EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra proved itself to be a wonderful graphics card to use in our test bench and play games on. The performance is just ahead of the 2080 Founders Edition card thanks to the higher boost clock and lower temperatures of the wicked huge 2.75-slot cooler. The main selling feature of this card has to be the 2.75-slot cooler and it works. We found the 2080 XC Ultra to be 7C cooler while gaming than the 2080 FE! If lower temperatures are important to you then that that is a massive drop.

Picking the right GeForce RTX 2080 card from EVGA will utimately come down to your budget. The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming is the base model and starts at $699 with the blower style fan. From there you start moving up in $50 increments. The XC Black Edition runs $749 then you have the XC Gaming model at $799 and finally the XC Ultra at $849. So, the model that we are looking at today runs $150 more than the base model from EVGA and to our knowledge all four of these cards use the same PCB and 10 phase power design.

Once you move up to the XC2 and above you get the ICX2 cooling technology package that requires a difference PCB build and then on the flagship FTW3 models you get a beefy 14 phase power design. The XC2 Ultra runs $879 and the FTW3 Ultra runs $899. You are starting to get up there in price at this point as you are $200 over the base model and $100 over the 2080 Founders Edition.

Both Amazon and EVGA are not showing any availability of base Gaming and Black versions right now, so the XC Gaming and XC Ultra are the two cards that are usually in-stock and available to purchase. Now you know why at the start of this review we said that the XC Gaming at $799.99 shipped and the XC Ultra at $849.99 shipped would be two of the more popular models!

If you are looking for an RTX 2080 graphics card and want a good GPU cooler with RGB lighting we highly suggest giving the XC Ultra a closer look. It’s a super nice card if you have the space and can afford it.

Legit Bottom Line: The EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC Ultra is a nice card if you are willing to pony up the extra cash to get this 2.75-slot card!