NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review

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Control

Some pages have multiple games on each page, so be sure to scroll all the way down. In the text to follow we will shorten Founders Edition to FE.

To evaluate performance in Control we are using a custom run-through in the “Unknown Caller” main mission. We have a run-through that takes us through the large interior cafeteria scene taking down enemies. We are testing in DX12 in the game’s highest “High” quality preset, and using Ray Tracing and DLSS where indicated.

1440p

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Benchmark Graph

Running 1440p in “High” the GeForce RTX 3080 is the fastest video card at 116 FPS. This is 66% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 FE and 27% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Ray Tracing Benchmark Graph

Now we have enabled just Ray Tracing at 1440p using the “High” Ray Tracing in-game quality option. You can see performance drops quite a bit, but the GeForce RTX 3080 FE remains very playable at 72 FPS. This is 84% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 FE and 38% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Ray Tracing DLSS Benchmark Graph

In addition to Ray Tracing, we have now also enabled DLSS. This improves performance quite a bit across the board with Ray Tracing enabled. The GeForce RTX 3080 FE is almost back to the performance it was at without Ray Tracing. It is 75% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 FE and 35% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

4K

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Benchmark Graph

Starting with this graph we are now going to do the same run of tests but at 4K instead of 1440p. Here is 4K at “High” quality preset. GeForce RTX 3080 FE is playable at 60 FPS. It is 75% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 FE and 29% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Ray Tracing Benchmark Graph

In this graph, we have now enabled “High” Ray Tracing. You can see how it destroys the performance on RTX 2080 and 2080 SUPER. It’s not as high as we thought it might be on GeForce RTX 3080 FE, but at 36 FPS the game is somewhat playable, just not great. It’s still way faster than RTX 2080 and 2080 FE though. It is a whopping 89% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 FE, so that is pretty amazing and shows that Ray Tracing has been vastly improved. It is 38% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Review Control Ray Tracing DLSS Benchmark Graph

In this graph, we have now turned on DLSS with Ray Tracing at 4K. This is what really makes the difference. With DLSS performance is now a very playable 66 FPS average on the GeForce RTX 3080 FE. We can actually play the game at 4K with Ray Tracing now! It is 81% faster than GeForce RTX 2080 FE and 36% faster than GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE.

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Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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