Thoughts on Nvidia's Geforce RTX 4080...

[ZeekAncient]

I was wondering what people thought of the RTX 4080.

I have been reading some initial reviews, and I have some mixed feelings on it myself.

Here are some of the reviews that I have read:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080-review

https://www.techspot.com/review/2569-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080/

https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-rtx-4080-16gb-review-performance-benchmarks/

I have read some others, but I figured I would post these as their scores vary from one an other and they provide the same important and relevant info as other review you will find.

The consensus is that the 4080 provides excellent gen-on-gen performance increases over the 30 series, and compared to the 4090, is very power efficient, and probably more worth purchasing if you are eyeing resolutions lower than 4K, like 2560 x 1440.

At 4K, it can be less than 30%% less powerful than an RTX 4090, however still a great performer at 4K, outperforming the flagships of the last generation.

However, it seems to be way overpriced. Obviously not a surprise here, as I think everyone was expecting this to be the case. But with the advent of AMD's 7900XTX, and 7900XT, to be released for $999, and $899, respectively, I was wondering what you all thought about the 4080's performance and how it should compare to AMD's RDNA3 offerings.

Some seem to think that even the 7900XTX will fall short of the 4080's overall performance, while others think that AMD's flagship will easily outperform the 4080 in rasteriztion performance, but fall short when it comes to ray tracing.

While most don't seem to care about ray tracing, or upscaling tech for that matter, I for one DO care about ray tracing performance, and love upscaling tech, especially at 4K. Most games nowadays are going to have some kind of ray tracing implemented, and more and more newer titles are going to be implementing it better, and more so. I don't think it will be very long before we see games completely rendered with ray-tracing. And not just older games like Quake II and Portal.

So, I think ray tracing performance is very important, and I don't want my next generation GPU to fall flat in that area. So, that is why I am very curious to see how AMD's next GPUs will perform in that area. I mean, if the 7900XTX can outperform the 4080 in rasterization but then be more on the level of the 40 series midrange cards when ray tracing is implemented, that might turn me off.

And then when it comes to upscaling tech, I am very interested in what DLSS 3.0 has to offer. DLSS 2.0 is already fantastic, but the performance gains that 3.0 seem to be providing, almost seem like a game changer. Considering that DLSS 3.0 can only be used on 40 series cards, unlike FSR which can be used on any card, FSR 3.0 might need to be a game changer as well if I am going to consider buying an AMD card.

I have been on Nvidia a long time, but I will be wanting to upgrade my GPU when I upgrade my display to a 4K 120Hz+ display. The RTX 4090 is just too expensive and too power hungry for me to realistically consider it. And while the 4080 seems to push all the right buttons for me when it comes to performance and power consumption, even it it still uses the 16-pin power connector, that $1199 price tag, and even more when you consider AIB cards, is way too overpriced.

If it would have been $999, or less, I think it would have been a no brainer. But it will be hard to drop $1200 or more on a GPU, when AMD's $999, or even $899, offering provide better rasterization performance. Not too mention more VRam. Even if the ray tracing will not be quite as good, and DLSS 3.0 will be a no no.

I've been impressed by what the specs, and price, of the 7900XTX and XT have shown but I guess now it all depends on how well it will perform in ray tracing and how good, and how well adopted, FSR 3.0 will be. I guess we will have to wait and see in December.

I'm kind of one that would like to stick with Nvidia since I have been there for so long, and it is comfortable for me, even with Nvidia's shady business practices, but $1200 or more for a GPU is just too much to stomach. The 4080 really should have been $200-$300 bucks cheaper. But if AMD falls flat in ray tracing, and FSR 3.0 just can't match the quality of DLSS 3.0, I just can't see myself going the AMD route. Might have to wait for Nvidia to come to their senses and drop their prices....

I might be waiting long....

Anyway, those are my very long two cents on the matter...sorry....

[Haruspex]

LTT's testing shows that it uses less power than advertised. This is a good thing. It also has a hugely overbuilt cooler that keeps the chip between 50c-60c under load. Super impressive, and it would even be a suitable card for a small, cramped, minimal clearance build.

$1200 is too much though. I'm hoping AMD's RDNA3 offerings brings some serious competitive heat, which would lower prices for everyone.

[ZeekAncient]

I have been watching some youtube reviews as well, like GN, and I too am very impressed with the 4080's power draw and thermals.

Overall, I am very impressed with the 4080 product, as a product, but that price just completely spoils it.

If the card would have been less than a $1000, I might just have jumped on it at launch. But as it stands, I am not going be spending $1200 on this thing.

Hoping AMD's GPUs are impressive. Looks like they will be in rasterization performance, but I am one who does care about ray tracing performance. Hope their performance will be good enough that Nvidia decides to cut the price. But I doubt Nvidia will. Maybe when the 30 series stock has dried up. Maybe.

[Rod]

No DP 2.1 no buy. Just about to enter a new era of high end displays with 8k Ultrawide starting it of in January. And LG prepping 27 inch panels if they are 4k 165hz or 4k 240hz that means Nvidia cant come play... Only AMD users will be able to enjoy new displays.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Why does the RTX 40 need to keep having discussions? They are junk, plain and simple.
Except the 4090, which has its uses, just not a typical gaming GPU.

The 3080 Ti, 3090, 3090 Ti, or AMD 7900 series would be much better choices then RTX 4070 or 4080 anything, any day.

[SinCanDory]

I just watched 1-2 videos and need to check it out more but from what I saw it's not that impressive. There are 3000 / 6000 series cards that are giving the same performance for much much cheaper.

[Pocahawtness]

Good card, shame about the price.

There is absolutely no way NVIDIA can justify a near 100% price increase from the 3080.

Anyone with the money to buy a 4080 would be a fool not to buy a 4090.

The 4080 is rapidly going to be the "fools choice" deservedly getting the Clown Award!

The 7900xtx is looking like a serious alternative.

[Guydodge]

Originally posted by Rodders:

No DP 2.1 no buy. Just about to enter a new era of high end displays with 8k Ultrawide starting it of in January. And LG prepping 27 inch panels if they are 4k 165hz or 4k 240hz that means Nvidia cant come play... Only AMD users will be able to enjoy new displays.

who in there right mind is going to buy a 8k monitor to play at 40fps if your lucky i dont think
2.1 is an issue just yet.

[r.linder]

Spoiled by its price tag, but still better value than the upcoming 7900-XTX, which costs 20% less but performs easily around 30% less while using more power.

If NVIDIA hadn't increased the price so much (or at all) then the 4080 would have been an absolute bombshell of a card.

Also, all of the whining around DP 2.1 is just silly, none of these cards are going to be handling 4K 165Hz or 8K, there's literally no point in investing more money into something that hardware can't even handle yet. But AMD loves to do that just to score brownie points from people that haven't the slightest clue.

[ugafan]

Originally posted by 尺．し工几句ヨ尺:

which costs 20% less but performs easily around 30% less while using more power.

When you say it performs around 30% less, what are you referring to? Because the estimates I've seen are much better than that. Are you talking about with ray tracing or dlss?

[Lord Flashheart]

So:
The new power connector - fire risk - big big no.
DLSS 3. which promises huge fps gains with display port 1.4a. Makes little sense.
Cost - way too much.

I agree with the OP that nvidia has some dodgy business practices.
I upgraded from a gtx 1080 ti to RTX 3080 about a month ago.
My monitor is 3440x1440 120H gsync.
I went for nvidia as I want for the variable refresh rate.
My next big upgrade will be another monitor I have my eye on.
Same resolution 144+ Hz and 10 bit. Most importantly freesync.
After that, will have a nice choice of all three GPU makers. I hope AMD and intel up their game with graphics cards.

[SinCanDory]

Originally posted by 尺．し工几句ヨ尺:

Spoiled by its price tag, but still better value than the upcoming 7900-XTX, which costs 20% less but performs easily around 30% less while using more power.

I love how you made up "performs less" without any benchmarks for AMD cards.

[Pocahawtness]

Interestingly, I just read that the current best sellers over the past week are the 6900,6800 and 6600.

It seems that people are unimpressed with NVIDIA right now.

[Komarimaru]

Barely faster then my 3080ti at 4k. NVidia dropped the ball here.

[mario43]

Did you play Dying Light Stay Human ???

[A&A]

When it comes to next gen video cards, DLSS, FSR or Intel's XeSS and Ray Tracing, I'm not too impressed. However, at the AMD presentation, they wanted to show us that they're a bit 8K ready, but their 8K isn't 7680 x 4320, it's 7680 x 2160, and they used FSR, so what's the deal? Hype?!

Nvidia's new RTX 4080 isn't overpriced and is more energy efficient due to the 4nm process which is great, while AMD stays with 5 and 6nm because it's very cheap. Who knows maybe Nvidia made few changes to improve the efficiency.

7900XTX vs RTX 4080
On the AMD side, it will be interesting how much better the infinite cache will be, as the cache aways was a game changer and how effective their power tweaks will be.

On the Nvidia side, increasing L2 cache from 5MB (RTX3080) to 64MB (4080), which should match the performance of infinite cache and DLSS 3... I won't give even a broken coin.

I don't know who will be slower because I don't know who has a better ipc.