Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super Video Card Review

Founders Edition video cards like the RTX 2080 Super are special versions built and sold by NVIDIA.  These cards are the same as the ones you can buy from major retailers like Best Buy and can also obtained from board partners like EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, etc.. 

One of the most distinguishing features of the NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition is the cooling solution.  This extremely well built cooler features dual fans and aluminum body.  The center section with the logo has a mirror finish and the logo across the top lights up.  Sadly this card does not exhaust outside your case and based on my testing it LOVES to get hot so, pro tip make sure your case vents well.

Flipping the card around will show you the unique cast aluminum back plate that is held in place by a figurative ton of screws.  Unlike with previous GTX edition cards the backplate features a number of thermal pads to soak up excess heat from the PCB, GPU and VRM. 

Video output is comprised of a single HDMI and three Display Port connections.  Four of these can be used at the same time allowing you to run 3-way surround and still have a spare monitor for use outside of the game.  You may also notice a USB Type C connection near the bottom.  This is your Virtual-link connection for certain VR headsets.

SLI is possible on the RTX 2080 Super but is no longer using the traditional SLI fingers that we have all grown to love.  Instead the cards use the professional based and much larger NVLink.  This is a linking technology similar to SLI but offers more bandwidth and currently limits RTX cards to 2-Way configurations.  As with most SLI setups you’ll want to plan your build accordingly and pick cards that are the same height and while the original intent for SLI was to give you a performance upgrade path the modern take is to get two cards at the same time given that finding additional cards can be difficult.

On the positive though, you can use any NVLink bridge to link your RTX 2080 Super or can run a single card and hide the connector under the surprisingly stylish cover..