Verdict

There ’s no deny Nvidia ’s GeForce RTX 5080 delivers some seriously impressive skeletal frame rates at 4K. All you ask to do is catch a solid PSU and one of the just monitors you could discover , and you ’ll have a seriously in force time with any championship you choose to throw at it .

Pros

Cons

Key Features

Introduction

This may well be Nvidia ’s most controversial graphics bill launch to date , as much as it pain me to say it .

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 serial has had one heck of a bumpy launching , with stock being blazing in its absence and sure visiting card from particular manufacturer lack the full complement of componentry they ’re meant to have , yet still going on cut-rate sale .

That said , the RTX 5080 , in isolation , remains an impressive plug-in . At least on the control surface . At its core , Nvidia ’s 50 series features the all - new Blackwell architecture . Built off the back of TSMC ’s 4NP manufacture summons ( effectively a urbane 5 nm node ) , the RTX 5080 , on the aerofoil at least , is n’t that dissimilar from its predecessor , the 4080 Super .

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sure enough outside of in the buff specs anyway . There ’s only been a small bump in the total number of components on the affair , with the major performance gain actually come from clock swiftness and pressurise memory , more than anything else .

Yeah , it might not be topping thebest art cardof 2025 list , at least not yet , but there ’s more to this GPU than encounter the eye .

Specs

Core specs , then . As I already name , the jump up from theRTX 4080 Superto the RTX 5080 has been rather small . Despite utilising TSMC ’s tweaked 4NP manufacture cognitive operation , the overall footprint of the GPU has shrunk slenderly . Not by much , confessedly , 0.6 mm² to be exact , but enough to rein in any major ironware compactness increases .

full CUDA pith , TMUs , ray tracing effect , and Tensor cores have all increase in routine by exactly 5 % aggregate , and that ’s it . ROPs remain selfsame . Not a huge generational saltation by any means . Additionally , the advertised hike clock has also increased from 2550 MHz to 2620 MHz ( in testing , it peaks at around 2835 MHz in my apparatus ) .

The big achiever here forBlackwellis the inclusion of Samsung ’s latest GDDR7 VRAM . The speeds adequate to on this are just unparalleled justly now , with the 256 - piece bus on the RTX 5080 rescue a banging 960 GB / s of full bandwidth , give way it some serious clout nail at 4K.

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Although again , there are n’t any total mental ability increases here either , so you ’re still mystify with that 16 GB . TDP has gone up too , increasing from 320W to 360W , and the MSRP is set at the same $ 1000/£1000 .

Buy GeForce RTX 5080 Graphics Cards : Amazon / Currys / Laptops Direct / Overclockers / Scan

Nvidia ’s really banking on its procession withDLSS 4for these calling card . That ’s the big trafficker here . Particularly as it ’s transitioning out from that convolutional neuronic meshing to a transformer - based model alternatively .

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In part , this is to help oneself lurch from those often blurred edges and motion sickness that some are susceptible to in the earlier model , particularly with upscaling and frame generation . It ’s the latter that ’s seen the biggest improvement , with selection now available to twofold , triple , or even quadruple the turn of bod generated , importantly boosting framerates in the process .

Test Setup

I ’ve spent the last two to three calendar month try out Nvidia ’s RTX 50 series cards in all manner of soma and setups . Here , I wanted to do something a little different by entirely revamping our testing suite to really campaign these graphics cards to the limit and well understand how they operate under load .

Throughout the examination operation , I ’ve monitored power draw and scheme temperature utilize a salmagundi of plug - in power meters and HWMonitor .

For the tests themselves , I ’m using a mixture of synthetic and “ real - world ” benchmark from game engines . I ’m also using a number of AI tests ( admit illation examination and paradigm multiplication ) , plus some custom data decimal point based on cost - to - performance ratios and average chassis per moment across resolutions .

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For our gaming test , each elemental solution is benchmarked , with a total of five games , each run three times , to net a median result for both minimal and median physical body pace .

The games in doubt are Cyberpunk 2077 , Black Myth Wukong , Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition , Final Fantasy XIV , and Total War : Warhammer 3 ( utilising the mirror of insaneness bench mark ) . All game are set to the maximum preset available , with no changes ; the only exceptions are Black Myth Wukong , which has its ray tracing features handicapped and the graphic profile correct at Ultra , alongside Cyberpunk , which has DLSS disabled .

Additionally , to get a better understanding of how these cards execute with both DLSS and Frame Generation dynamic , I ’ve also done an additional four set of trial with Cyberpunk and Black Myth Wukong ( this time with ray of light tracing enabled ) , with AI upscaling only run , plus AI upscaling and frame generation too .

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For Nvidia circuit card , that of class means we ’re utilising DLSS ; for AMD and Intel , that ’s strictly FSR , not Intel ’s XeSS .

As for my hardware picks , you may see those above . the right way now , the battle between Intel and AMD for CPU dominance and the hunt for thebest gaming CPUis incredibly tight .

Although an X3D chip shot might have been a good pick , given its 3D memory cache solution has fairly mixed results depending on the title , I opt to instead stick with the blood line AMD Ryzen 9 9900X , as it represented a good balance between undivided and multi - core performance without sacrificing too heavily on clockspeed .

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Gaming Performance

calculate , let ’s be real here ; we all knew this circuit board was going to seriously cede at 4 K , and , well , it really does .

Average inning rates across all of our testing title of respect landed at 61.56 fps , and that ’s a figure dragged down by some pretty aggressive testing on both Cyberpunk and Black Myth . Total War ’s Mirrors of Madness benchmark landed a solid 64.3 Federal Protective Service on average , and Final Fantasy XIV set down 111 again at 4 G , with not a tinge of beam trace or DLSS in sight .

Metro Exodus , with the profile rig to extreme , glided in at 58 Federal Protective Service , Black Myth at 40 Federal Protective Service ( without shaft trace , it ’s just an strong-growing plot ) , and hacker managed 34.7 fps as well .

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All good , telling numbers . Comparing it to last gen , though , is where the problems lead off to arise . The performance difference of opinion amount to around 12.9 % harmonise to my figures . That ’s an betterment , sure , but in reality , we ’re utter about a remainder in mean framerate of about 6.5 Federal Protective Service .

Now , yes , it has only been one year since the Super ’s launch , but it feels massively lackluster for a generational jump . That only fuck off more and more worse as we go down the result stack as well . At 1440p , the difference is only 4.4 % in average build rates ; at 1080p , it ’s not even worth account — it ’s that blue .

In the synthetic examination , things were ( perhaps unsurprisingly ) a band more irrefutable for the late coevals of card , with the RTX 5080 visualise significant performance bumps compared to last gen as well , but given these are n’t just establish on substantial - humans play , they do n’t really serve as much of a comfortableness . you could see all the benchmarking data point below .

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Gaming Benchmark Data

Ray Tracking, DLSS and AI Performance

First up , countenance me just say that the Modern transformer mannikin Nvidia is apply for its DLSS and framing - gen dangerous undertaking is far better than its convolutional predecessor .

It ’s cleaner , crisper , and latency has been dramatically improve , at least in my experience with it . MFG every bit really did extend its legs quite well here , and in my brief time splash around with it in Cyberpunk , it produce fair skeletal frame at closely 200 fps in 4x style .

It ’s a bit frustrating really , as this is technical school that is shut away behind the RTX 50 serial , despite the 40 and 30 serial theoretically having the capacity and hardware to utilise it as well . They still can get that 2x mood , however .

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Still in examination , the RTX 5080 did see an telling performance boost utilise DLSS and frame gen in Cyberpunk and Black Myth . I save the MFG at just 2x frames for Cyberpunk and medium frames shot from 60fps with just DLSS to 105.3 Federal Protective Service with frame gen add on top .

In UL ’s Procyon AI bench mark rooms , results were quite hopeful . Nvidia ’s TensorRT API give up a score of 4274 in Computer Vision , versus the RTX 4080 Super ’s 3728 , although again using Windows ML , that deficit did once again drop .

picture generation equally saw significant improvements utilising Tensor over last gen , with ONNX only direct to a 10 % increase in overall execution .

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Power Consumption and Temperature

So , good news first . Nvidia has clearly proven with its Founders Edition that you may get away with just utilising a matching - time slot cooler design for its RTX 5080 cards .

In my testing , max temps overstep out at 76.0 deoxycytidine monophosphate throughout the entire benchmarking cognitive process ( ambient way temperature was 28.0 C ) . That ’s such a large deal in today ’s long time of concrete - block - forge graphics cards ; it ’s nice that we ’ve got coolers useable that really flinch them back down to a fairish size without compromising on temperatures as well .

Max superpower attractor during testing was reasonably high than on the late genesis , with a protuberance of around 30W or so under cargo , but that ’s to be expect as TGP has go up by 40W formally too , no doubt in part due to the increase clock speeds Nvidia is leverage here .

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Should you buy it?

There ’s no denying Nvidia ’s GeForce RTX 5080 cede some seriously telling frame rate at 4K. All you need to do is take hold of a substantial PSU and one of the full varan you may find , and you ’ll have a seriously near prison term with any claim you choose to flip at it . With DLSS and MFG there if you need them , it effectively makes 4 K a realness without break away the bank .

If you ’re still on the last gen of Nvidia cards , unless you ’re on an RTX 4060 , it ’s probably not deserving jumping over to the RTX 5080 just yet .

Although it does birth solid performance , that middling 12.9 % improvement on last gen is grueling to see when you ’re actually stake and only survive at 4K. If you may find one in stock for its retail price , even then , it ’s not the best value for money card either ( that claim sit around thoroughly with Intel ’s Arc B580 ) .

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Final Thoughts

Nvidia ’s GeForce RTX 5080 is a bite of an unusual person . A black cat in the world of computer graphic lineup launches . Its expiration has been marred with contestation and stock issues , not help by globular events and politics , and pricing remains often gamey .

In closing off ( and this is for sure applicable if you ’re on the 30 or 20 series from Nvidia ) , the RTX 5080 is a easily one of thebest art poster , capable of delivering some especial 4 K performance and backed up by an unbelievable suite of AI hardware to extradite some of the in force high - res play experience money can buy ( outside of the RTX 5090 ) .

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How we test

Every GPU I get in for review is establish in its own consecrate exam apparatus , complete with ironware that should ensure bottleneck remain at a minimum .

Each card is then monitored via power meter and software to keep a check on mightiness draw and temperatures while the benchmarking process is underway .

We utilize a totality of 67 datum points per card , prove across all style of plot and titles , plus synthetic benchmarks , at every mainstream answer , and also test AI functionality as well .

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