Overall and Final Verdict
I’ve got a big soft spot for the Founders Edition designs, specifically because their designs are unique and stylish and have an all-metal construction that is only matched and beat by some of the best cards on the market. It’s no different this time around as well, the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition has the same design as the original RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090. The only change is the card is blacked out now like we saw with the RTX 4070 SUPER Founders Edition. The cooler design for this card is big, really big, and if you are a SFF fan like me it is going to be something you have to work around. This is exaggerated even more with the location of the 12VHPWR connection which is right up in the middle of the card on top not recessed down into the card like most aftermarket cards will do. Nvidia also didn’t put it in at an angle like with the 3000 Series. It means that the large card size has to also figure in the additional height of the power connection and the new 12VHPWR connection is less flexible in these situations. Even with that, I would still go with this card design in a lot of situations.
As far as the 4080 SUPER goes Nvidia did improve on the performance we saw with the RTX 4080 but this isn’t a huge step up in performance between the two cards, I saw an average of 3.8% improvement in our 4k gaming tests, and in some of the synthetic tests I saw less and other tests I saw up to 5%. This did help it catch up to the RX 7900 XTX at 1080p and 1440p but the XTX was still a few FPS higher at 4K. That is before we figure in DLSS 3 with frame generation and the overall ray tracing capabilities of the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition which were both a big plus for the 4080 SUPER. For power efficiency, the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition did drop down slightly compared to the original RTX 4080 but it was still in a different class compared to the competition from AMD. The RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition impressed in our noise testing, especially when under load and its cooling performance was better than I expected as well. The only downside there is that there isn’t much headroom in the cooler when it comes to cranking the fans up but as it sits I wouldn’t have any reason to want to do that anyhow.
In the end, like always, it comes down to pricing. Nvidia has the RTX 4080 SUPER priced with an MSRP of $999 and the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition because it comes from them directly will be at that price point. The RTX 4080 that this replaces launched at $1199. While the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition isn’t a drastic step forward in performance it does offer a step up while coming down $200. Most people, myself included, weren’t a fan of the pricing of the RTX 4080 last year but I can say without a doubt that the RTX 4080 SUPER and the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition with it is what the original RTX 4080 should have been. A capable performer and while not cheap you are getting high-level performance at a price that fits that is competitive. The RX 7900 XTX is right in that same price range right now and while the raster performance of the 7900 XTX was a touch higher than the 4080 SUPER at 4K Nvidia’s tech like DLSS 3 and its ray tracing capabilities help add a lot of value and push me into the 4080 SUPER camp.
Live Pricing: HERE
