Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 review: Second only to the 4090—for now

Very little about Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 is surprising—especially now that the confusing, scrapped 12GB version is being renamed. In pretty much all of our performance tests, it slots in right where you'd expect it to, comfortably ahead of the RTX 3080 Ti but trailing the $1,600 RTX 4090 by enough to justify the $300 price gap. It's usually capable of hitting or exceeding 60 fps at 4K, and games with DLSS support (or some other kind of upscaling tech) can buy you a solid frame rate increase. And its power requirements aren't as stratospheric as the 4090's, either, so most people with an existing xx70 or xx80-class gaming PC shouldn't need to switch out their power supply. The major downsides, as of this writing? As a group, the cards are often just as huge and cumbersome as the RTX 4090 (the Founders Edition is identical, and partner cards largely follow suit). The $1,200 starting price is historically high—the 3080 Ti launched with a GPU-shortage-inflated MSRP of $1,119 GPU, but the 2080 and 3080 were both a mere $699 at launch. And even if you are willing to pay that price—surprise, surprise—it's basically impossible to find in any form anywhere close to MSRP. Which means, hooray: another GPU review that exists mostly as a theoretical exercise! If you could buy this GPU for the amount of money it's supposed to cost, and if its competitors were also available for what they were supposed to cost, then here's how it would stack up. That world doesn't exist right now, but if you're reading this in a few months, circumstances may have changed. In the meantime, imagine with us, won't you?

About the size—and that power connector

The 4080's physical dimensions are 12.3×5.35×2.13 inches, same as the 4090, and our 4090 review has several images comparing it to various objects so you can get an idea of just how large that is. It's a GPU that's roughly the same size as an entire Xbox Series S. That does have ramifications for upgraders, particularly those using more space-efficient cases. Plenty of gaming-focused mini ITX cases won't fit a 4090 or 4080 at all, and although the case I use for my testbed fits full-size ATX motherboards (a Lian Li O11 Air Mini), I can't put the side panel back on with the card installed because the included power adapter sticks out too much. Once you factor in the front-mounted radiator and tubing for the CPU cooler, it's a tight fit, and it's something to keep in mind when upgrading an existing PC rather than building a new PC specifically designed to accommodate the card. On the subject of that power adapter, the 4080 still uses a 12VHPWR power connector, the same as the RTX 4090—the adapter just wants three 8-pin power adapters plugged into it instead of four. This connector has been the subject of some controversy because of overheating and melting issues that some users have experienced. The bad news is that the 4080's adapter is likely susceptible to the same issue, but the good news is that, in most cases, Nvidia and third-party testers have found that this overheating is created when the cables aren't quite plugged in all the way, something most people should be able to avoid with a little care.

The best way to check the firmness of your connection is to give the adapter a couple of firm tugs to make sure it doesn't come unseated—it may pull back a millimeter or two while you're doing this but not enough to cause the heat problems that some people have been seeing. Push the connector back down after you've done this and try to be careful not to pull the cables around too much or bend them at an extreme angle. In terms of power draw, the Founders Edition of the RTX 4080 is rated at around 320 W, the same as the last-generation RTX 3080 and lower than the 4090 (450 W) and the 3080 Ti (350 W). In practice, we found it to be even better behaved, drawing an average of just under 300 W during a Hitman 3 benchmark run and averaging a relatively cool 59.8 degrees Celsius. The hulking heatsink and fans are overkill, but they do their job. Nvidia recommends a 750 W power supply, the same as the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti, and you might be able to get away with less if you've paired it with a modest 6- or 8-core CPU.

Game performance

The RTX 4090 is so much faster than last-generation cards that it leaves a lot of space underneath it for a still-faster-but-not-quite-as-fast card to fit, and that's exactly what the RTX 4080 is. It's short of the RTX 4090 but well ahead of the RTX 3090 and (especially) the 3080 Ti, and 3DMark gives a good high-level summary, though if anything, it undersells how well the 4080 stacks up to the 4090 in actual games.

For anyone other than an RTX 4090 owner, this will be the most capable 4K graphics card you've ever owned, and it averages well over 60 fps in all of our non-raytracing test games at 4K with the settings maxed, even without the help of frame rate-boosting DLSS upscaling (you will usually want DLSS enabled to break 100 fps at 4K, though). The card also handles ray-tracing-enabled games pretty well, hitting almost exactly 60 fps in Quake II RTX and more than that in slightly older games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Ray-tracing is still demanding enough that more recent games may need that DLSS boost to get to 60 fps and beyond, though, as is the case with Hitman 3. Beyond raw performance, the 4080 brings the same upgrades to the table that the RTX 4090 does, including hardware encoding support for the royalty-free AV1 video codec. Most importantly, though, it brings DLSS 3.0, which boosts frame rates by lightening the load on your CPU and GPU without unduly increasing latency to do all those fancy predictions. For the few games that support it—we tested the RTX 4090 with Microsoft Flight Simulator and Cyberpunk 2077, but others will follow—it can feel like a "magic wand," boosting frame rates even more than the previous version of DLSS. The benefits will be the same for the RTX 4080, albeit at a somewhat lower performance level.

The Radeon RX 7900 looms

The GeForce RTX 4080 is an impressive graphics card next to anything other than the RTX 4090. If we lived in a world where the 4080 cost $1,200 and the 4090 cost $1,600, it would be a solid deal, delivering between 82 and 88 percent of the performance in most games for 75 percent of the money. Even without breaking out a calculator, the results speak for themselves: This is a good-to-great 4K gaming experience that saves you enough money to buy a better CPU, a roomier SSD, a nicer case, a better CPU cooler, or some combination of all four. That being said, it's difficult at best to do this kind of price comparison in a world where neither the 4080 or 4090 is easy to find at those suggested prices, making them hard to justify no matter how good they are. And when you start talking about value for money, you have to include AMD's imminent Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT in the conversation. So far, AMD has published little in the way of head-to-head comparisons between the RTX 4080 and the upcoming Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT cards. But at $899 and $999, if either or both of those cards can approach the RTX 4080's performance, they'll be undercutting it even more on price (despite still being expensive, historically speaking). There's more than raw game performance in the AMD-Nvidia rivalry, as ever. Nvidia has typically maintained an edge in power efficiency and ray-tracing performance, not to mention fringe benefits like DLSS 3.0. But if AMD can come close in general game performance while offering a physically smaller card with traditional PCIe power connectors, the combination of pricing and compatibility might make them better buys than the RTX 4080. You can't buy a 4080 for anywhere close to $1,200 right now—but even if you could, your best bet is still to wait just a bit longer.

The good

• Excellent 4K gaming performance, second only to the RTX 4090.
• Runs cool and quiet and shouldn't require a new power supply for anyone already using an upper-midrange or lower-high-end GPU in their current PC.
• Great ray-tracing performance, especially with DLSS upscaling enabled.
• AV1 video encoding support, which will be handy as the codec enters wider use among streamers and streaming sites.
• It's hard to call something that costs $1,200 a "bargain," but its performance-per-dollar is usually better than the RTX 4090's at that price.

The bad

• 12VHPWR power connector controversy. You should be able to avoid any issues by plugging your adapter or cable in firmly, but it's still something you need to think about.
• Hard to actually buy, especially at anything close to its suggested retail price.
• Few games support DLSS 3.0 as of this writing.

The ugly

• Big enough to be a tight fit for a lot of cases. The huge cooler does a great job, but it's still huge.