ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition3. Testing Methodology4. Game Benchmarks5. Clock Speed6. GPU Temperatures7. Acoustics8. Noise-Normalised Temperatures9. Power Draw and Efficiency10. Overclocking11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

It has been some time since we last reviewed a graphics card from ASUS, let alone one of the Noctua Edition models, but that is exactly what we are checking out today. First shown at Computex 2025 but officially launched this month, the ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition is the biggest card we have ever reviewed here at KitGuru, packing in a quad-slot cooler, alongside three 120mm NF-A12x25 G2 fans and a heatsink that sports no less than eleven heatpipes. ASUS and Noctua are clearly aiming for near-silent operation, so let's see how it performs…

As you may have guessed, all of that engineering work does not come cheap, and this is far and away the most expensive RTX 5080 I have ever seen, listed at £1500 over on Scan. During the process of this review, we actually saw Nvidia drop the price of its RTX 5080 Founders Edition to £909, meaning the ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition commands a whopping 65% premium over the MSRP. Can any graphics card justify that sort of price increase? Let's find out.

	RTX 5090	RTX 5080	RTX 4090	RTX 4080 Super	RTX 4080
Process	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4
SMs	170	84	128	80	76
CUDA Cores	21760	10752	16384	10240	9728
Tensor Cores	680	336	512	320	304
RT Cores	170	84	128	80	76
Texture Units	680	336	512	320	304
ROPs	176	112	176	112	112
GPU Boost Clock	2407 MHz	2617 MHz	2520 MHz	2550 MHz	2505 MHz
Memory Data Rate	28 Gbps	30 Gbps	21 Gbps	23 Gbps	22.4 Gbps
L2 Cache	98304 KB	65536 KB	73728 KB	65536 KB	65536 KB
Total Video Memory	32GB GDDR7	16GB GDDR7	24GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X	16GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface	512-bit	256-bit	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	1792 GB/Sec	960 GB/Sec	1008 GB/Sec	736 GB/Sec	716.8 GB/Sec
TGP	575W	360W	450W	320W	320W

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 5090, which is built on the GB202 die, RTX 5080 uses smaller silicon as it is a full implementation of the GB203 die, measuring 378mm². Comprised of 7 Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), each holds up to eight Texture Processing Clusters (TPCs), with a total of 42. Each TPC is home to two Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), giving us 84, and each SM still holds 128 CUDA Cores, meaning the RTX 5080 has a total of 10752 shaders. We also find 84 RT cores, 336 Tensor cores, 336 Texture Units, and 112 ROPs.

This time around, however, there's no node-shrink, and GB203 remains fabricated on TSMC's N4 node, as per the RTX 40-series. As such, rated clock speed is barely changed this generation, with the RTX 5080 rated at 2617MHz, compared to the RTX 4080 Super's 2550MHz boost.

The memory configuration is also fairly similar, but sports one key upgrade – GDDR7 memory. The RTX 5080 comes equipped with 16GB, running at 30Gbps, and that puts total memory bandwidth at 960 GB/s, a 30% increase over the RTX 4080 Super. L2 cache remains at 65MB.

Power draw has also increased, with the RTX 5080 sporting a 360W 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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