Conclusion
...what's jarring for EVGA, on this side of the pond at least, is the retail price of £850-plus.EVGA comes locked and loaded to the RTX 2080 party with four cards that cover the $750, $800, $850 and $900 price points. Such product differentiation is achieved by running different core speeds, using larger coolers, or in the case of the FTW3, an all-in-house design.
The leader of the non-custom spec is the XC Ultra Gaming, built on that Founders Edition PCB but featuring a hulking 2.75-slot cooler. With Nvidia keeping things tight, EVGA ups the core boost clock to 1,815MHz, or just above that FE, though real-world results are almost identical. That means superb performance at QHD and very passable numbers at UHD.
There's little doubt that the XC Gaming is a solid card. It carries simple RGB lighting, the fans switch off at low loads, it runs about 10°C cooler, and is marginally quieter than the reference board. All good stuff.
What's jarring for EVGA, on this side of the pond at least, is the retail price of £850-plus, putting it over £100 dearer than you know what. This fact is all the more worrying for enthusiasts because many already feel the RTX 2080 to be priced too high.
Nvidia is putting its cohort of board partners into a tight spot by, we imagine, limiting their margins through high buy-in pricing. EVGA probably can't turn a profit at a retail £750, so we can only imagine that any RTX 2080 value will arrive when AIBs are allowed to produce their own PCBs at a price more amenable than buying from Nvidia directly. EVGA is promising us some interesting promos in the near future, so stay tuned for those.
However, it's these current economic machinations that take the shine off what is otherwise a decent, well-implemented card, but at the current £850 asking price we'd go for the Founders Edition and buy a few leading games with the change.
Future-proof architecture
Runs cooler than FE
Quiet under load
Occupies three slots
Not as pretty as FE
EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra Gaming
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The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra Gaming graphics card is available from Scan Computers.
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