Nvidia RTX 4080 Super Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Alan Wake II7. Assassin's Creed Mirage8. Cyberpunk 20779. Forza Horizon 510. The Last of Us Part 111. A Plague Tale: Requiem12. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart13. Red Dead Redemption 214. Resident Evil 415. Returnal16. Starfield17. Total War: Pharaoh18. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)19. Clock Speed Investigation20. Cost Per Frame Analysis21. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II22. Ray Tracing: Avatar Frontiers of Pandora23. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207724. Ray Tracing: F1 2325. Ray Tracing: Hitman 326. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart27. Ray Tracing: Returnal28. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider29. Ray Tracing Performance Summary30. DLSS Testing31. Clock Speed32. GPU Temperatures33. Memory Temperatures34. Acoustics35. Noise-Normalised Temperatures36. Power Draw: 1080p37. Power Draw: 1440p38. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)39. Performance per Watt: 1080p40. Performance per Watt: 1440p41. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)42. Total System Power Draw43. Overclocking44. Closing Thoughts45. View All Pages

Today marks the end of a busy January launch period for the GPU market, as we check out the RTX 4080 Super. Announced alongside the RTX 4070 Super and 4070 Ti Super back at CES 2024, not only has Nvidia outfitted the 4080 Super with more cores and faster memory than the original model, but it's also had a price cut – down from £1269/$1199 at the 4080's launch, to £959/$999 today. It's still mighty expensive, but does it do enough to tempt those looking for an upgrade?

No doubt about it, the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super is the least exciting of the three 40-series Super refreshes. Even just on paper, the RTX 4070 Super delivered a 22% boost in CUDA cores over the vanilla 4070, while the RTX 4070 Ti Super increased VRAM and memory bandwidth by a third over the 4070 Ti. The RTX 4080 Super however, only ups the CUDA core count by 5%, alongside a 3% increase to memory speeds.

We'll analyse what that means for gaming performance over a wide range of titles, but clearly the 4080 Super is all about the price cut. Back in November 2022, the original 4080 hit the market at £1269 in the UK, or $1199 in the States, and it was almost universally agreed to deliver poor value for money at that price point. Fast-forward just over a year and the 4080 Super has come down in price by over £300, to the MSRP of £959, or $999 USD. Let's find out what that means for those with about a grand to spend on a new GPU…

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	RTX 4090	RTX 4080 Super	RTX 4080	RTX 4070 Ti Super	RTX 4070 Ti
Process	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4
SMs	128	80	76	66	60
CUDA Cores	16384	10240	9728	8448	7680
Tensor Cores	512	320	304	264	240
RT Cores	128	80	76	66	60
Texture Units	512	320	304	264	240
ROPs	176	112	112	96	80
GPU Boost Clock	2520 MHz	2550 MHz	2505 MHz	2610 MHz	2610 MHz
Memory Data Rate	21 Gbps	23 Gbps	22.4 Gbps	21 Gbps	21 Gbps
L2 Cache	73729 KB	65536 KB	65536 KB	49152 KB	49152 KB
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X	12GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	1008 GB/Sec	736 GB/Sec	716.8 GB/Sec	672 GB/Sec	504 GB/Sec
TGP	450W	320W	320W	285W	285W

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti which use cut-down versions of the AD103 GPU, the new 4080 Super is a full implementation of AD103 silicon, with the die measuring in at 379mm². This means the RTX 4080 Super offers a total of 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 10240. We also find 80 RT cores, 320 Tensor cores, 320 Texture Units, and 12 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4080 Super sporting a 2550MHz rated boost. That's 45MHz faster than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4080, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 4080, too. The 4080 Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 23Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 736 GB/s. L2 cache remains unchanged at 65536KB.

Considering the slightly increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4080, with the new Super model still boasting a 320W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

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