Barely a fortnight after the launch of the RTX 5090, and NVIDIA is already making the GeForce RTX 5080 official. That’s right, we have the card in our lab and in spite of it being the Chinese New Year week, I’ve managed to conduct the review for it.
And despite the fact that this card is step down the ladder from the RTX 5090, the card is, expectedly, anything but a slouch in the gaming department.
Specifications
Design
Just as NVIDIA did with the RTX 40 Series Founders Edition, the RTX 50 Series is identical to the RTX 5090, at least in its cooler shroud design. Of course, it goes without saying that the GPU is essentially a watered-down version of NVIDIA’s flagship GPU but, as the company has consistently pointed out, is still more powerful than the RTX 4090.
Underneath the hood, the RTX 5080 still rocks the same 4NP process node from TSMC but instead of 32GB of GDDR7, you get half that at 16GB GDDR7. Additionally, it features a smaller memory bus size and lower TGP at 360W and to my surprise, though, the onboard memory runs at a faster 30Gbps, compared to the RTX 5090’s 28Gbps. Beyond that, the GPU and its PCB sits squarely – that’s both a literal and figurative description – in the middle of the card.
Circling back to the cooler shroud, the RTX 5080 features the FE’s Dual Flowthrough design instead of the older Dual Axis Flowthrough, while the two fans are installed at the front, or bottom of the card, depending on how you look at it. Ports-wise, you get the three DisplayPort 2.1a ports and one HDMI 2.1 port, all of which are inverted to have the latches of the cable heads face upwards for what I assume is easier accessibility.
Testbench
My testbench remains the same as when I reviewed the RTX 5090 and the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. By that, I’ve been using the Gigabyte AORUS Elite X870E WiFi7 as my primary motherboard, along with the Ryzen 9 9950X as the CPU of choice. For comparison, I will be benching the RTX 5080 FE against the RTX 4080 but not with RTX 4080 Super. Also, because of the CPU change, the gaming benchmarks for the RTX 4080 have been retested in order to keep the results fair.
Some of you are probably wondering why I’m only comparing the RTX 5080 against the RTX 4080 and not the 4080 Super. The simple fact of the matter is: the performance gains between the 4080 and its Super variant aren’t groundbreaking and looking back upon earlier benchmarks, really are negligible.
For another matter, and this is based on a very broad assumption: given the minute gains between the 4080 and 4080 Super, I doubt many would have upgraded to the latter, especially if their system was already running the former.
Benchmarks, Temperature, And Power Consumption
As one would expect, the RTX 5080 FE pulls ahead of the RTX 4080 by a comfortable margin, with only a couple of benchmark tests seeing it lag behind its predecessor, but only ever so slightly.
Gaming, on the other hand, presented some interesting results. Here’s the thing: yes, titles such as Alan Wake 2 and the new 2.21 update for Cyberpunk 2077 clearly give the RTX 5080 a defining edge in their performance, allowing it to boost the average frames in both games exponentially. However, when it comes to older titles, there are signs that a reverse diseconomy of scales or tipping point, if you will, is present.
When gaming at 4K resolution, the RTX 5080 batters the bejesus out of the RTX 4080, taking the lead across all my control titles. Scale the resolution down to QHD or Full HD, for that matter and the flip is switched on it, for a handful of titles. Take the Full HD test as an example: DXMD, Doom Eternal, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider can be seen running faster. Granted, it’s not by a whole lot but a lead is still a lead.
As for temperatures, the RTX 5080 FE runs cooler than the RTX 4080 FE but as a reminder, this is just for the FE variant and how much better cooling for AIB cards will depend on the board partners that manufacture them.
As for power consumption, the card pulls the same amount of power as advertised by NVIDIA, and not a watt more.
Conclusion
So there you have it. For half the price of the RTX 5090 at US$999 (~RM4,388), the GeForce RTX 5080 FE is just as much a beast as NVIDIA’s king of the Blackwell architecture. That puts it in the same price bracket as the RTX 4080 Super but as with all inter-generational updates, there are some gains to be had with this card.
As I mentioned in my review of the RTX 5090, making the jump from an RTX 40 Series card to the RTX 5080 is a no brainer, especially if you’re prepared to fork out north of RM4,500. Likewise, for those of you making the upgrade from the RTX 30 Series, or RTX 20 Series even, the new card would undoubtedly deliver a massive boon in performance not just in framerates but in all the additional features that come with the card, including DLSS4 and Multiframe Generation.
Photography by John Law.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
