MSI RTX Gaming X Trio 2080 and 2080Ti Review

MSI RTX Gaming X Trio 2080

Sometimes if you’re not buying the absolute top model you are made to feel small and insignificant by the packaging. As if the designers want to remind you that you’ve compromised. Not so with the RTX 2080 Trio. You’d struggle to tell it apart from the 2080Ti. We could almost turn this into a spot the difference competition. If we assume that the letters Ti aren’t counted we can only spot one.

  

Just like the Ti the regular 2080 sports three TORX 3.0 fans on a monochrome shroud with carbon accents and four RGB lighting areas all able to be controlled by the MSI Mystic Light. Particularly eagle-eyed readers might just about be able to spot the top of the wave fan design peeking through the gaps in the 14 fan blades. Three fans and a much more substantial cooler should hopefully free up even more performance than we saw from the reference nVidia cards, without making us deaf in the process.

  
  

At the business end of the card we have three DisplayPort 1.4 ports, an HDMI 2.0b and a USB Type C connector, should you own a VR headset in need of somewhere to plug in. The jury might be out on whether VR will ever really become the default gaming standard, but there is no doubt that the best headsets combine with the games that are perfectly designed to bring an experience like no other. Be glad we can stop playing Elite and PCars long enough to review things for you.

  

Backplates have been a fairly new addition to the GPU world and are usually black, so it’s very nice to see this brushed aluminium finish on the MSI Gaming X Trio cardss.

  
  

As we said on the previous page, the power of the 2080Ti has been beefed up, but the regular RTX 2080 is still capable of pulling 375W from the PSU, so it shouldn’t be left breathless.

  

Curiously the move across to a gold dragon, and indeed gold True Gaming moniker, is one which blends in very well with the card. It’s subtle enough to not dominate things, but classy enough to remind the peasants that your GPU costs more than most peoples first car.