NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition Review & Benchmarks

High-end gaming has become extremely popular, with both AMD and NVIDIA targeting this demographic of buyers in recent years. Building a top-end PC has become increasingly more feasible with new components consistently hitting the market designed to handle the performance demands of the latest games at higher resolutions.

The RTX 4080 SUPER is one of these components, targeting buyers looking to build a highly capable gaming PC. The RTX 4080 SUPER is the third RTX 4000 card to receive a mid-life ‘SUPER’ refresh, targeting AMD’s most powerful Radeon 7000 option, the RX 7900 XTX. NVIDIA’s Ada Lovelace architecture has proven itself a number of times, with DLSS and ray tracing capabilities demonstrating how worthwhile RTX 4000 GPUs are.

Out of all of the RTX 4080 SUPER options, the Founders Edition is a very competitive offering, coming in with an MSRP of $999. In today’s review, we’ll be doing a deep dive on the Founders Edition variant of the RTX 4080 SUPER, assessing performance within a plethora of games, to see if this card is worth picking up versus current market alternatives.

Suggested Article: MSI RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT Review & Benchmarks

Specifications

The RTX 4080 SUPER sees some changes to the hardware, with the main upgrades focusing on the core counts and clock speeds. For the most part, the RTX 4080 SUPER doesn’t differ that much from the original RTX 4080. The VRAM capacity and memory bus remain the same, along with power consumption too. CUDA cores have risen up to 10240, with RT and Tensor cores sitting at 80 and 320 respectively.

All of these core upgrades improve general gaming performance, while also enhancing the capabilities of DLSS and ray tracing. The slightly improved base and boost clock speeds will also assist performance too. We can understand why NVIDIA haven’t dramatically improved the hardware of the RTX 4080. The original RTX 4080 was already a very good GPU, it was just priced too high.

And this is where the MSRP change comes in. After the launch of the RTX 4080, AMD significantly undercut the $1199 price point with their competitor card, the RX 7900 XTX. But the RTX 4080 SUPER matches AMD’s pricing, going head to head with Team Red. This is the biggest improvement to the RTX 4080 SUPER, and is likely to make many buyers consider the RTX 4080 as a worthy option.

The Founders Edition offers a very exciting value-proposition for buyers, as you’re able to secure this card for MSRP. Manufacturers tend to push a price premium on their alternative model options, so the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition is a solid GPU if you’re being a bit more price conscious.

What is the RTX SUPER Refresh?

NVIDIA’s SUPER refresh revitalises three graphics cards from the RTX 4000 range. This isn’t the first time that NVIDIA have given their GPU’s a mid-life upgrade, with the RTX 2000 series back in July 2019 receiving three new SUPER rebrands too. While RTX 4000 is seeing some similar treatment, the card choices have changed slightly.

The RTX 4080, RTX 4070 Ti, and RTX 4080 have all received hardware upgrades along with the word ‘SUPER’ appended to the end of their names. The RTX 4070 SUPER, and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER have seen a number of hardware enhancements, with the Ti getting more VRAM and a memory bus improvement. The RTX 4080 SUPER however is the only card to also get a price drop among the physical core and clock speed changes.

The pricing adjustment is a major step for NVIDIA, as the vast majority of RTX 4000 GPUs were criticised for being too expensive which was made worse by the world’s current economic position.

It would have been good to see the RTX 4070 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER see price drops too, aligning them more with AMD’s competitor cards. However, we can understand that NVIDIA are recovering some of their margins to a degree based on the hardware changes that all three of these cards have seen. Regardless, the RTX 4080 SUPER is the card that we’re most excited about, as it provides healthy competition within the top-end GPU market.

Design

Founders Edition graphics cards are a mainstay of any NVIDIA graphics card launch, because they come in at the best competing price, while offering a unique design and aesthetic that is specific to this particular range. These cards are an in-house option directly from NVIDIA and have proven to be one of the most popular GPU options since their introduction back with the RTX 2000 series.

As one of the more slim-line models, the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition shouldn’t pose any clearance issues within modern cases. Coming in at a length of 304mm, this Founders Edition model is a 3-slot GPU with two fans.

The RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition brings a sleek and stealthy all-black aesthetic to the table, with even the ‘RTX 4080 SUPER’ text on the front of the card aligning with the darker theme. Admittedly, the Founders Edition look will be considered a bit restrained for some, but I’m personally a big fan. The black look allows the card blend in well with other dark components, and will match up pretty easily with most build styles.

This contrasts to the original RTX 4080 Founders Edition model, which had silver accents around the shrouding of the card, which I have mixed feelings about.

NVIDIA’s RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition card features a non-traditional fan design, with one on the front, and the other on the back. The ‘Flow Through’ cooling system ensures that heat is dissipated quickly, preventing any hot air from re-circulating around the GPU. And the use of two fans as opposed to three results in a much quieter card.

Performance

In order to assess the performance of the RTX 4080 SUPER, we’ve run a multitude of good ol’ fashioned gaming benchmarks. Our in-house benchmarking expert, Harry Coleman, has put the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition through its paces, with comparisons against current competitor options. For a full rundown on our methodologies, we’ve written a how we test graphics cards article.

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 settings, we ran two separate benchmarks, one with Ray Tracing and DLSS 3.0 enabled, and one with these settings off. The RTX 4080 SUPER was able to offer a pretty solid framerate within this title without any additional settings, outputting an average of 96FPS. This is the exact same framerate as the original RTX 4080 which is a bit of a shame, as we’re seeing very little in terms of a performance improvement.

With DLSS and ray tracing switched on, the RTX 4080 SUPER saw an average framerate of 133FPS, which again, is solid. This is a 1FPS bonus over the vanilla RTX 4080, which is pretty minimal.

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 we’re seeing a similar set of results when compared to our Alan Wake 2 gameplay. The RTX 4080 SUPER doesn’t offer much of a performance improvement over the original RTX 4080, which indicates how solid the original card was. In this benchmark run, the RTX 4080 SUPER wasn’t quite able to beat out the RX 7900 XTX either, which offered a 7FPS increase of the RTX 4080 SUPER.

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 the RTX 4080 SUPER came out on top within both of our benchmarking runs. With DLSS 3.0 and ray tracing on, the RTX 4080 SUPER was able to output 110FPS on average, putting at the top of our ray traced benchmarks. Compared to AMD’s options, the RTX 4080 SUPER is a clear winner when ray tracing is thrown into the mix.

When these settings are disabled, the RX 7900 XTX and RTX 4080 SUPER at level pegging, offering up 141FPS on average. This demonstrates that VRAM isn’t the be all and end all of more intense games, as the RTX 4080 SUPER is easily able to handle Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p despite having 8GB less VRAM than the RX 7900 XTX.

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 at 1440p high, the RTX 4080 SUPER yet again sits towards the top of the graph, with an average FPS of 131. Performance was very stable during this benchmark, and we were able to enjoy the excellent visual quality that this game has to offer. The RX 7900 XTX did offer a slight bonus of 4FPS, but this would be effectively negligible at framerates this high.

COD Warzone

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

COD Warzone is a game where framerates really do matter, so it was great to see that the RTX 4080 SUPER was able to offer an impressive 188FPS. DLSS is doing some of the work here, but most of the performance can be put down to how strong this card is. The RX 7900 XTX did offer a slight performance improvement up to 195FPS, but this wouldn’t be noticeable. The RTX 4080 SUPER has massively surpasses the 144Hz sweet spot already, and this will be enough for most buyers.

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

In F1 2022 the RTX 4080 SUPER was able to offer up 299FPS on average. Realistically you’re not ever going to need framerates this high, but this benchmark just demonstrates how powerful the RTX 4080 SUPER is. This is also a ray traced benchmark too, which is impressive to see. AMD’s RX 7900 XTX does outperform the RTX 4080 SUPER here again, but you’re not really going to see a tangible visual difference.

Apex Legends

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

In Apex Legends at 1440p high, we saw a 271FPS average from the RTX 4080 SUPER. As you can see from our data, most cards are able to offer pretty solid performance across the board, meaning that you’re not required to pick up the most powerful GPU you can buy to enjoy stable framerates within Apex Legends. However, if you’ve got a very high refresh rate monitor, the RTX 4080 SUPER will not disappoint you within this title.

Fortnite

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

In Fortnite at 1080p competitive settings, the RTX 4080 SUPER saw a performance average of 320FPS. This benchmark gives us an indicator of where performance sits across all of our cards that we’ve tested. The RTX 4080 SUPER in this particular run sat just below the RX 7900 XTX, but higher than the RX 7900 XT.

VRAM – Is It Important?

Graphical video memory (or VRAM) has become the talk of the town due to the rising performance demands within modern games. Pretty much all of the latest AAA titles have become much harder to run, hence why new GPU benchmarks don’t see the insanely high framerates that we’re used to.

But why is this important? Well, as we’ve seen with our benchmarks, the RTX 4080 SUPER which is a 16GB GPU, comes very close to the performance of the RX 7900 XTX, a card with significantly more VRAM (24GB to be specific). So in a market where VRAM is one of the big considerations for most buyers, it is worth addressing why it is important, and how you can avoid buying a card you don’t need.

For those that play the most intense games, more VRAM will benefit you. 16GB seems to be the sweet spot currently, as games like Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Starfield aren’t benefitting from the 24GB that the RX 7900 XTX has to offer.

However, take this with a pinch of salt. As we’ve seen with cards like the RX 7600 XT, and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, VRAM doesn’t just automatically make everything better. Your graphics card has to offer decent quality across the board in order to benefit from the increased VRAM. This means having a better memory bus, more compute units and cores, a stronger clock speed, etc.

Upgrading from an 8GB VRAM graphics card to a 16GB VRAM GPU will not solve all of your gameplay problems instantly. If you need more VRAM, choose a card that offers the performance you need within a price category you’re comfortable with. This does sometimes mean you’ll need to spend more, but if you’re playing games at higher resolutions, this is the caveat.

Buyers that primarily play Esports games or older titles can stick to 8GB. Esports games are designed to be less intensive so that they are accessible to everyone. Which is why Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Warzone are generally easier to run, comparative to massive story games that have insane graphics. You might see some performance dips within newer Esports titles, but for the vast majority of gamers, 8GB of VRAM is perfectly fine.

Conclusion