Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER AERO OC Review & Benchmarks

NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 SUPER targets the enthusiast PC building space and is a perfect option for those looking to play games at high resolutions. As part of a mid-life refresh, the RTX 4080 SUPER is the third RTX 4000 ‘SUPER’ card to release in a very competitive market.

The RTX 4080 SUPER hits the shelves a week after the release of the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and offers buyers an alternative option that competes with the RX 7900 XTX, AMD’s most powerful Radeon 7000 graphics card. NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace architecture has always offered a solid value proposition to respective buyers, and the RTX 4080 SUPER demonstrates this with its excellent performance metrics across AAA titles.

In this review we’ll be taking a look at Gigabyte’s AERO OC variant of the RTX 4080 SUPER. We’ll be assessing the design and performance that this card offers versus market alternatives.

Buy the Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER AERO OC on:

Specifications

The RTX 4080 SUPER is the card that we’re the most excited about due to its hardware improvements and significant price drop. In terms of spec improvements, the most notable changes are to the core counts and clock speeds.

Versus the original RTX 4080, the SUPER model has received uplifts across its RT, Tensor and CUDA cores. The boost clock speed has also increased by around 400MHz, up to 2.55GHz. The boost clock speed will vary across different models, and you might be able to leverage more performance dependent on the card you’ve chosen.

For example, the Gigabyte AERO OC card that we’re looking at today offers a 2.59GHz clock speed, which will improve some performance across games and other applications.

The other big change is the MSRP of the RTX 4080 SUPER model. Instead of the $1200 MSRP that the original RTX 4080 saw, the RTX 4080 SUPER sits at $999 as its launch price. The biggest issue with the vanilla RTX 4080 card was its price versus the rest of the market. But with this major price drop, the RTX 4080 SUPER offers much better value in comparison, while also competing with the RX 7900 XTX.

Suggested Article: Palit RTX 4080 SUPER GamingPro OC Review & Benchmarks

RTX SUPER Cards – What Are They?

NVIDIA’s RTX SUPER range of graphics cards isn’t the first ‘SUPER’ rebrand that we’ve seen from Team Green. After the initial RTX 2000 launch, we saw a SUPER refresh that targeted the RTX 2060, 2070, and 2080 cards. This has shifted slightly with the RTX 4070, 4070 Ti, and 4080 all receiving hardware upgrades and a name change.

These three cards have received hardware enhancements increasing core counts and clock speeds. The RTX 4070 Ti SUPER also saw a VRAM capacity upgrade and memory bus improvement. The RTX 4080 SUPER has received some minimal hardware improvements, along with a minor price drop too.

Admittedly, it would have been great to see the RTX 4070 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER receive price adjustments, but we can understand NVIDIA are trying to recoup their losses with the hardware changes. Both of the ’70’ class cards have been received well versus their original counterparts, so the performance upgrade is definitely worth it for many buyers.

Design

Taking a look at the design, Gigabyte’s AERO variant of the RTX 4080 SUPER is a needle in a haystack. White cards are somewhat rare nowadays, so Gigabyte’s AERO OC model offers buyers a unique look that isn’t as common within the PC building space. The Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER AERO OC features a white shroud across the entirety of the card, along with three white fans too.

The thermal performance of this GPU is very strong thanks to the enhanced heatsink design which is visible through the backplate, top, and bottom of the card. The alternate spinning fans increases airflow pressure, while the unique fan blade design guides air smoothly through the card, minimising coil whine and noise levels. Gigabyte have also employed their 3D Active Fan technology which turns off the fans when the load is low enough.

On the aesthetic front, the Gigabyte AERO variant of the RTX 4080 SUPER is one of the best looking cards on the market. The white shrouding provides a sleek lighter look to your PC build, ideal for a white-themed system. The white colouring is also consistent across the entire card, including the fans.

The rear of the AERO OC model also features a metal backplate increasing stability, while maintaining the lighter theme. The AERO logo on the top of the cards provides some additional flair in the form of RGB which can be fully customised using Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion software. Overall, this Gigabyte AERO card is an excellent GPU ideal for those building a white PC.

Performance

To figure out how well the Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER AERO OC performance, our in-house benchmarker, Harry Coleman, has put this variant through the wringer within a myriad of different games. We’ve targeted 1440p as our primary resolution, as this is an extremely popular market right now. However, the RTX 4080 SUPER is a very capable 4K GPU too.

Alan Wake 2

Settings: 1440p, Post-Processing High, Texture Resolution High, Texture Filtering High, Volumetric Lighting High, Global Illumination Quality High, Shadow Detail High, Terrain Quality High, Ray-Tracing: Disabled, DLSS: On/Off, Frame Generation: On/Off

In Alan Wake 2 at 1440p high we ran two different benchmarks, one with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, and one without these settings. As you can see from the graph, the RTX 4080 SUPER holds up pretty well in pure rasterized gameplay, offering up a 96FPS average. This cements the RTX 4080 SUPER as one of the most capable GPUs when it comes to pure raster gameplay.

With DLSS and ray tracing switched on, framerates surged up to the 133FPS mark which was pretty impressive. DLSS 3.0 is clearly putting in some of the work here, but its great to see that the RTX 4080 SUPER still holds up well within ray traced gameplay.

Starfield

Settings: 1440p, Shadow Quality High, Indirect Lighting High, Reflections High, Crowd Density High, Particle Quality High, Volumetric Lighting High, Motion Blur off, GTAO Quality High, Grass Quality High, Contact Shadows High VSync Off, DLSS/FSR OFF

In Starfield, the RTX 4080 SUPER was able to offer up 110FPS on average. This was more than ample as Starfield is quite an intense game and can be much harder to run comparative to other AAA titles. The RTX 4080 SUPER does sit slightly below the RX 7900 XTX, but the 7FPS difference here is almost negligible.

Cyberpunk 2077

Settings: 1440p, Shadow Quality High, Indirect Lighting High, Reflections High, Crowd Density High, Particle Quality High, Volumetric Lighting High, Motion Blur off, GTAO Quality High, Grass Quality High, Contact Shadows High VSync Off, DLSS/FSR: On/Off, Ray Tracing: On/Off, Textures: High

In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p high, we saw solid performance from the RTX 4080 SUPER, leading the fore with a 117FPS average. This is with ray tracing and DLSS enabled, and we’re seeing the RTX 4080 SUPER hold up extremely well despite being under a significant amount of load.

With these settings disabled, the RTX 4080 SUPER shot up to the top of the graph, offering a 141FPS average, aligning it with the RX 7900 XTX. Cyberpunk 2077 is quite an intense title, so its great to see that the RTX 4080 SUPER holds up well within this title.

Hogwarts Legacy

Settings: 1440p, Shadow Quality High, Indirect Lighting High, Reflections High, Crowd Density High, Particle Quality High, Volumetric Lighting High, Motion Blur off, GTAO Quality High, Grass Quality High, Contact Shadows High VSync Off, DLSS/FSR: On/Off, Ray Tracing: On/Off, Textures: High

In Hogwarts Legacy, the RTX 4080 SUPER was able to output 131FPS on average, placing it at the top of the graph just below AMD’s RX 7900 XTX. Again, performance here is pretty negligible, you’re not going to really notice a 4FPS framerate difference.

COD Warzone

Settings: 1440p, Upscaling/Sharpening FSR 2.1/DLSS Quality (80 Sharpness), Texture Resolution High, Texture Filter Anisotropic High, Level of Detail High

In COD Warzone we switched on DLSS and FSR and saw an average framerate of 188FPS from the RTX 4080 SUPER. Frames really do matter in this particular title, so its great that the RTX 4080 SUPER is surpassing the 144HZ mark, allowing buyers to enjoy high refresh rates.

F1 2022

Settings: 1440p, Ray Tracing Quality Medium, Lighting Quality Ultra High, Post Process High, Shadows Ultra High, Weather Effects Ultra High, Ambient Occlusion HBAO+, Asynchronous Compute On, Texture Streaming Ultra High, Anisotropic Filtering 8x, DLSS: Enabled

During our F1 2022 benchmark we switched on ray tracing and DLSS and saw an outrageous framerate of 299FPS from the RTX 4080 SUPER. 299FPS is not going to be necessary for most gamers, but its still impressive to see especially with ray tracing enabled. The RX 7900 XTX does however give the RTX 4080 SUPER a run for its money with a 322FPS average.

Apex Legends

Settings: 1440p, Anti-aliasing TSAA, Texture Filtering 8X, Model Detail High, VSync Disabled, Effects High, Ambient Occlusion Quality High

Apex Legends is a game that we always benchmark due to its popularity. Gaming performance really does matter within this title, as it gives you the ability to respond at a moments notice. The RTX 4080 SUPER was saw a 271FPS average in this title which is going to be more than enough for most gamers. Ultimately most gamers are not ever going to need their frames to reach this high, but it is still impressive to see regardless.

Fortnite

Settings: 1080p, Quality Low, Anti-aliasing & Super Resolution TSR High, Temporal Super Resolution Performance, View Distance Far, Textures Low

Our final benchmarking run was Fortnite, in which we dialled the settings and resolution down to 1080p low. The RTX 4080 SUPER is not a GPU that you’d pick specifically for 1080p gaming, but this benchmark gives us an indicator of where performance lies across each generation. The RTX 4080 SUPER offered up 320FPS, placing it just below the RX 7900 XTX which offered 324FPS instead. Performance was extremely stable, and is going to be ample for most buyers.

Cost Per Frame

While raw gaming performance is a metric that we use to assess the value that a graphics card offers. However cost per frame also gives us an idea of how many frames we’re getting based on how much you’re spending. Below we’ve provided two graphs that highlights the cost per frame of the RTX 4080 SUPER in Apex Legends and Hogwarts Legacy.

Apex Legends

In Apex Legends the RTX 4080 SUPER offers a cost per frame of $3.69. The overall cost per frame here is obviously quite high, and this is primarily down to the fact that the RTX 4080 SUPER is not a card that most buyers will use to play a well optimised title like Apex Legends. The RX 7900 XTX does offer a slightly better cost per frame within this title, with $3.12.

The sweet spot within this particular game is around the $2.50 mark. 1440p gaming is more intense than 1080p, so a card like the RX 7700 XT or RTX 4070 SUPER offer better value at this resolution.

Hogwarts Legacy

In Hogwarts Legacy cost per frame does shift slightly. Although the overall cost has increased, the values are much closer, with the RTX 4070 and RTX 4080 SUPER coming relatively close together. The RTX 4080 SUPER is geared more towards this title, as it is an incredibly demanding game. However, cards like the RX 7900 XT and even the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER look to be better options for this particular game.

RTX 5000 Graphics Cards – Worth Waiting For?

RTX 5000 GPUs are an exciting proposition within the current PC building landscape based on the fact that performance could be ground-breaking. Prospective buyers looking for an upgrade might consider holding out for the next generation of GPUs in hopes to unlock insane gaming performance, but is RTX 5000 worth holding out for?

Allegedly codenamed ‘Blackwell’ and potentially launching towards the end of 2024 or at the start of 2025. Although we’re not really in any position to guess where performance will lie, based on the current positioning of RTX 4000 and Radeon 7000 cards, it isn’t likely that a potential RTX 5000 range will offer mind-blowing metrics.

The market has somewhat shifted, where games have become extremely demanding and hardware is still catching up, any RTX 5000 graphics cards probably won’t outperform the current generational options. Now this isn’t to say that the current GPUs are bad.

The graphics card market is the most competitive its ever been, and there are a plethora of cards that cater to different use-cases and buyers. However, we don’t feel waiting out for RTX 5000 options is a good idea based on the fact that NVIDIA’s RTX 4000 range is very solid.

Conclusion