Nvidia RTX 5080 Review: Efficiency Gains, Performance Letdown

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 5080 Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Alan Wake II5. Black Myth: Wukong6. Cyberpunk 20777. Final Fantasy XVI8. Forza Horizon 59. Ghost of Tsushima10. Horizon Forbidden West11. The Last of Us Part 112. A Plague Tale: Requiem13. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 214. Starfield15. Total War: Warhammer III16. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)17. Cost Per Frame Analysis18. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II19. Ray Tracing: Black Myth: Wukong20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: F1 2422. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Ray Tracing: Star Wars Outlaws26. Ray Tracing Performance Summary27. DLSS Testing28. AI & Productivity Benchmarks29. Clock Speed30. GPU Temperatures31. Acoustics32. Power Draw: 1080p33. Power Draw: 1440p34. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)35. Performance per Watt: 1080p36. Performance per Watt: 1440p37. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)38. Total System Power Draw39. Closing Thoughts40. View All Pages

Alan Wake 2 is a 2023 survival horror game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing. A sequel to Alan Wake, the story follows best-selling novelist Alan Wake, who has been trapped in an alternate dimension for 13 years, as he attempts to escape by writing a horror story involving an FBI special agent named Saga Anderson. The game was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on 27 October 2023. (Wikipedia)

Engine: Northlight. We test using the High preset, High Ray Tracing preset, FSR set to Quality upscaling, DXR API.

Moving onto ray tracing performance, Alan Wake 2 still exhibits those frame pacing issues mentioned earlier in the review. On average though, at 1440p the RTX 5080 is good for 60fps, making it 9% faster than the RTX 4080 Super. It's almost three times as fast as AMD's RX 7900 XTX, however, showing the clear gulf when it comes to ray tracing performance.

Then, at 4K, we're looking at 34fps on average, working out as an 11% boost over the RTX 4080 Super.

Update: Frametime issue has been fixed

As mentioned earlier in the review, just yesterday Nvidia let us know that a new driver had been issued which was designed to fix the frametime issues in Alan Wake 2. I tested it and, sure enough, the 1% lows are now much more consistent than what we saw before. Average frame rates have dropped by a couple frames, but nothing of real significance.

Multi Frame Generation

We do have a dedicated section exploring DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation later in the review, but here's the frame rates that are achievable if you want to enable the technology in Alan Wake 2.

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