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, FSR set to native resolution, DX12 API.

Kicking off the benchmarks with Alan Wake 2, as mentioned in the RTX 5090 review, we're still experiencing frametime issues with the new Blackwell GPUs, something I'd expect to be fixed soon with a driver update. However, looking at average frame rate, the RTX 5080 delivers 87fps at 1440p, putting it 9% ahead of AMD's RX 7900 XTX, while it's 13% faster than the RTX 4080 Super.

Stepping up to 4K sees the 5080 now average 49fps, giving it 12% and 14% gains over the 7900 XTX and 4080 Super, respectively. It's 15% slower than the RTX 4090, and 35% behind the RTX 5090.

Update: Frametime issue has been fixed

Just a day before this review was scheduled to go live, 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 few frames, but nothing of real significance.

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