Product test
Big card, big performance, big price tag
by Kevin Hofer
The RTX 4080 is just too expensive
6/12/2022
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
Most of the discourse surrounding the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 concerns pricing. And deservedly so. After all, it’s the main factor in why I don’t want one.
«Is the RTX 4080 expensive or too expensive?» was the title of last week’s Review Roundup. Now that I’ve had time to get to know the 4080, the answer seems quite clear: too expensive. And that’s despite the fact that the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition I tested isn’t a bad graphics card in terms of performance.
Design and ports: a tank
Specifications: a minor upgrade on paper
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is manufactured at TSMC in the N4 process. There are 9728 Cuda cores enabled on the AD 103 chip. In addition, the card features 304 fourth-generation tensor cores and 76 third-generation ray tracing cores. Thus, the RTX 4080 offers twelve per cent more cores than the RTX 3080. That doesn’t sound like much, but the actual performance increase compared to its predecessor is greater in reality. The card possesses 16 gigabytes of GDDR6X memory.
Nvidia still relies on PCIe Gen 4 for the interface. Powering this is a 12VHPWR adapter. You should pay attention to correctly handle the cable; otherwise there’s a risk of your card catching fire. The thermal design power (TDP) is 320 watts. Here are all the specs at a glance:
Test setup and methods
I used the following components for this review, which were provided to me by the manufacturers for testing:
The system runs on Windows 11 version 21H2 (22000.1098). I used BIOS version 0502 and enabled XMP. Otherwise, I left everything on default, Resizable BAR was disabled. For the graphics card, I used driver version 526.47.
Here’s an overview of the different benchmarks:
I ran each benchmark three times and took the best result. For the games, I used the highest possible presets. Otherwise, I left everything at default except for the resolution. I left DLSS or FSR deactivated. In this review, I’m looking at the rasterisation and ray tracing performance of various games without additional tools.
Game results a clear increase in performance
Since we can’t display image galleries, I won’t list individual game results. You can download all the benchmarks here. The following charts (only in German) show the arithmetic mean of frames per second (FPS) for all nine benchmark games across various graphics cards.
This is a big difference compared to the RTX 4090, managing 23% fewer FPS, especially in UHD. At lower resolutions, it’s a maximum difference of ten per cent.
Same goes for the three ray-tracing games. Across all three games, the RTX 4080 beats the 30-series cards. Compared to the RTX 3080, the difference gets bigger at higher resolutions. It increases from 27 per cent at 1080p to 34 per cent at 2160p.
Compared to the RTX 4090, it’s 12 in 1080p, 18 in 1440p and 23 per cent fewer FPS in 2160p. You can download results from individual games here.
Fire Strike, Fire Strike Ultra, Time Spy and Time Spy Ultra
Across all four benchmarks, the RTX 4080 lags 17 per cent behind the RTX 4090. It blasts past the RTX 3080 and 3090 by 37 and 22 per cent, respectively.
Blender
Blender Benchmark renders three scenes in its 3D graphics suite (version 3.3) and calculates three scores using them. I’ve added these up to give end scores for each.
The performance jump in Blender is large. The RTX 4080 achieves an 86 per cent higher score than the RTX 3080 and a 57 per cent higher score than the RTX 3090. Compared to the current top model, the RTX 4090, however, the RTX 3080 falls 25 per cent short.
Photography and video editing
The photo editing and video editing benchmark UL Procyon simulates various workloads in Adobe Creative Suite. At the end, the benchmark calculates a score.
As expected, the RTX 4080 is ahead of both 30-series models in the video editing benchmark. In the photo editing benchmark, however, it falls short. That’s only slightly surprising, however. Adobe is very slow when it comes to adapting software to new hardware. If I ran the benchmark again in a month or two, I’d get a vastly different result.
Power consumption, noise and temperature
The maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 320 watts is rarely reached by the RTX 4080. In games, I’ve only seen the value flare up briefly. On average, it stays at 270 watts in 2160p across the entire benchmark suite. Thus, the RTX 4080 is quite a bit more economical than the RTX 3080 with 300 watts. At lower resolutions, the performance should be below this value. Thus, the 750-watt power supply recommended by Asus should be well sufficient.
When gaming, temperatures reached a maximum of 63 degrees Celsius. On average, I measured 56 degrees Celsius across all games on the open test bench.
Regarding noise, you won’t hear a peep from the card in idle mode, since the fans stand still. Like this, the card only draws 5 watts and stays cool at 28 degrees Celsius. When I’m browsing or watching Netflix, the card requires up to 32 watts of power, but doesn’t get hotter than 40 degrees Celsius. Most of the time, the fans don’t run.
Lastly, I measured performance during the Blender Benchmark. Here, the RTX 4080 draws an average of 205 watts and reaches a maximum of 54 degrees Celsius.
Verdict: nope
Performance-wise, the RTX 4080 isn’t a bad graphics card, as evidenced by all the benchmarks in this review. It delivers decent FPS while remaining efficient. Still, the price is a problem.
The Founders Edition RTX 4080 costs 1,199 USD at launch in the US. That’s $500 or 72 per cent more than the RTX 3080 at its launch in 2020. The same goes for the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition featured in this review. It cost 1,659 francs/euros at launch. Its direct predecessor, the ASUS GeForce TUF RTX 3080 O10G Gaming, ran you just 739 francs/euro. The new card is 125 per cent more expensive than its 2020 equivalent.
The pricing policy makes it seem like we’re still in the middle of a semiconductor crisis, with scarcely available graphics cards. But that’s no longer the case. Today, inflation is a bigger problem. But even it, to my knowledge, isn’t at 125 per cent…
Kevin Hofer
Senior Editor
kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.chFrom big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.
