NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super

Written by John Yan on 1/31/2024 for PC  

Today we have the last of the Super cards announced at CES by NVIDIA with a look at the GeForce RTX 4080 Super. Unlike last week’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super, there is a Founder’s Edition for this SKU and NVIDIA was kind enough to send one over for me to review.

The GeForce RTX 4080 Super will be replacing the GeForce RTX 4080, which will no longer be in production once the current run is sold out. Its specs on paper make it sound like it’ll be slightly faster than the RTX 4080 and NVIDIA acknowledges that you’re looking at about a 2-5% increase over that card. Let’s take a look at how it compares with the GeForce RTX 4080, GeForce RTX 4090, and a few others.

	GeForce RTX 4080 Super	GeForce RTX 4080	GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
SM	80	76	80
CUDA Cores	10240	9728	10240
Tensor Cores	320 (4th gen)	304(4th gen)	320 (3rd gen)
RT Cores	80 (3rd gen)	76(3rd gen)	80 (2nd gen)
Texture Units	320	304	320
ROPs	112	112	112
Base Clock	2295 MHz	2205 Mhz	1365 MHz
Boost Clock	2550 MHz	2505 MHz	1665 MHz
Memory Clock	11500 MHz	11200 MHz	9500 MHz

We get a slight increase in both base and boost clocks 2295 MHz for the base 2550 MHz for the boost. That’s up from 2205 MHz for the base of the RTX 4080 and the boost of that card being 2510 MHz. CUDA cores also get a slight bump from 9728 to 10240, a 5.26% increase.

For memory, the card’s amount stays the same with the GeForce RTX 4080 Super having 16GB of GDDR6X RAM running at 11500 MHz on a 256-bit bus, a minor speed bump for memory. With 16GB of RAM, there shouldn’t be any complaints of VRAM running out for this card, just like the GeForce RTX 4080.

Size wise, it’s the same as the GeForce RTX 4080 and GeForce RTX 4090 as the Founder’s Edition is a 3 slot card with dual fans, one on each side. Like GeForce RTX 4070 Super, the GeForce RTX 4080 Super’s gone with the black matte design and omitting the silver that’s prominent in the other Founder’s Edition cards. When put together side by side with an RTX 4080, they’re pretty much twins except for the color scheme change.

Video connections are the same as usual with three DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. And as usual, the 12VHPWR connector is on top of the card. As I said, it’s the same as the RTX 4080 physically and it’s pretty much on par with all the other Founder’s Edition cards out there in terms of design.

While on paper the RTX 4080 Super should have a slight performance lead over the RTX 4080, we’ll see if that’s the case. Here’s my test rig for this review:

All tests were done in 4K at the highest settings and there were three runs on each test with the averages displayed below. Let’s start with rasterization and DLSS performance.

I had to do a double take a few times, but sometimes my GeForce RTX 4080 Super ran slower than the GeForce RTX 4080 released a year ago. Some can be attributed to normal run variances, but I found out I wasn’t the only one experiencing this. In certain cases, it might be slower, but you’ll see on average a 1-3% increase in performance over the RTX 4080. I’ll go more into this in the conclusion, but for rasterization and DLSS, you MIGHT see a performance increase versus the non-Super card. Now let’s check out RTX and DLSS3 numbers.

With RTX enabled and DLSS3, there’s more of a consistent lead versus the non-Super RTX 3080, but again the margin is pretty close and can also be attributed to run variances. Now, let’s check out the VR benchmarks as well as 3D Mark Time Spy Extreme.

Here the numbers are more spread out, but still close. For VR, this would be a great card to use and if you can’t afford the RTX 4090, the GeForce RTX 4080 Super will provide plenty of performance to drive your HMD.

Let’s get down to the basics. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super is pretty much a price adjustment for the 4080 line. With performance that’s on par or just a little faster with the RTX 4080, the big selling point of the GeForce RTX 4080 Super is the $200 reduction in price. Granted, the $1000 price point is better for the GeForce RTX 4080 Super, but I feel it’s still a little more than what I think the card should be at. It does make this card more compelling to buy over the RTX 4090 now with that much larger price gap in between the two. If you’ve been holding out on a more affordable RTX 4080, then the RTX 4080 Super is for you.

So there you have it. That’s all three Super cards from NVIDIA announced at CES. I was surprised that out of the three, the GeForce RTX 4070 Super would be the one I was most impressed with. I feel that card is the best priced out of the three Supers available. There’s a card in almost every price point, but I somehow feel NVIDIA’s got a few more left in the Ada Lovelace architecture before they move on to the next generation. Perhaps, they’ll go out with a bang with a RTX 4090 Ti or Super in a few months. Who knows, but hopefully we’ll see the Super cards be readily available for those who want it.