Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card review

Around five years is the sweet spot for when a high-end PC is crying out for a full upgrade. You can extend life by dropping in more RAM, adding additional (ideally faster) storage and, most commonly for easy performance gains, slapping in a new graphics card. That’s what I did when Nvidia sent me a GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card to review. And I used it to answer a straightforward question: can squeezing an RTX 4080 upgrade into a rig with five-year-old components turn an ageing machine into a high-end beast? Let’s find out.

Make no mistake: the days of $1,500-ish high-end Nvidia graphics cards are done and dusted. Admittedly, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 was tricky to buy at launch let alone close to its $1,259 starting price, but the RTX 4080 prices start at around $2,099. That price has gone down slightly since launch.

For comparison, AMD’s Radeon 7900 XT prices start at around $1,569 while the higher-performing RX 7900 XTX prices kick off at around $1,789. According to benchmarks from other sites, the 4080 has around a 15% to 20% lead on 7900 XT game frame rates. Those performance leads get even bigger across comparable games with ray tracing. It’s a much closer battle between the 7900 XTX and 4080 which, admittedly, the Nvidia GPU still wins.

In terms of pricing, it really is about whether you want the option for the best frame rates, particularly for ray tracing, as well as future-proofed features like DLSS 3, which are exclusive to Nvidia 4000-series graphics cards.

Here's a quick breakdown of Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 prices from Mwave's range:

Nvidia deserves points for packaging and a premium feel right from unboxing. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition will be tough to buy in Australia, but it sits angled in a rather giant box. That’s because it’s a rather giant GPU. I’m talking the same dimensions and (assumedly) roughly the same heft as a 4090.

This is one of the initial hurdles to overcome. The RTX 4080 is a 304mm long, 137mm wide, three-slot-consuming graphics card. Length was my primary concern but there’s plenty of breathing space inside my full-tower case. But five-year-old motherboard hurdles arise immediately, and why wouldn’t they given the longest GPUs of 2017 are around 40mm shorter.

That extra length meant I had to sacrifice power for USB 2.0 socket on my MSI Z370 Godlike motherboard. There’s no way around it as it completely covers the port; thankfully, PCI-express USB expansion cards are an affordable workaround. What’s more concerning is that the RTX 4080 completely covers one of my M.2 drives (the all-important one with Windows 11 on it) and partially covers another. Heat was an initial concern, and I doubt I could have a thermal guard on my primary M.2 drive and comfortably fit the RTX 4080 on top. Good thing this GPU runs cool—with testing temps averaging at around 53 degrees Celsius and power draw averaging at around 215 watts—but that may change in the future as developers tap into its power.

Speaking of power, you’re going to need at least a 750-watt power supply to get the most out of the RTX 4080. Additionally, this thirsty GPU uses three eight-pin VGA connectors from the power supply which, mercifully, connects to an included 16-pin connect for the RTX 4080. Once I removed the USB 2.0 power connector and made my peace with the possibility of frying my primary hard drive (it didn’t happen during more than a dozen hours of testing), installation was easy.

I was concerned the size of the graphics card might necessitate a support bracket, but it sits comfortably in place in a horizontal configuration with three PCI screws. Removing the graphics card is slightly trickier as the weight tends to press the RTX 4080 back into the PCI-express slot lock.

Fast-forward to more recent times, and the RTX 4080 is surrounded by completely new hardware. For my new computer build, I’ve stuck with the same modular Be Quiet Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 case. Because I’ve finally ditched an optical drive and abandoned the need for a traditional HDD, I’ve removed the drive support brackets inside. The result: much more room and better airflow.

Buying an Intel Core i9-13900K CPU and, more importantly, a 13th-gen compatible motherboard fixed the real estate problems of my five-year-old PC. I configured the parts so the RTX 4080 wasn’t sitting atop a hard drive, and the motherboard is laid out in such a way that respects the height and length of modern GPUs. Translation: no more compromises on USB port connectors.

I honestly went overboard with the power supply, opting for a Corsair AX1600i 1600-watt modular option so, technically, I never have to worry about GPU power-draw requirements in the future. Disappointingly, this power supply didn’t come with a 16-pin cable for the RTX 4080, so I ran three PCIe power cables to the included 4080 power adaptor. Not so great for tidy cable management, but an easy enough installation.

Honestly, the overall build was more painful than it had to be. Be Quiet’s case is modular to an incredible degree, but its documentation is lacking and the video guides are insufficient. My current pledge is to never waste my time building again and pay someone to do it for me because nobody needs that stress in their life. As you might hope from a graphics card, though, that was the easiest part of installation.

Once everything was installed, the main challenge was configuring the RAM timing to its advertised number. Initially, I had to underclock it to stop Windows 11 from crashing. But a BIOS update and automated driver patches with my motherboard software were a relatively painless fix. I’ve had a stable PC for around two months now and have spent a lot more time putting the RTX 4080 through its paces.

“Rasterisation” is the term used for games that don’t use funky features like ray tracing. It may sound like a name that’s used to save a gold-spinning imp from stealing a newborn baby, but it’s also a practical way of testing games. Why? Most games don’t have ray tracing or its robo-sibling deep learning super sampling (DLSS) for enhanced prettification and extra frames, respectively.

Thus, rasterisation is a fair starting point for testing graphics cards under typical gaming conditions. Here’s how the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card fares testing 11 games with in-game benchmarks, all on ultra settings with ray tracing and DLSS disabled (where available).

Note that the rasterisation, DLSS, DLSS 3 and ray tracing benchmarking numbers below are all from a five-year-old PC. At the end of those benchmarks is a section that compares the RTX 4080 results between old PC and a cutting-edge one.

Once again, the CPU proves a bottleneck, albeit for fewer titles: Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p and 1440p), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p and 1440p), plus 1080p resolution for Red Dead Redemption 2. Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t particularly playable at 4K resolution on the RTX 3070 Ti, but other results tend to hang around or above 60fps. While PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have been frustratingly conditioned to accept 4K 30fps as playable (admittedly, the lack of widespread HDMI 2.1 adoption may have a part to play), 60fps should be considered the foundation for PC gaming. Typically, this means dropping the resolution to achieve that frame-rate minimum.

The RTX 4080 has a noticeable lead over the RTX 3070 Ti, particularly at 4K resolutions. In fairness, that’s to be expected given the RTX 4080 is marketed as a 4K graphics card while the RTX 3070 Ti was built to impress at 1440p resolutions. Still, the RTX 4080 boasts 1440p fps leads that range from a nothing-to-write-home about 7fps to a commanding 100fps+ lead for Rainbow Six Extraction.

Additionally, the newer GPU also boasts beefier specs and doesn’t even come close to using up its 16GB GDDR6X memory in games that highlight memory usage. Expect the games of tomorrow to really start pushing the RTX 4080, which only got to 64 degrees Celsius at its absolute hottest while testing. Meanwhile, the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 2080 Super were pumping out heat up to 80 degrees during testing.

For anyone with an Nvidia 2000 series graphics card curious about upgrading to an RTX 4080, here’s how the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super handled the 10 main test games.

CPU limiting was rarer for the pushed-to-the-brink 2080 Super, though it did crop up in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (1080p and 1440p), Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p). Honestly, it’s surprising to see how well the RTX 2080 Super holds up today, particularly at 1440p resolutions. Still, the RTX 4080 is meant for 4K and it, understandably, annihilates the 2080 Super, by 43fps on the lower end of victory and up to 102fps while lapping its older sibling.

DLSS has been the answer to the frame-rate tanking of ray tracing since Nvidia released the RTX 2000 line of graphics cards. Not every game has DLSS but there are hundreds of options today using DLSS 1, DLSS 2 and there are dozens confirmed to use DLSS 3. Disappointingly, DLSS 3 is exclusive to RTX 4000 graphics cards, reportedly because of hardware limitations on older RTX GPUs.

Before we get to DLSS 3, here’s how the RTX 4080 fared in my tests with DLSS 2 games, all at 4K resolutions with maxed-out settings (note some base 4K frame rates may be different from above as they’re based on new tests).

While results don’t change too much for Death Stranding Director’s Cut (12fps change), Call of Duty Modern Warfare II excels (70fps upgrade) and Kena: Bridge of Spirits more than doubles the frame rate with DLSS enabled (138fps gains).

DLSS 3 is even more impressive from a technical standpoint, given it isn’t just an AI upscaler but also inserts AI-generated frames to increase frame rates. Here’s how the RTX 4080 handled most of the DLSS 3 games that were available for testing.

Though fledgling, this is incredibly impressive tech whose only disclaimer is the extra system latency added for the spectacular results. Admittedly, system latency only becomes an issue for competitive games, and people looking to eke every edge out of those shouldn’t be using DLSS to keep system latency as low as possible. For those people, the RTX 4080 is still a viable option for maximising frames with DLSS off.

Disclaimers aside, these AI-generated frame gains are fantastic, particularly for Cyberpunk 2077 and Microsoft Flight Simulator. For Cyberpunk 2077, that’s with ray tracing enabled (on the appropriately named ‘Psycho’ setting) and it results in more than double the frames. It’s an almost identical story for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is the modern equivalent of the machine-melting Crysis back in its heyday.

The lowest gains were still an impressive 40-ish frames, while Super People more than doubled its base frame rate with DLSS 3 enabled. It’s incredibly exciting to think of how DLSS 3 will evolve, hopefully with a lower impact on overall system latency. Overall, it adds an additional layer of futureproofing to an already cutting-edge GPU.

It used to be that ray tracing was always talked about in terms of 1080p resolutions. Basically, if you wanted lifelike reflections, the compromise was resolution. And using DLSS was a given. Not anymore. Here’s a look at a handful of games with ray tracing enabled and DLSS disabled across 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions.

Note that every game outside of Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition hit a CPU limitation, which means newer processors can feasibly expect even better gains. Cyberpunk 2077 comes close to 60fps with the Ultra ray tracing preset (just below Psycho) but the other three are comfortably hitting 60fps at 4K without any AI assistance. That’s bonkers compared to the resolution-sacrifice norm up until recently. Understandably, 1440p and 1080p scores are even better, even though their true values are held back by my CPU.

Given that 4K 60fps is now seemingly viable, I did some ray tracing tests with DLSS at 4K resolutions for a handful of games that usually bring GPUs to their knees. All of these games have ultra settings and maxed-out ray tracing.

Wow. Dying Light 2, a title whose gameplay benefits from a fluid frame rate, goes from unplayable to impressive with more than double the frames. It’s a similar story for Fortnite, which transforms from unplayable as a competitive online shooter to respectable at more than three times the frames. Metro Exodus had marginal gains but Control absolutely benefits from DLSS with more than 60fps gains once the AI feature is enabled.

The raw benchmark numbers paint an impressive picture. But what about all-important gameplay? Borderlands 3, Hell Let Loose and Days Gone are DLSS-less games known to push PCs to their limits maxed out at 4K resolutions. Borderlands 3 was very playable at around 85fps average and Days Gone’s frantic gameplay benefits from fluid 94fps gameplay. Even the notoriously poorly optimised Hell Let Loose manages a 78fps average—which, believe me, is impressive—with most of the test matches consistently scoring over 100fps.

Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection was unplayable with sub-30fps gameplay using the RTX 3070 Ti and maxed-out settings, but it was pushing the 120fps borderless-fullscreen limit without enabling DLSS (and looking absolutely stunning). I’m so used to compromising fidelity settings or tweaking DLSS sliders to get the most out of my 4K, 120Hz screen but the 4080 simplifies everything. Set everything to ultra, including ray tracing, and you’re generally comfortably playing at 60fps. Enable DLSS to get frame rates closer to 120fps.