If the $2,000 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is the undisputed king of 4K gaming, is the RTX 5080 the prince? Or is it the hidden court vizier, the figure controlling the graphics kingdom behind the scenes? Due to its $1,000 price tag, more gamers can afford the 5080, but it’s still a luxury GPU. If the two cards are in the same weight class, there’s no question that the Nvidia RTX 5090 will knock out the 5080 with a single punch. Similarly, there’s no question that if I were putting money down on GPUs, the 5080 is the safer bet for most PC gamers.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founder’s Edition is more like the RTX 5090’s goatee-sporting evil twin with something to prove. In most ways, it’s a less-capable graphics card, so you get what you pay for. Here’s where things get complicated, however. Our tests running like-for-like 5080 didn’t see vast improvements over the 4080 Super, last year’s big GPU upgrade. In some games, the FPS increase was within 10 to 15 frames.
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The difference was even more negligible in some demanding titles, like Cyberpunk 2077. In other benchmarks, the difference between an RTX 4080 Super from 2024 and 5080 was far more stark than in-game performance. This means that games may still need to catch up to the Blackwell architecture, and it may take time to eliminate bottlenecks with new games and hardware. Developments in Blackwell architecture over Ada Lovelace are evident, but the 5080 also requires more wattage from your PSU at peak compared to the RTX 4080’s 320 W TGP.
The dark horse amid all this discussion is the Multi Frame gen capabilities. It’s the headline feature for all 50-series cards, and it pulls up gaming framerates less dramatically than the 5090 in all cases, but it makes more sense on this card than on a $2,000 GPU. The upgrade path for anybody with a 3080 or even a 4070 Ti is more sensible when you choose the 5080, even though it costs $300 more for the same level of GPU than it did five years ago. Things are more complicated for those with a 4080 or—especially—the 4080 Super. I would consider the upgrade jumping from a 30-series GPU to a 50-series, but the main reason you would source the new $1,000 RTX 5090 is Multi Frame Gen.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 is set to launch on Jan. 30 for $1,000.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition Looks Nearly Identical to the RTX 5090, But Not in Performance
The RTX 5080 Founders Edition is exactly the same shell as the RTX 5090 with a color sheen closer to the 40-series Founders edition cards. The 2-slot GPU is as long and wide as Nvidia’s $2,000 flagship, and it even weighs as much as a brick as the 5090. It’s enough that if you don’t have support when slotting it into the PCIe slot, you may watch it start to dip while you desperately try to screw it to the tower.
Although they look so similar, if you were to judge merely by specs, the RTX 5080 is half the card of the 5090. It’s running on 10,752 CUDA cores compared to the 5090’s 21,760. The flagship is supposed to support 3352 TOPS of AI processing with the 5th-gen Tensor cores compared to 1801 on the 5080. It packs 16 GB of VRAM compared to 32 GB.
But a card is more than just core counts. The base clock speed on the RTX 5080 is 2.3 GHz, and it goes up to 2.62 GHz with a boost clock. The 5090 has a 2.01 GHz base clock and up to 2.41 GHz at max boost. The 5080 also has the added benefit of requiring far, far less power draw. The card demands 360W and claims a required 850W of total PC power compared to the RTX 4080’s 750W PSU. The RTX 5090, at peak, will demand 575W from your PSU, which already puts the cards in stark contrast. That’s before you get to performance, where the differences in the same generation are truly striking.
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How Does the GeForce RTX 5080 Compare to the 5090 and 4080 Super?
The 5090 is not a massive step above the 4080 Super in gameplay, but it’s significantly less capable of raw graphics processing than the 5090. This isn’t a generation-to-generation test but an attempt to see the better buy for most gamers or those needing a high-level GPU without dropping the equivalent of a strong desktop or laptop PC on a single component.
Specifically, we compared the RTX 5080 Founders Edition to a $1,130 PNY Nvidia RTX 4080 Super Verto OC GPU and its 2.565 GHz clock speed. In 3D Mark benchmarks, the difference between the three cards is striking. The RTX 4080 Super claims a score of 7,600 in Speed Way and 18,282 in Port Royal for ray tracing benchmarks, but the 5080 will hit 8,692 in Speed Way easily. The RTX 5080 scored close to 1,500 points more in the Steel Nomad benchmark and Time Spy Extreme.
If all that sounds like a true generational leap from the one-year-old 4080 Super, then just know that gameplay tells a much different story. My tests were conducted on an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K system with an iCUE H150i Elite liquid cooler, 32 GB of DDR4 5400 MT/s RAM, and a 1,000 W Corsair RM1000e Plus Gold power supply. The RTX 4080 Super and 5080, the extra headroom on the PSU is a bonus, but for the RTX 5090, 1,000 W is necessary. Everything we tested was on a 4K monitor, as if you’re buying a $1,000 GPU you want to play it at its peak.
In 3D Mark, the 5080 trailed the 5090, equivalent to each card’s number of cores and price tags. The RTX 5090 hit 5,667 more points in 3D Mark Speed Way and 6,077 more in Steel Nomad over the 5080. There’s no middle ground between the two GPUs, not when you practically double the number of transistors from one card to the next.
For in-game benchmarks in Cyberpunk 2077, the 4080 Super could do a little over 63 FPS with max settings, DLSS balanced settings, and no path tracing. That was without 2x frame gen, but with it, the game maxed out close to 100 FPS. The RTX 5080 edged up to 54 FPS with the same settings and no frame gen. With the 2x frame gen, the game hit 112 FPS in benchmarks. The RTX 4080 Super may only hit 42 FPS in benchmarks with path tracing enabled, but the RTX 5080 may only get close to 45 FPS.
Reviewers noted the RTX 5090 could suffer from CPU bottlenecks in some games, though the RTX 5090 still blasted the 5080 with or without frame gen and path tracing enabled. The game made it to 100 FPS without frame gen. These were all the latest drivers provided by Nvidia for reviewers. When planning your upgrade path, I suggest you still look for a next-gen CPU sometime down the road when games can catch up.
Playing Hogwarts Legacy, the 5080 without frame gen would hit 40 to 55 FPS outdoors or 60 to 75 FPS indoors. That was with all the ray tracing settings enabled and excluding framegen. While playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, all settings are maxed without framegen, and the PC with the RTX 5080 would hit around 78 to 90 FPS in outdoor environments. That’s better than the 4080 Super that averaged 77 FPS in the same area. The RTX 5090 would do 100 to 130 FPS outdoors.
There’s a Space for Nvidia’s RTX 5080, and It’s Not About Being Second Best
The difference between the RTX 4080 Super and RTX 5080 is simply less striking than the RTX 5080 to 5090, and the cost of each card reflects that. There’s no question that the 5090 is the best consumer GPU you can buy. It’s able to hit the fabled 100+ FPS without relying on frame generation, and that’s enough for most 4K gaming monitors, the most affordable of which normally hit 120 Hz refresh rates.
But let me turn the tables. What if you really demand 160 FPS or above 200 FPS with all the hyped ray tracing settings enabled? What if you want to get a pretty—and pretty expensive—240 Hz 4K monitor that can make use of the extra frames? The 4x frame gen on the 5080 makes more sense than on the 5090. Cyberpunk 2077, with path tracing and 4x frame gen, was doing 150 FPS. That’s far less than the 5090’s 260 FPS with the same settings and same game, but the difference in gameplay is entirely moot.
Frame Gen works to such a surprising degree that your average gamer won’t be able to tell the difference. If you’re looking for issues, you may find the occasional instance of a texture flicker or UI elements that fizzle. The instances are rare, but those with discerning eyes might spot them easier than others. I didn’t spot too many issues in my gameplay. I know I would feel perfectly comfortable playing with Frame Gen turned on.
Those considering the RTX 5080 should know it’s not all gravy. Nvidia’s Multi Frame Gen may not support your favorite game at launch. Some gamers will inevitably get more out of these cards than others. But for a $2,000 RTX 5090 Founders Edition, you could grab the equivalent of $1,000 RTX 5080 and save that money for a high-end 4K monitor with all the fixings.
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