For example, no matter how amazing Noctua fans are we’re convinced they’d sell more if they dispensed with the brown, but if you want a silent system you get brown fans that don’t match with anything. They know their target audience places much weight on the fans, and thus they don’t bother with the colour.

ASUS could have taken the same route with the White Edition RTX 2080 Ti, but instead their design team have gone all in on producing a card which has very carefully selected Turing GPUs and overclocks like a freaking lunatic. In fact we’d go so far as to say that the pendulum has swung the other way, in that rather than forcing those who like white to accept an average product, the blistering performance is such that if you demand absolute frames per second you might be forced to have a white GPU in your rig. Out of the box it’s blazing fast and in the upper echelons of our graph at stock, but it’s extremely easy to overclock and the DirectCU cooler so good that, when overclocked, the average boost clock leads to it sit atop the vast majority of our graphs, being only occasionally ousted from the top spot by a card with a 240 radiator bolted onto it. A quick look into any case besides the Corsair 1000D shows that the Aorus Extreme Waterforce forces you to place the radiator at the front, pushing hot air into your case, whereas the ASUS Strix White Edition uses it’s air-cooled prowess to keep the card cool without forcing you into a particular setup.

If you want a white graphics card then the ASUS Strix RTX 2080 Ti White Edition will make you grin with its insane performance. If you want the best performance you’ll be just as pleased and, if you want a quiet and cool card, it ticks those boxes too. Yes there is a price premium to pay, but the RTX 2080 Ti is already eye-wateringly expensive so a little extra on top for the very best one around is a small price to pay. For its outstanding performance in every measurable regard the ASUS Strix RTX 2080 Ti White Edition wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

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