Reviews show that Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 is less than 15% faster than RTX 4080 Super. Making it the worst performance uplift in xx80 graphics cards in years.
Earlier this month, Nvidia announced GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080 & RTX 5070 graphics cards.
While RTX 5090 reviews were out a few days ago, we didn’t cover it. It was around 30% faster, has around 30% more cores, uses 30% more power and costs around 30% more.
So when we looked at the specs of RTX 5080, we asked ourselves whether Nvidia even made any major changes in it. As it had only minor increase in specs over the RTX 4080 Super.
Specs Of Nvidia RTX 5080 vs RTX 4080 Super
| Graphics Card | RTX 5080 | RTX 4080 Super |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | GB203 | AD103 |
| GPU Size | 378 mm² | 379 mm² |
| Process | TSMC N4 (5nm) | TSMC N4 (5nm) |
| SMs | 84 | 80 |
| CUDA Cores | 10752 | 10240 |
| Tensor Cores (AI) | 336 Cores (5th-Gen) | 320 Cores (4th-Gen) |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 84 Cores (4th-Gen) | 80 Cores (3rd Gen) |
| Render Output Units | 112 | 112 |
| Texture Mapping Units | 336 | 320 |
| Base Clock | 2.30GHz | 2.29GHz |
| Boost Clock | 2.62GHz | 2.55GHz |
| VRAM Capacity | 16 GB GDDR7 | 16 GB GDDR6X |
| VRAM Speed | 30Gbps (32Gbps chips) | 23Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 960 GB/s | 736 GB/s |
| Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| L2 Cache | 64 | 64 |
| DLSS Version | DLSS 4 | DLSS 3 |
| Slot (FE) | 2-Slot | 3-Slot |
| Max Temps | 88C | 90C |
| TGP | 360W | 320W |
| PSU Requirement | 850W | 750W |
| Power Connector | 1x 450W PCIe 5.0 | 1x 450W PCIe 5.0 |
| Release Date | January 2025 | January 2024 |
| MSRP | $999 | $999 |
As one can see. The difference in most specs is just 5%. Except new GDDR7 VRAM, there’s hardly any changes.
How does it translate to performance. Let’s check the reviews.
Reviews
Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware tested the RTX 5080 and called it “Incremental gains over the previous generation”.
In raster performance at 4K (what this graphics card is meant for), the RTX 5080 is just 9% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 10% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. It’s even worse at 1440p, where it’s just 7% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 9% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
In ray tracing performance, RTX 5080 is just 5% faster than RTX 4080 Super at 4K. At 1440p that reduces to 1%. This performance increase in ray tracing is massively disappointing.
AMD always lags behind in ray tracing, so it’s not much to speak about or compare to.
In terms of power usage, at 4K both RTX 5080 and RTX 4080 Super are similar too. With a difference of just 3W. While RTX 5080 uses 297W average in gaming, RTX 4080 Super uses 299W. While AMD RX 7900 XTX 360W, RTX 4090 400W and RTX 5090 496W in the same.
It changes slightly – 4% with 1440p, where RTX 5080 uses 266W average in gaming, while RTX 4080 Super uses 276W in same. While AMD RX 7900 XTX 361W, RTX 4090 354W and RTX 5090 409W in the same.
TechSpot
Steve Walton from the Hardware Unboxed fame posted a written review for RTX 5080 on TechSpot. Those who want to watch the review instead can find it here (YouTube). It called the RTX 5080 a RTX 4080 Ti instead.
In raster performance at 4K, the RTX 5080 is just 11% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 8% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. It’s even worse at 1440p, where it’s just 4% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 5% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
In ray tracing performance, they tested it with quality upscaling. In it, the RTX 5080 is just 9% faster than RTX 4080 Super at 4K. At 1440p that reduces to 5%.
In power consumption, it used anywhere from 4% to 20% less power than the 4080 Super, depending on the game.
TechPowerUP
TechPowerUP reviewed the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080.
In raster performance at 4K, they found that the RTX 5080 is just 12% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 14% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. It’s even worse at 1440p, where it’s just 9% faster than RTX 4080 Super and 11% faster than AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
In ray tracing performance, they found that the RTX 5080 is just 10% faster than RTX 4080 Super at 4K. At 1440p that reduces to 6%.
In power consumption, RTX 5080 used about 326W in gaming in raster, which is 20-30W lesser than RTX 4080 Super. In ray tracing, it increased further to 332W, which is 42W more than RTX 4080 Super. Meanwhile, AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX consistently used 360W across both raster and ray tracing.
Conclusion – Worst xx80 Nvidia GPU In Years
Those want more reviews can check out VideoCardz for a review round-up.
So why we call it the worst xx80 range Nvidia graphics card in years. For a simple reason. Let’s check generation upon generation uplift in performance of previous xx80 range graphics cards:
- GTX 680 → GTX 780: 21%
- GTX 780 → GTX 980: 24%
- GTX 980 → GTX 1080: 40%
- GTX 1080 → RTX 2080: 31%
- RTX 2080 → RTX 3080: 40%
- RTX 3080 → RTX 4080: 33%
- RTX 4080 → RTX 5080: 12%
These numbers are taken from all the TechPowerUP reviews. All percentages are at 4K, except GTX 680 to GTX 780, which was done at 1600p.
As one can see. In a whole decade, we cannot find a single Nvidia xx80 graphics card which offers less than 20% improvement in performance at 4K. Except the new GDDR7 memory, RTX 5080 doesn’t offer much increase in performance.
It does have the new DLSS 4 multi frame generation, which so far is exclusive to the RTX 50 series, but it has its own issues and that’s about it.
The RTX 5080 is a massive disappointment of a graphics card. Forget about beating RTX 4090, it hardly beats RTX 4080 Super.
In fact, VideoCardz even jokingly said it needs to be unlaunched. Just like how the original RTX 4080 was unlaunched due to public backlash.
It seems to have been made only to make RTX 5090 look so that people buy the expensive model instead.
Those who want to switch from RTX 30 can buy RTX 5080, but those who have RTX 40 have gotten no reason to upgrade to it. What’s worse is that there are hardly any RTX 5080 which are going to be available at MSRP at launch.
We feel Nvidia might be making Super series for RTX 50 series soon, with 3GB VRAM chips instead of 2GB ones currently used.
Both Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are launching on 30th January. We doubt many would be interested in RTX 5080 though.
