NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Video Card Review

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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Back View

Conclusion

Continuing the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series, the new GeForce RTX 4080 is now launching. We reviewed the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition, looking at 4K performance, 1440p performance, Ray Tracing performance, and DLSS performance, and compared it to many different video cards across the range, to see how it stacks up. The GeForce RTX 4080 is launching with an MSRP of $1,199. It is geared for enthusiast gaming, mostly in the 4K range, but also has the chops to enable Ray Tracing at this resolution. Don’t let that dissuade you from the 1440p gameplay experience, however, as it is very powerful at 1440p with Ray Tracing and allows that to be playable whereas the previous generation equivalent was not.

The GeForce RTX 4080 is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture on TSMC 4N NVIDIA custom process and has 9,728 CUDA Cores, 304 4th Gen Tensor Cores, 76 3rd Gen RT Cores, 304 Texture Units, and 112 ROPs. It has a Boost Clock of 2505MHz. It has 16GB of GDDR6X memory at 22.4GHz on a 256-bit memory bus giving it 716.8GB/s of memory bandwidth. The TGP is 320W.

Performance

Performance of the GeForce RTX 4080 FE started, and ended, with it always giving us faster than GeForce RTX 3090 Ti performance, consistently. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare II the GeForce RTX 4080 allowed a fast playable experience near 100FPS average at 4K with the highest settings. If you need more, DLSS brings it to over 130FPS at 4K. It was faster than the RTX 3090 Ti by 23% and faster than the RTX 3080 Ti by 39%. In F1 2022 the GeForce RTX 4080 continued the lead at 4K at 156FPS. Dying Light 2 is a demanding game at 4K, but the GeForce RTX 4080 is able to provide a very playable experience at over 70FPS with maximum settings. It ends up being 13% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 29% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti.

Far Cry 6 plays extremely well at over 100FPS at 4K with maximum settings. Cyberpunk 2077 is also very demanding, but the GeForce RTX 4080 is able to provide over 60FPS at 4K with “Ultra” settings. It’s 18% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 33% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti. In Watch Dogs Legion the GeForce RTX 4080 provides over 80FPS at 4K.

When it comes to Ray Tracing performance at 4K, the gains are even larger versus the previous generation. However, there are still some instances where you will want DLSS enabled to get a smooth experience with Ray Tracing at 4K. In F1 2022, the RTX 4080 is right at the border of providing a smooth experience in the game at 4K with maximum Ray Tracing. It’s sitting right under 60FPS average. This is still better than the previous gen being 16% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 36% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti, but it’s also still not exactly 60FPS at 4K with Ray Tracing. DLSS fixes this though and gives you near 100FPS, but that is upsampling.

Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are really the two main games that struggle the most at 4K with maximum Ray Tracing. Simply put, the GeForce RTX 4080 is not powerful enough to provide a good gameplay experience at 4K and maximum Ray Tracing in these games without DLSS. The RTX 4080 only manages 40FPS in Dying Light 2, and 30FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with maximum Ray Tracing. This is faster than the previous gen (22%-41%) faster and (21%-42%) faster, but still, without DLSS it isn’t playable. With DLSS Dying Light 2 is playable at 70FPS and Cyberpunk 2077 at nearly 60FPS. Watch Dogs Legion is also quite challenging, whereas the GeForce RTX 4080 is also not playable at 4K with maximum Ray Tracing, only reaching 46FPS. You will need to enable DLSS to make it playable at 76FPS.

Now we come to 1440p performance. To begin this summary, we must state that without Ray Tracing enabled we think the GeForce RTX 4080 is hitting a CPU bottleneck in many, if not all games, even on an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU. This makes the uplift compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 seem less than it should. In order to push the RTX 4080 harder, you will need to enable Ray Tracing and then you should see larger differences in performance versus the GeForce RTX 3080. There was no game setting that wasn’t playable in every game here that we tested, at 1440p on the RTX 4080. It was able to bring a playable gameplay experience at 1440p with the maximum Ray Tracing settings, in every game, so that is a major advantage here. The GeForce RTX 3080 was not able to do this without DLSS, but the GeForce RTX 4080 can do this, without DLSS. Then, factor in DLSS, and performance shoots past the moon. If you are playing at 4K, the uplift from the RTX 3080 would also be greater.

Power and Temp Summary

There has been a lot of concern over the GeForce RTX 40 series power requirements. With the new GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition, you do not have to worry. The TGP is 320W, which is acceptable, and we did find that the power utilization was among the best on our test charts. In fact, the GeForce RTX 4080 used 13% less power than the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which confirms NVIDIA’s claims. In fact, it also used less board power than the GeForce RTX 3080 you might be upgrading from. The video card is much faster, and actually uses slightly less power than the GeForce RTX 3080. Our conclusion on power is that the GeForce RTX 4080 is a power-efficient video card, and really shouldn’t be a concern. The Founders Edition cooler is also overkill and keeps the GPU incredibly cool. The advantage here is that the fan speeds don’t have to ramp up high, and the noise level is therefore very low. It’s a well-built card and keeps very cool.

Final Points

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is NVIDIA’s new $1,199 video card, as such we need to put it into context with the competition and other video cards around this price point. Right now, we are waiting on the AMD competition, so that will be interesting when it pans out. At this time, we look at the GeForce RTX 4080 as a step down from the more expensive $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 and as a possible upgrade if you are sporting a last-generation video card, or older. It does seem that there is a larger gap than we might have expected versus the GeForce RTX 4090, especially considering the price. Perhaps the price gap should also be larger, to match. The GeForce RTX 4080 does seem like it needs to come down in price a bit to match the performance gap between the RTX 4090.

In our testing, it was consistently faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, and depending on the game can provide up to 20%+ performance, especially with Ray Tracing. Compared to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti it is up to 40%+ faster in performance. Compared to the RTX 3080 it is up to 60%, so that’s the upgrade you are looking at coming directly from the RTX 3080 at a lower resolution like 1440p. At 4K, or with Ray Tracing, the benefit may be higher. However, beware, you will need a fast CPU, like the latest generation Intel 13th Gen or AMD AM5 Zen 4 CPUs.

In our experience, the GeForce RTX 4080 allows an enthusiast 4K gaming experience, which means you’ll be able to maximize the graphics settings in your games at 4K, sans Ray Tracing. In raster performance, you can play games at 4K at very high framerates without having to use upscaling. In terms of Ray Tracing performance at 4K, that will depend on the game. In some games, it will be very playable at maximum settings, but in other more demanding games, you will have to enable DLSS to play with maximum Ray Tracing at 4K. At 1440p though, it is a different ballgame. The GeForce RTX 4080 will allow you to play at 1440p with maximum Ray Tracing without the need for DLSS. Then, if you need faster performance, or more demanding games come, DLSS is an option to improve the framerate and response quite a bit.

Therefore, this is a powerful 4K card, and may or may not allow maximum Ray Tracing (depending on the game) without DLSS, but DLSS should fix that. At 1440p, it’s a win all around, allowing maximum Ray Tracing, and then DLSS is there for future demanding games. Don’t forget DLSS 3 as well, as more games are released with support for DLSS 3 the GeForce RTX 4080 will have the option to give you much faster framerates with Frame Generation, so that could be a huge upgrade if you are a 4K gamer.

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REVIEW OVERVIEW

Gaming Performance
8
Power Efficiency
10
Build and Cooling
10
Price Value
6

SUMMARY

We reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition video card and put it through its paces, pushing 4K, 1440p, Ray Tracing, and DLSS. Performance exceeded the previous generation. 4K with Ray Tracing and the uplift versus the GeForce RTX 3080 felt a bit underwhelming for the price point. The step-down in performance compared to the GeForce RTX 4090 seems unbalanced for the price difference. The build and cooling are exceptional, with a robust video card that stays quiet, and cool and is also power efficient for the performance delivered. The GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition is a good video card that is otherwise marred by its high price tag for the performance offered and price-to-performance value proposition versus the GeForce RTX 4090.
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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We reviewed the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition video card and put it through its paces, pushing 4K, 1440p, Ray Tracing, and DLSS. Performance exceeded the previous generation. 4K with Ray Tracing and the uplift versus the GeForce RTX 3080 felt a bit underwhelming for the price point. The step-down in performance compared to the GeForce RTX 4090 seems unbalanced for the price difference. The build and cooling are exceptional, with a robust video card that stays quiet, and cool and is also power efficient for the performance delivered. The GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition is a good video card that is otherwise marred by its high price tag for the performance offered and price-to-performance value proposition versus the GeForce RTX 4090.NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Video Card Review