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

Ray tracing 8-game average FPS

Here we present frame rate figures for each graphics card, averaged across all 8 ray traced games on test today. These figures can disguise significant variations in performance from game to game, but provide a useful overview of the sort of performance you can expect at each resolution tested.

Overall then, averaged over the eight ray traced games tested, the RTX 5080 comes in 11% faster than the 4080 Super at 1440p. It's miles ahead of AMD's RX 7900 XTX, with a 55% advantage there, but it's still 16% slower than the RTX 4090.

At 4K, we can see a 12% gain over the 4080 Super, so scaling is very similar to the raster performance we looked at earlier in the review. The 5080 is now 57% faster than the 7900 XTX, and it's also 74% better than the RTX 3080 Ti, showing how far things have come in two generations.

Cost per frame, launch MSRP data

Please note this only compares ray traced performance and value.

Cost per frame for ray tracing performance looks much more favourable for the RTX 5080, given it sits top of the chart – though only just, as it's just 2% better value than the RTX 4070 Super. Compared to the 4080 Super, we're looking at another 9% improvement to cost per frame.

Cost per frame, current pricing data

Things aren't quite so impressive when looking at the ray traced cost per frame data using current street pricing, with the 4070 Super retaking the lead, but the RTX 5080 is still in second place, offering marginally better value than the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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