Has any genus of graphics card been as dramatically storied because the GeForce XX80s? The RTX 3080 was a factor of magnificence, solely to be tarnished by the worst wheeler-dealing spree (and crypto mining misappropriation) in PC part historical past. Then the RTX 4080 rocked up with its laughable £1269 / $1199 price ticket, a miscalculation so extreme that the RTX 4080 Tremendous appeared good – regardless of hardly being any sooner – merely for not repeating it. For the brand new RTX 5080’s sake, you virtually need it to be boring.
It isn’t. However then, neither is it a blood-boiler just like the RTX 4080, nor a largely aspirational show-off piece just like the RTX 5090. By sustaining the 4080 Tremendous’s course correction on value whereas tooling up on compelling DLSS 4 enhancements, the RTX 5080 is an agreeable GPU from the off. Notably, in case you’ve bought the 4K monitor to take full benefit of it.
It’s definitely a extra wise purchase than the RTX 5090 for high-rez gamesplaying. A Founders Version, just like the one I’m testing right here, will set you again £979 / $999, or roughly half the value of the subsequent (and ultimate) RTX 50 mannequin within the pile. Plus, whereas it has the identical 16GB of 256-bit VRAM because the 4080 and 4080 Tremendous, that’s nonetheless sufficient for all of the AAA trade’s largest resource-eaters, and it’s been upgraded to GDDR7 for a stretch of additional bandwidth. Get the Founders Version and also you’ll additionally bag your self the identical beautiful metallic design and efficient dual-fan cooler that the RTX 5090 FE has, operating even colder right here because of the RTX 4080’s decrease energy wants.
It is nonetheless a thirsty creature, to make certain: Nvidia reckon you’ll want at the least an 850W PSU to run it, and max utilization is rated at a toasty 360W. In contrast to on the RTX 5090 FE, nevertheless, I didn’t document the RTX 5080 FE truly hitting its restrict, with it peaking at 322W whereas operating video games. Its GPU temperature excessive of 64°c was an excellent 9 levels cooler the 5090 as nicely. See? Smart. Ish.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 overview: 4K benchmarks
The largest and scariest of mainstream monitor resolutions doesn’t faze the RTX 5080 a jot, even within the more moderen robust runners. The RTX 5090 is quicker nonetheless, although the RTX 5080 is all the time in a position to match an excellent majority of its sibling’s frames-per-second output for half the money. It’s additionally a juicy improve over the RTX 30 sequence’ elite – encouraging, in case you’re upgrading from an older card – and it even comes considerably near the RTX 4090, which on the time of writing remains to be going for upwards of £1300 within the secondhand market.
Eager bar chart followers might recall that the RTX 4080 did beat the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti outright, so it’s a little bit of a backwards shuffle for the RTX 5080 to not utterly outpace the earlier era’s prime canine in flip. I’m undecided that’s a very big deal, outdoors of sustaining conventions, although I do want the RTX 5080 gave extra of a pace enhance to rasterised, native-rez video games over the RTX 4080 Tremendous.
To take a look at this, we should – briefly however with apologies – return to the outdated RPS check rig and its Core i5-11600K, which is the one one I’ve RTX 4080 Tremendous outcomes for. Cyberpunk 2077 sees a good bump, rising from 51fps (with Extremely settings) on the 4080 Tremendous to 71fps on the 5080, although the most recent GPU’s 81fps in F1 22 (on Extremely Excessive) is an uptick of simply 12fps. Metro Exodus barely improved both, averaging 99fps on the 4080 Tremendous and 106fps on the 5080.
What none of those RTX 40 sequence playing cards have, nevertheless, is a full suite of DLSS 4 framerate-massaging instruments. Whereas one in every of my private favourites amongst these – the brand new Transformer mannequin possibility for upscaling, which boosts general picture high quality in trade for a smaller efficiency enhance – is accessible to older RTX fashions, the headlining multi Body Era (MFG) is unique to the RTX 50 sequence. And this truly can nudge the RTX 5080 previous the RTX 4090, at the least when it comes to purely seen smoothness.
When you’re unfamiliar, MFG takes the AI body era of DLSS 3 and may throw up wherever between one and three generated frames for each one of many frames that your PC truly renders. This provides some additional enter lag, and it gained’t essentially really feel smoother (because the generated frames don’t have in mind your mouse actions or keyboard presses), however the visible affect can look very wonderful certainly. On the RTX 5080, MFG additionally opens up the potential of above-60fps framerates at whereas combining 4K with among the most demanding ray tracing and path tracing results within the enterprise. In all three video games I attempted, making use of the 4x body gen possibility let it saunter previous the RTX 4090, whose DLSS 3 model maxes out on the equal of MFG’s 2x setting.
Outdoors of benchmark nerdery, every little thing appears to be like and feels playable, although Alan Wake II did begin pushing 100ms of latency with 4x MFG on – sufficient for aiming to get slightly sluggish. I’d most likely drop DLSS upscaling from High quality to Balanced, in that case, to bump up that base of 37 non-AI frames per second. That might enhance visible smoothness much more whereas touching up responsivity. In any other case, although, DLSS 4 makes a persuasive argument within the RTX 5080’s favour, and with 75 suitable video games confirmed, it’s getting a much more widely-supported begin to life than rival body gen tech like FSR 3 and XeSS 2 did.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 overview: 1440p benchmarks
As ever, something 4K can do, 1440p can do sooner, and there are good causes to decide on the RTX 5080 for this decision in case you’ve redirected all of your monitor improve finances right into a GPU fund. CPU bottlenecking snips the tall-poppyness of the RTX 5090, permitting this cheaper card to maintain tempo extra successfully, whereas additionally narrowing the hole towards RTX 4090 and downright styling on the RTX 3090.
That mentioned, it’s price ready for the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti at this stage. The RTX 5080 is undoubtedly a barnstormer at 1440p however not like with 4K, there may be typically a sense that you just’re paying for extra energy and options than you should utilize. 4x MFG, for example, isn’t as helpful as a result of the framerates you may get with out it are already sky-high: take Cyberpunk 2077 with Psycho ray tracing, which the RTX 5080 might run at 106fps with simply High quality-level DLSS upscaling. Most screens wouldn’t even be capable of show all the additional AI frames, even when your eyes might understand the distinction between such speeds – and diminishing returns very a lot do come into impact.
Then once more, there’s a case for 2x body gen in some video games. F1 24 on Extremely Excessive rose from 116fps with solely High quality DLSS to 148fps with body gen, and that really did make for a noticeable (if minor) smoothness enchancment. The RTX 5080 clearly isn’t a nasty GPU for Quad HD – it’s simply not the perfect decision for spreading its DLSS 4 wings, therefore why it’ll be intriguing to see whether or not the extra inexpensive RTX 5070 duo could make for extra appropriate matches.
Or AMD’s Radeon RX 9070, perhaps. That may have its personal souped-up DLSS rival in FSR 4, although it feels like this will likely be a less complicated 2x body generator within the DLSS 3 vein. With the sooner and extra versatile MFG, DLSS 4’s pin-sharp Transformer mannequin possibility, and the GeForce line’s historic benefits with ray and path tracing, it’s exhausting to see how RDNA 4 GPUs like this may be capable of stand as much as the RTX 50 sequence on options.
For 4K, anyway, the RTX 5080 is the one to beat. It’s cooler, extra environment friendly, and (not, uh, counting any potential inventory shortages) drastically extra attainable than the RTX 5090, whereas nonetheless having sufficient muscle for slick, max-quality efficiency. Is it as lovable as that poor, reseller-abused RTX 3080? Not a lot – an even bigger bounce up from the RTX 4080 Tremendous would have been appreciated. But it surely’s higher deal general than each the Tremendous and the unique RTX 4080, particularly when you begin exploiting its extra superior tech. Tech that may assist it go away the RTX 4090 behind, not to mention these 4080s.
This overview is predicated on a retail unit supplied by the producer.
