Nvidia RTX 4080 Founders Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 4080 Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Assassin's Creed Valhalla7. Cyberpunk 20778. Days Gone9. Dying Light 210. Far Cry 611. Forza Horizon 512. God of War13. Horizon Zero Dawn14. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Resident Evil Village17. Total War: Warhammer III18. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)19. Cost Per Frame Analysis20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered22. Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing: Resident Evil: Village24. Clock Speed25. GPU Temperatures26. Acoustics27. Noise-Normalised Temperatures28. Power Draw: 1080p29. Power Draw: 1440p30. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)31. Performance per Watt: 1080p32. Performance per Watt: 1440p33. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)34. Total System Power Draw35. Overclocking36. Closing Thoughts37. View All Pages

Driver Notes

• All AMD GPUs were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 22.10.3 driver.
• All Nvidia GPUs (except RTX 4080) were benchmarked with the 526.61 driver.
• RTX 4080 was benchmarked with the 526.72 driver supplied to press.

It's important to note here that we are not re-using benchmark results from our day-1 RTX 4090 review. As we have previously covered, Nvidia's 522.25 driver has brought a number of performance optimisations to games including Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Forza Horizon 5. By re-using data from our RTX 4090 review, where we tested 30-series GPUs with the 516.94 driver, our results would not take these new performance optimisations into account, and could potentially show a larger performance difference between the RTX 4080 and the 30-series than is actually the case. We re-tested all AMD and Nvidia GPUs on the latest drivers (as of 13th November) to ensure a level playing field, so we can present the most accurate data possible.

Benchmark results are only comparable where this exact configuration has been used.

Test System:

We test using a custom built system powered by MSI, based on Intel’s Alder Lake platform. You can read more about this system HERE and check out MSI on the CCL webstore HERE.

CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard	MSI MEG Z690 Unify
Memory	32GB (2x16GB) ADATA XPG Lancer DDR5 6000MHz CL 40-40-40
Graphics Card	Varies
SSD	2TB MSI Spatium M480
Chassis	MSI MPG Velox 100P Airflow
CPU Cooler	MSI MEG CoreLiquid S360
Power Supply	Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro 21H2
Monitor	MSI Optix MPG321UR-QD
Resizable BAR	Enabled for all supported GPUs

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• Sapphire RX 6950 XT Nitro+ 16GB
• AMD RX 6900 XT 16GB
• AMD RX 6800 XT 16GB
• Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition
• Gigabyte RTX 3090 Ti Gaming 24GB
• Gigabyte RTX 3090 Eagle 24GB
• Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition 12GB
• Gigabyte RTX 3080 Eagle 10GB

All cards were tested at reference specifications.

Software and Games List

• 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
• 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test (DXR Synthetic)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• Days Gone (DX11)
• Dying Light 2 (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• God of War (DX11)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (DX12)
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (DXR)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (DX12)
• Resident Evil Village (DX12)
• Total War: Warhammer III (DX11)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present mean averages in our graphs. We use FrameView to measure average frame rates as well as 1% low values across our three runs.

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