NVIDIA RTX 4080 review: A (slightly) more practical 4K gaming titan

So what do these numbers mean in practice? The RTX 4080 scored around 3,500 fewer points in 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme benchmark compared to the 4090. But if that more powerful card didn’t exist, the 4080 would be the most capable GPU we’ve ever reviewed. Its TimeSpy Extreme score was about 50 percent higher than the 3080 Ti, and it reached a comfortable 130fps while playing Halo Infinite in 4K with all of its graphics settings maxed out. Seeing Cyberpunk 2077 hit 74fps in 4K with ultra ray tracing settings (and the help of DLSS 3) nearly brought a tear to my eye.

A word on DLSS 3: It’s NVIDIA’s latest AI solution that can take lower-quality imagery and upscale it to higher resolutions. But in addition to intelligently sharpening edges and upgrading textures, DLSS 3 can also inject interpolated frames to smooth out 4K gameplay. While I can occasionally spot issues with particularly low quality DLSS upscaling, I didn’t notice any unusual framerate hiccups while testing Cyberpunk and A Plague Tale: Requiem with the technology enabled.

The only real downside to the RTX 4080 is that I can’t help but compare it to the 4090. That same Cyberpunk ray tracing benchmark was almost twice as fast on the 4090, reaching an eye-watering 135 fps. It also hit a 40-fps-higher average framerate in the 3DMark Port Royal ray tracing benchmark. Still, these are the sorts of gains only the most dedicated gamers will notice, the exact market for the 4090. When it comes to actual 4K gameplay, even with ray tracing in demanding games like Control, I never felt held back by the RTX 4080.

And if you’re looking for more performance, overclocking is always an option. I didn’t have a chance to do so myself, but the 4080’s thermal performance makes me think there’s plenty of room for pushing things harder. It never climbed beyond 61 celsius during my testing, around 10 degrees cooler than the 4090. That’s a testament to NVIDIA’s excellent cooling setup (and perhaps partially due to my office being slightly cooler this month).

The real question: Is it worth settling for the 4080 if there’s a chance you’ll actually be able to buy the 4090 for $1,599? At the moment, most online retailers are selling 4090 cards for well above $2,000. It sounds crazy to say it, but the $1,199 card seems like a steal with that gulf. But, of course, who knows how long you’ll be able to find the RTX 4080 at its launch price. It likely won’t be too long before it creeps towards the 4090’s higher tag.

And if paying more than $1,000 for a video card seems insane to you — and let’s be clear, it should — sit tight to see what NVIDIA’s future cards look like. We’re definitely expecting RTX 4070, 4060 and 4050 cards eventually, but the the question is when. (Also, what the heck will NVIDIA do with its planned $899 4080 GPU? Does that become the 4070?) AMD’s flagship RDNA 3 GPUs will launch below $1,000, and at the entry level, Intel’s new Arc GPUs are surprisingly compelling.

All in all, the RTX 4080 is exactly what I’d want from an RTX 3080 Ti successor. It’s faster and has plenty of new features to make it a demonstrable leap from the previous cards. I’m not saying you should be upgrading your 3080 anytime soon, but if you somehow stumble onto $1,199, I wouldn’t blame you for being tempted by the 4080.