MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio Review

While we got our first look at Nvidia's new SUPER cards three weeks ago, in the form of the 2060 and 2070 SUPER, we've had to wait until now for the 2080 SUPER to be officially released. This review has looked at MSI's custom Gaming X Trio card, but if you want to see what you get with the Nvidia Founders Edition, a full review of that card is over here.

Starting with the obvious, MSI has simply taken the same card design from its 2070 SUPER Gaming X Trio (and original RTX 2080, for that matter) and re-used it for the 2080 SUPER. That means it is a big triple-fan, triple-slot graphics card and MSI has even included a support bracket for it in the box. The PCB design is also the same, except now the 2080 SUPER uses a 10+2 phase power delivery, up from 8+2 with the 2070 SUPER.

Unfortunately, just as we found with the 2070 SUPER Gaming X Trio, MSI hasn't used this opportunity to really go ‘balls to the wall' with a factory overclock – instead, this card is rated just 30MHz faster than the reference card, with its 1845MHz boost clock. In the real world, thanks to GPU Boost, we saw frequencies settle at 1965MHz, but that is still only 50MHz or-so faster than the Founders Edition.

What that means is, there is very little to be gained in terms of raw performance by going with the MSI card. Across our set of benchmarks, it proved just 2% faster on average than the Founders Edition, meaning frame rates were typically just 2-3FPS higher when gaming at 1440p. Up against the vanilla 2080, the MSI is 5% faster across the board.

If we compare this card to the 2070 SUPER Founders Edition now, it's on average 13% faster, though that is reduced to just 10% when comparing to the MSI 2070 SUPER. Up against AMD's RX 5700 XT, the MSI 2080 SUPER is 17% faster.

So while gaming performance may be pretty much the same as the Founders Edition, MSI does make good strides when looking at temperatures and acoustics. The Gaming X Trio runs 7C cooler than Founders, for instance, while it is also noticeably quieter – producing around 39dB of noise during our testing. These are definitely the two biggest selling points for MSI.

Still, even with those improvements taken into account, we simply cannot recommend RTX 2080 SUPER – custom card or not, it simply makes no sense from a value perspective. In fact, with this card's higher price tag – it has a UK MSRP of £752.99 – it looks even worse value than the Founders Edition.

Let's put it this way – this MSI card is just 13% faster than the RTX 2070 SUPER Founders Edition, yet it costs 59% more. Let that sink in – 59% more! That's almost an extra £280 for a 13% improvement. It's laughable, really. Up against the 5700 XT, things look even more ridiculous, as you paying just shy of double the cost of a 5700 XT, for 17% improved performance.

I don't want to be too harsh on MSI here, they have built a good card and while it is disappointing to see another meagre factory overclock, it runs cooler and quieter than the Founders Edition. It's just that, with 2080 SUPER priced the way it is, I really cannot recommend any 2080 SUPER card to our audience. The price increase over 2070 SUPER is just not at all worth the extra performance gained by stepping up a tier.

If you are interested in the MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio, we found it on sale for £758.99 from Overclockers UK HERE. It also on sale for £739.99 from CCL HERE.

Pros

• Runs cool.
• Very quiet.
• Stylish backplate.
• Memory overclocked very well.

Cons

• Very poor value compared to 2070 SUPER.
• Disappointing factory overclock.
• Power draw is higher than 2080 Ti.

KitGuru says: MSI's Gaming X Trio is a good card and improves on the Founders Edition in every way, even if the factory overclock is quite weak. That said, pricing for the 2080 SUPER means it represents very poor value money and potential buyers should look at the 2070 SUPER instead.

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