Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review: bringing near-RTX 4090 performance closer to the masses
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080: Two-minute review
At first glance, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 doesn’t seem like that much of an upgrade from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 it is replacing, but that’s only part of the story with this graphics card.
Its performance, to be clear, is unquestioningly solid, positioning it as the third-best graphics card on the market right now, by my testing, and its new PCIe 5.0 interface and GDDR7 VRAM further distances it from the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super from the last generation. It also outpaces the best AMD graphics card, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, by a healthy margin, pretty much locking up the premium, enthusiast-grade GPUs in Nvidia’s corner for at least another generation.
Most impressively, it does this all for the same price as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super and RX 7900 XTX: $999 / £939 / AU$2,019. This is also a rare instance where a graphics card launch price actually recedes from the high watermark set by its predecessor, as the RTX 5080 climbs down from the inflated price of the RTX 4080 when it launched back in 2022 for $1,199 / £1,189 / AU$2,219.
Then, of course, there’s the new design of the card, which features a slimmer dual-slot profile, making it easier to fit into your case (even if the card’s length remains unchanged). The dual flow-through fan cooling solution does wonders for managing the extra heat generated by the extra 40W TDP, and while the 12VHPWR cable connector is still present, the 3-to-1 8-pin adapter is at least somewhat less ridiculous the RTX 5090‘s 4-to-1 dongle.
The new card design also repositions the power connector itself to make it less cumbersome to plug a cable into the card, though it does pretty much negate any of the 90-degree angle cables that gained popularity with the high-end RTX 40 series cards.
Finally, everything is built off of TSMC’s 4nm N4 process node, making it one of the most cutting-edge GPUs on the market in terms of its architecture. While AMD and Intel will follow suit with their own 4nm GPUs soon (AMD RDNA 4 also uses TSMC’s 4nm process node and is due to launch in March), right now, Nvidia is the only game in town.
None of that would matter though if the card didn’t perform, however, but gamers and enthusiasts can rest assured that even without DLSS 4, you’re getting a respectable upgrade. It might not have the wow factor of the beefier RTX 5090, but for gaming, creating, and even AI workloads, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 is a spectacular balance of performance, price, and innovation that you won’t find anywhere else at this level.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080: Price & availability
- How much is it? MSRP is $999 / £939 / AU$2,019
- When can you get it? The RTX 5080 goes on sale January 30, 2025
- Where is it available? The RTX 5080 will be available in the US, UK, and Australia at launch
Where to buy the RTX 5080
Looking to pick up the RTX 5080? Check out our Where to buy RTX 5080 live blog for updates to find stock in the US and UK
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 goes on sale on January 30, 2025, starting at $999 / £939 / AU$2,019 for the Founders Edition and select AIB partner cards, while overclocked (OC) and more feature-rich third-party cards will be priced higher.
This puts the Nvidia RTX 5080 about $200 / £200 / AU$200 cheaper than the launch price of the last-gen RTX 4080, while also matching the price of the RTX 4080 Super.
Both of those RTX 40 series GPUs should see some downward price pressure as a result of the RTX 5080 release, which might complicate the value proposition of the RTX 5080.
The RTX 5080 is also launching at the same MSRP as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which is AMD’s top GPU right now. And with AMD confirming that it does not intend to launch an enthusiast-grade RDNA 4 GPU this generation, the RTX 5080’s only real competition is from other Nvidia graphics cards like the RTX 4080 Super or RTX 5090.
This makes the RTX 5080 a great value proposition for those looking to buy a premium 4K graphics card, as its price-to-performance ratio is very strong.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080: Specs & features
- GDDR7 VRAM and PCIe 5.0
- Still just 16GB VRAM
- Slightly higher 360W TDP
| Header Cell – Column 0 | Nvidia RTX 5080 | Nvidia RTX 4080 Super | Nvidia RTX 4080 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process Technology | TSMC 4nm | TSMC 5nm | TSMC 5nm |
| Transistors (Billion) | 45,600 | 45,900 | 45,900 |
| Compute units | 84 | 80 | 76 |
| Shaders | 10,752 | 10,240 | 9,728 |
| AI/Matrix cores | 336 | 320 | 304 |
| Ray Tracing Cores | 84 | 80 | 76 |
| Render Output Units | 128 | 112 | 112 |
| Texture Mapping Units | 336 | 320 | 304 |
| Base Clock (MHz) | 2,295 | 2,295 | 2,205 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 2,617 | 2,550 | 2,505 |
| Memory type | GDDR7 | GDDR6X | GDDR6X |
| VRAM (GB) | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| VRAM Bus Width | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 30 | 23 | 22.4 |
| Bandwidth (GB/s) | 960 | 736.3 | 716.8 |
| TDP (watts) | 360 | 320 | 320 |
| PCIe Interface | PCIe 5.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
While the Nvidia RTX 5080 doesn’t push the spec envelope quite as far as the RTX 5090 does, its spec sheet is still impressive.
For starters, like the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 uses the faster, next-gen PCIe 5.0 interface that allows for speedier data processing and coordination with the CPU, which translates directly into higher performance.
You also have new GDDR7 VRAM in the RTX 5080, only the second card to have it after the RTX 5090, and it dramatically increases the memory bandwidth and speed of the RTX 5080 compared to the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super. Those latter two cards both use slower GDDR6X memory, so even though all three cards have the same amount of memory (16GB) and memory bus-width (256-bit), the RTX 5080 has a >25% faster effective memory speed of 30Gbps, compared to the 23Gbps of the RTX 4080 Super and the 22.4Gbps on the base RTX 4080.
This is all on top of the Blackwell GPU inside the card, which is built on TSMC’s 4nm process, compared to the Lovelace GPUs in the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super, which use TSMC’s 5nm process. So even though the transistor count on the RTX 5080 is slightly lower than its predecessor’s, the smaller transistors are faster and more efficient.
The RTX 5080 also has a higher SM count, 84, compared to the RTX 4080’s 76 and the RTX 4080 Super’s 80, meaning the RTX 5080 has the commensurate increase in shader cores, ray tracing cores, and Tensor cores. It also has a slightly faster boost clock (2,617MHz) than its predecessor and the 4080 Super variant.
Finally, there is a slight increase in the card’s TDP, 360W compared to the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super’s 320W.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080: Design
- Slimmer dual-slot form factor
- Dual flow-through cooling system
The redesign of the Nvidia RTX 5080 is identical to that of the RTX 5090, featuring the same slimmed-down dual slot profile as Nvidia’s flagship card.
If I were to guess, the redesign of the RTX 5080 isn’t as essential as it is for the RTX 5090, which needed a way to bring better cooling for the much hotter 575W TDP, and the RTX 5080 (and eventually the RTX 5070) appear to have got this new design almost by default.
That said, it’s still a fantastic change, especially as it makes the RTX 5080 thinner and lighter than its predecessor.
The core of the redesign is the new dual flow-through cooling solution, which uses an innovative three-part PCB inside to open up a gap at the front of the card, allowing a second fan to blow cooler air over the heat sink fins drawing heat away from the GPU.
This means that you don’t need as thick of a heat sink to pull away heat, which allows the card itself to get the same thermal performance from a thinner form factor, moving from the triple-slot RTX 4080 design down to a dual-slot RTX 5080. In practice, this also allows for a slight increase in the card’s TDP, giving the card a bit of a performance boost as well, just from implementing a dual flow-through design.
Given that fact, I would not be surprised if other card makers follow suit, and we start getting much slimmer graphics cards as a result.
The only other design choice of note is the 90-degree turn of the 16-pin power port, which should make it easier to plug the 12VHPWR connector into the card. The RTX 4080 didn’t suffer nearly the same kinds of issues with its power connectors as the RTX 4090 did, so this design choice really flows down from engineers trying to fix potential problems with the much more power hungry 5090. But, if you’re going to implement it for your flagship card, you might as well put it on all of the Founders Edition cards.
Unfortunately, this redesign means that if you invested in a 90-degree-angled 12VHPWR cable, it won’t work on the RTX 5080 Founders Edition, though third-party partner cards will have a lot of different designs, so you should be able to find one that fits your cable situation.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080: Performance
- Excellent all-around performance
- Moderately more powerful than the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super, but nearly as fast as the RTX 4090 in gaming
- You’ll need DLSS 4 to get the best results
A note on my data
The charts shown below are the most recent test data I have for the cards tested for this review and may change over time as more card results are added and cards are retested. The ‘average of all cards tested’ includes cards not shown in these charts for readability purposes.
A note on the RTX 4080 Super
In my testing for this review, the RTX 4080 Super scored consistently lower than it has in the past, which I believe is an issue with my card specifically that isn’t reflective of its actual performance. I’m including the data from the RTX 4080 Super for transparency’s sake, but I wouldn’t take these numbers as-is. I’ll be retesting the RTX 4080 Super soon, and will update my data with new scores once I’ve troubleshot the issue.
Performance is king, though, and so naturally all the redesign and spec bumps won’t amount to much if the RTX 5080 doesn’t deliver better performance as a result, and fortunately it does—though maybe not as much as some enthusiasts would like.
Overall, the RTX 5080 manages to score about 13% better than the RTX 4080 and about 19% better than the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, a result that will disappoint some (especially after seeing the 20-25% uplift on the RTX 5090) who were hoping for something closer to 20% or better.
If we were just to go off those numbers, some might call them disappointing, regardless of all the other improvements to the RTX 5080 in terms of design and specs. All this needs to be put in a broader context though, because my perspective changed once I compared the RTX 5080 to the RTX 4090.
Overall, the RTX 5080 is within 12% of the overall performance of the RTX 4090, and within 9% of the RTX 4090’s gaming performance, which is a hell of a thing and simply can’t be ignored, even by enthusiasts.
Starting with the card’s synthetic benchmarks, the card scores about 13% better than the RTX 4080 and RX 7900 XTX, with the RTX 5080 consistently beating out the RTX 4080 and substantially beating the RX 7900 XTX in ray-traced workloads (though the RX 7900 XTX does pull down a slightly better average 1080p rasterization score, to its credit.
Compared to the RTX 4090, the RTX 5080 comes in at about 15% slower on average, with its worst performance coming at lower resolutions. At 4K, though, the RTX 5080 comes in just 7% slower than the last-gen flagship.
In terms of compute performance, the RTX 5080 trounces the RX 7900 XTX, as expected, by about 38%, with a more modest 9% improvement over the RTX 4080. Against the RTX 4090, however, the RTX 5080 comes within just 5% of the RTX 4090’s Geekbench compute scores. If you’re looking for a cheap AI card, the RTX 5080 is definitely going to be your jam.
On the creative side, PugetBench for Creators Adobe Photoshop benchmark still isn’t working for the RTX 5080, so I can’t tell you much about its creative raster performance yet (though I will update these charts once that issue is fixed), but going off the 3D modeling and video editing scores, the RTX 5080 is an impressive GPU, as expected.
The entire 3D modeling industry is effectively built on Nvidia’s CUDA, so against the RTX 5080, the RX 7900 XTX doesn’t stand a chance as the 5080 more than doubles the RX 7900 XTX’s Blender Benchmark performance. Gen-on-gen though, the RTX 5080 comes in with about 8% better performance.
Against the RTX 4090, the RTX 5080 comes within 15% on its performance, and for good measure, if you’re rocking an RTX 3090 and you’re curious about the RTX 5080, the RTX 5080 outperforms the RTX 3090 by about 75% in Blender Benchmark. If you’re on an RTX 3090 and want to upgrade, you’ll probably still be better off with an RTX 4090, but if you can’t find one, the RTX 5080 is a great alternative.
In terms of video editing performance, the RTX 5080 doesn’t do as well as its predecessor in PugetBench for Creators Adobe Premiere benchmark tests, and effectively ties in my Handbrake 4K to 1080p encoding test. I expect that once the RTX 5080 launches, Puget Systems will be able to update its tools for the new RTX 50 series, so these scores will likely change, but for now, it is what it is, and you’re not going to see much difference in your video editing workflows with this card over its predecessor.
The RTX 5080 is Nvidia’s premium “gaming” card, though, so its gaming performance is what’s going to matter to the vast majority of buyers out there. For that, you won’t be disappointed. Working just off DLSS 3 with no frame generation, the RTX 5080 will get you noticeably improved framerates gen-on-gen at 1440p and 4K, with substantially better minimum/1% framerates as well for smoother gameplay. Turn on DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation and the RTX 5080 does even better, blowing well past the RTX 4090 in some titles.
DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation is game developer-dependent, however, so even though this is the flagship gaming feature for this generation of Nvidia GPUs, not every game will feature it. For testing purposes, then, I stick to DLSS 3 without Frame Generation (and the AMD and Intel equivalents, where appropriate), since this allows for a more apples-to-apples comparison between cards.
At 1440p, the RTX 5080 gets about 13% better average fps and minimum/1% fps overall, with up to 18% better ray tracing performance. Turn on DLSS 3 to ‘balanced’ and ray tracing to its highest settings and the RTX 5080 gets you about 9% better average fps than its predecessor, but a massive 58% higher minimum/1% fps, on average.
Compared to the RTX 4090, the RTX 5080’s average 1440p fps comes within 7% of the RTX 4090’s, and within 2% of its minimum/1% fps, on average. In native ray-tracing performance, the RTX 5080 slips to within 14% of the RTX 4090’s average fps and within 11% of its minimum/1% performance. Turn on balanced upscaling, however, and everything changes, with the RTX 5080 coming within just 6% of the RTX 4090’s ray-traced upscaled average fps, and beats the RTX 4090’s minimum/1% fps average by almost 40%.
Cranking things up to 4K, and the RTX 5080’s lead over the RTX 4080 grows a good bit. With no ray tracing or upscaling, the RTX 5080 gets about 20% faster average fps and minimum/1% fps than the RTX 4080, overall. Its native ray tracing performance is about the same, however, and its minimum/1% fps average actually falls behind the RTX 4080’s, both with and without DLSS 3.
Against the RTX 4090, the RTX 5080 comes within 12% of its average fps and within 8% of its minimum/1% performance without ray tracing or upscaling. It falls behind considerably in native 4K ray tracing performance (which is to be expected, given the substantially higher RT core count for the RTX 4090), but when using DLSS 3, that ray tracing advantage is cut substantially and the RTX 5080 manages to come within 14% of the RTX 4090’s average fps, and within 12% of its minimum/1% fps overall.
Taken together, the RTX 5080 makes some major strides in reaching RTX 4090 performance across the board, getting a little more than halfway across their respective performance gap between the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090.
The RTX 5080 beats its predecessor by just over 13% overall, and comes within 12% of the RTX 4090’s overal performance, all while costing less than both RTX 40 series card’s launch MSRP, making it an incredible value for a premium card to boot.
Should you buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080?
| Category | Notes | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Value | Walking back the price of the RTX 4080 and matching the price of the RTX 4080 Super, this card offers better performance without any additional cost. | 4 / 5 |
| Specs & features | New GDDR7 VRAM and PCIe 5.0 interface goes a long way to future-proofing this GPU. | 4 / 5 |
| Design | The slimmer design and better thermals make this card a winner on the design front, though the angled power power will frustrate anyone with a 90-degree 12VHPWR cable from the previous gen. | 4.5 / 5 |
| Performance | While the performance gains on its predecessor are modest on paper, this card manages to come within striking distance of RTX 4090 performance at a substantially lower cost. | 4 / 5 |
| Final score | Given its performance improvements, new features like DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation, slimmer profile, and approachable premium pricing, this is the best graphics card for most people, especially gamers. | 4.13 / 5 |
Buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider
How I tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
- I spent about a week and a half with the RTX 5080
- I used my complete GPU testing suite to analyze the card’s performance
- I tested the card in everyday, gaming, creative, and AI workload usage
Test System Specs
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
Motherboard: ASRock Z790i Lightning WiFi
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
CPU Cooler: Gigabyte Auros Waterforce II 360 ICE
RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR5-6600 (2 x 16GB)
SSD: Crucial T705
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050W Platinum
Case: Praxis Wetbench
I spent about a week testing the RTX 5080, using my updated suite of benchmarks like Black Myth Wukong, 3DMark Steel Nomad, and more.
I also used this card as my primary work GPU where I relied on it for photo editing and design work, while also testing out a number of games on it like Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth Wukong, and others.
I’ve been testing graphics cards for TechRadar for a couple of years now, with more than two dozen GPU reviews under my belt. I’ve extensively tested and retested all of the graphics cards discussed in this review, so I’m intimately familiar with their performance. This gives me the best possible position to judge the merits of the RTX 5080, and whether it’s the best graphics card for your needs and budget.
- Originally reviewed January 2024
