GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition Review: Next-Gen Performance and Efficiency – 14

Conclusion

Nvidia is trying to compare the RTX 4080 against the RTX 3080 Ti. From the point of view of the generational transition, it probably makes sense, from the point of view of the current offer, not so much. The RTX 3090 Ti is closest in terms of performance and price to the RTX 4080, but it has practically disappeared from the shops. That’s why I compared it to the older generation first.

I was pleasantly surprised with the RTX 4080’s performance, expecting it to be a few percentage points ahead of the RTX 3090 Ti, to say the least. But the difference in performance is far from small. What’s even better is that while the RTX 3090 Ti needed 450W, the RTX 4080 also manages that with a 320W cap. On the other hand, there’s a pretty big difference in performance between the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090, and we can expect the RTX 4080 Ti built on a bigger chip than the RTX 4090 to appear over time.

Compared to the previous generation of models of the 80s, 16 GB of memory is undoubtedly an advantage, with such a capacity it can already be said that the card has a certain reserve for several years. Paradoxically, the RTX 4080 will still lag behind the upcoming Radeons, which will carry 20 and 24GB of GDDR6.

As for the Founders Edition, considering it’s cooled by a massive three-slot cooler with a large open back, the performance is perfect. It’s by no means unnoticeable, the big fans at 1300-1400 are audible a little louder than the low profile fans on three fan boards spinning somewhere at 1200rpm, but in a normal case they need to be there. of the system fans, you will not be able to hear them.

What is not very pleasant is the price. In dollar terms, it’s comparable to the RTX 3080 Ti at launch, with the card offering much higher performance and better specs. In our country it is all the worse because the dollar exchange rate is already elsewhere and the amount in crowns has risen to 36,000. But the RTX 3080 Ti hit the market in the midst of the mining fever, when the prices of all cards were different and the RTX 3080 Ti was priced accordingly.

On the other hand, a more expensive and advanced manufacturing process is used, even the worst dollar exchange rate and inflation have taken their toll – with some exaggeration, it can be said that graphics cards are a of the few things that haven’t yet managed to raise the price by at least a fifth since the beginning of the year.

If you’ve been putting off buying a high-end card until today, it would probably be wise to advise you to wait another month to see what AMD comes up with. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX should offer at least a better price/performance ratio thanks to the significantly lower price tag of $999.

If I had a tested Radeon RX 7900 XTX, I would certainly be wiser. But for now, we have to build on what’s on the market, and in that regard, the RTX 4080 offers a significant improvement over the previous generation in every respect. From the performance boosts of the new Radeons that AMD has released in the presentations thus far, we can only guess that they will offer similar performance to the RTX 4080 (considering the prices, perhaps a little lower), but when it comes to ray tracing performance, it will be measured more with the latest generation of GeForce.

Taking into account that the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX shouldn’t go on sale until a week before Christmas, I wouldn’t kid myself that most interested parties will catch up with them before a few weeks after the new year (and something similar threatens the RTX 4080 if you don’t get it in the first wave of storage). So if you want a new graphic this year, I advise you not to hesitate too much, you can expect that the cards that will be on the shelves tomorrow will be gathering dust again.

But I can definitely advise you to prefer the RTX 4080 over the older RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti when buying, the high-end of the last generation significantly outperforms it in everything except memory capacity which is why we will give it a gold award.