Therefore. The cool thing about our RTX 4080 review: I barely had time for it. We’re experiencing the busiest weeks for PC gaming hardware in at least four years, with major product launches all over the world (from rival Radeon RX 7900 XT arrive Intel’s 13th Gen CPUs) and countless other components and peripherals that still need validation. Also, I get the impression that if I don’t do more Black Friday something, high-ranking ReedPop characters would show up at my apartment and start grabbing my fingers with chisels.
However, there is definitely potential graphics card Upgrade manufacturers are looking at the RTX 4080 to see if it’s worth buying compared to RTX4090. The pioneer of Nvidia’s next-generation Ada Lovelace architecture is by far the most powerful GPU I’ve tested and introduced a very exciting new feature in LSSS 3, but with prices starting at £1,679 / $1599 it’s not an affordable option. And since I had an RTX 4080 show up at the last minute – Asus’ custom ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition – I can at least provide some quick benchmarks and initial thoughts on whether that’s the case. Is it a better deal?
Here is one such thought: no. The RTX 4080 may be cheaper than the RTX 4090 but at £1269 / $1199 and up, it’s still hundreds of pounds/dollar more than its launch price. RTX 3080. This model of Asus? prefer £1649 / $1550, is getting close to the cost of the RTX 4090 Founders Edition. That… it… I… don’t. No!
At the very least, it is superior to the king of the Ampere generation: RTX 3090ti. And often by respectable profits, too. Here are my RTX 4080 benchmark results so far, focusing on its native 4K habitat:
The RTX 4080 also produced significant gains over the RTX 3080, although they were not proportional to the price increase. If drastic improvements from generation to generation are what you’re really looking for, the RTX 4090 might even – and it’s hard to push those words into the keyboard – better buy. Its performance in Total War: Three Kingdoms and subway exodus, in particular, is miles ahead of the rest. The advancements of the RTX 4080 look merely routine by comparison.
There’s relatively positive news from the RTX 4080’s DLSS 3 output. This overhauled upscaling engine can further boost performance by adding AI-generated, interpolated frames along with frames. normally rendered image, it’s actually better at increasing FPS here than on the RTX 4090. Here’s how the two cards compare in Electronic 2077:
The RTX 4080 is starting to suffer; at 4K it can’t even really handle the Psycho ray tracing setting without upscaling. But with both DLSS 3’s upscaling and its AI framing enabled, the RTX 4080 ends up with a larger multiplier effect on its overall frame rate. For instance, the Quality setting of DLSS 3 results in a 204% improvement over the original setting on the RTX 4080, while the RTX 4090 improves by 153%. At the Faster Performance setting, it was 278% (!) faster on the RTX 4080 and 223% faster on the RTX 4090.
Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 will still ‘feel’ smoother on the RTX 4090, as one difference of these AI-generated frames is that they don’t affect input responsiveness like frames are ‘real’ rendering. In terms of target smoothness and camera movement while driving, that 82fps in Quality mode should be the same 49fps that the RTX 4080 gets with rendering off Frames.
I still think DLSS 3 is totally worth trying in difficult games like this, though List of supported games It takes time to mature. And in other games, including those with older DLSS versions, can we say that the RTX 4080 is close enough to the RTX 4090 to justify its cost? Or is it even far enough ahead of the RTX 3090 Ti, which is now cheaper? Not really, at least from my testing so far. Power efficiency looks surprisingly good, and DLSS 3 compatibility in itself is a plus, but that’s the compelling strong point so far.
I’ll run some more benchmarks when I get the chance and/or once again be able to pass all the insurance deals over to Will. But outside of repeated stormy performances, and perhaps better luck with molten power adapterit’s hard to see how the RTX 4080 is worth the money.
