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

D. Hardawar@devindraNovember 15, 2022 9:00 AMIn this short article: GPU, gear, gaming, RTX 4090, NVIDIA, review, RTX 4080

Positive, we all want NVIDIA’s RTX 4090, but it really is tough to stomach its $1,599 starting off selling price (if you can even come across it at that price tag) or its substantial electricity requires. That leaves impatient Computer players with only a single other new NVIDIA selection this 12 months: the $1,199 RTX 4080 with 16GB of VRAM. Even though $400 isn’t specifically a large discount in the entire world of large-conclude Laptop gaming (undoubtedly not as substantial as the $899 12GB RTX 4080 that NVIDIA “unlaunched.”), it may perhaps tempt some gamers.

Following all, it can be speedier than the RTX 3080 Ti that released at the identical price earlier this 12 months, and it functions with NVIDIA’s strong new DLSS 3 upscaling technology (which is limited to 4000-sequence GPUs). If you can reside devoid of the bragging rights of possessing a 4090, the RTX 4080 is a strong GPU that’ll fulfill anyone who wants to game in 4K with ray tracing. For those stuck with decreased resolution monitors, while, you are likely better off waiting for the eventual 4070 and 4060 cards, as nicely as AMD’s future RDNA 3 GPUs.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA RTX 4080

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Pros

• Noticeably quicker than the 3080 Ti
• Great ray tracing functionality
• DLSS 3 offers good upscaling
• Interesting less than load

Negatives

• Continue to fairly expensive at $1
• 199
• RTX 4090 steals its shine

Astonishingly more than enough, the RTX 4080 Founders Version we reviewed shares the correct same style and design as the 4090. They the two acquire up 3 PCI-e slots, activity huge vapor chambers, and they keep the exclusive go-by supporter structure from NVIDIA’s preceding GPUs. I was anticipating anything a bit smaller, to be straightforward. At least the 4080 only demands three 8-pin PSU cables to functionality, whilst the 4090 requires four. (Both equally playing cards can also be powered by a one PCIe 5. PSU cable, but people power supplies are rather scarce at the moment.)

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Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

The 4080’s electric power cables also hint at a single of its big rewards: It has a 320-watt thermal style profile (TDP) and necessitates a 750W PSU, whilst the 4090 has a much much more demanding 450W TDP. Except you by now have an 850W electric power provide, upgrading to the 4090 may entail getting a new unit and rewiring energy through your entire method. These playing cards is not going to generally use their highest electric power hundreds, but you may even now will need to be all set for the exceptional moments when they require far more juice.

Whilst it may well appear just like the 4090, the RTX 4080 is a significantly diverse beast beneath the hood. It’s run by 9,728 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR6X VRAM and offers a foundation clock pace of 2.21GHz (with boost speeds to 2.51GHz). The 4090, on the other hand, has 16,384 CUDA cores, a little larger clock speeds and a whopping 24GB of VRAM. Compared to the 3080 Ti, the 4080 wins out with NVIDIA’s new Ada Lovelace architecture, substantially speedier speeds and 4GB a lot more VRAM. (The 3080 Ti technically has around 500 additional CUDA cores, but they are also inherently slower and less successful than NVIDIA’s new platform.)

Some parts of this article are sourced from:
engadget.com