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Nvidia reveals new line of ‘Super’ GeForce RTX graphics cards

Nvidia reveals new line of ‘Super’ GeForce RTX graphics cards

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The Super line will replace standard RTX cards over time

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Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge

Nvidia’s high-end RTX line is getting three new additions today in the form of a new variant of gaming-focused graphics cards the chipmaker is calling “Super.” As detailed in numerous rumors and leaks over the last month or so, the RTX 2060, 2070, and 2080 desktop cards will all have Super versions. The cards offer modest speed bumps while maintaining the same price point as the current line of RTX cards, which first hit the market last fall and introduced new visual fidelity and lighting features to PC gaming like real-time ray tracing.

According to Nvidia, the Super cards offer, on average, about 15 percent gains in speed over their non-Super editions, with the upper reaches of the cards’ performance levels achieving between 20 and 25 percent gains depending on your rig. For the RTX 2060 Super, you’ll also be getting 8GB of memory instead of just 6GB, while the 2080 Super will have a superior memory speed of 15.5Gbps over the standard’s 14Gbps.

Nvidia’s RTX Super cards offer modest speed bumps at existing prices

Nvidia is keeping the prices the same for the 2070 and 2080 lines, so Super versions of those cards will go for $499 and $699, respectively, while the 2060 Super will slot in now at $399, or about $50 more than a standard 2060. The 2060 and 2070 cards launch on July 9th, and the 2080 Super comes out on July 23rd. As part of the sale, Nvidia is also offering a bundle on RTX Super cards with two free games that take advantage of ray tracing: Remedy Entertainment’s Control and Bethesda’s Wolfenstein: Youngblood, both of which come out this summer.

Nvidia’s lineup is somewhat complicated right now, so the company is issuing some ballpark comparisons to help consumers understand where these cards fall in the hierarchy. For instance, the RTX 2080 Ti is still the top-of-the-line GPU you can buy, and that doesn’t change with the introduction of Super cards. The RTX 2080 Super, on the other hand, is better than the current 2080 and faster than a Titan Xp, the company says. The 2070 Super is more performant than a GeForce 1080 Ti, but not as good as that standard 2080.

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge

If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is. But Nvidia has basically made sure that no RTX card of a single numbered tier outperforms that of a higher tier. So you can think of the lineup as containing standard and slightly better Super versions, and then the 2080 Ti is an outlier for those with cash to burn.

Over time, Nvidia says the RTX 2070 Super and 2080 Super will replace the current non-Super versions of those tiers. The company plans to keep the standard 2060 around as a low-end option for those who want the benefits of RTX, but don’t want to spend upward of $400 or $500 on a new GPU. The standard 2060 will remain around $349. (Prices on the standard 2070 and 2080 from third-party GPU vendors should see some price drops, so the next few weeks sound like a good time to scout deals on those.)

The Verge hasn’t had extensive time to test out the new cards ourselves. But we were able to run some early benchmark tests using 3DMark’s Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme with single Super cards on the same rig, with an Intel Core i7 CPU, that we used to review last year’s RTX 2080. And the results are promising for the RTX 2060 Super and 2070 Super. (We don’t yet have our hands on the 2080 Super.)

For Time Spy, the 2070 Super clocked 9,053, while the 2060 Super came in at 8,171. For Fire Strike Extreme, the 2070 Super came in at 10,784, and 9,782 for the 2060 Super. That would appear to bolster Nvidia’s claims that the 2070 Super is now the better buy over the 1080 Ti and very close to the standard 2080, and that the 2060 Super “nearly matches RTX 2070 performance, for $399.” We’ll have more to share on the performance of these cards when we can spend a bit more time testing them.