In-Game Benchmarks
Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 8 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of whether turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. Cyberpunk 2077 is also tested with Super Sampling (DLSS/FSR/XeSS). In total, each video card is tested 60 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors, and 240 helps show the performance ideal for the latest higher refresh displays.
So how did the RTX 5080 Founders Edition do? Like with the RTX 5090, at 1080p it just rolled through everything. Every result was above 120 FPS and 12 of the 18 results were over 240 FPS. Nvidia officially has the RTX 5080 Founders Edition targeted at 2k or 1440p performance which is why it has significantly less VRAM compared to the RTX 5090. That said it went through all of our 1440p tests without issues but this time there were more results in the 120-239 FPS range than those that were above 240 with 10 and then 8. At 4k we see the first results end up in the 60-119 FPS range which is still smooth and playable but a majority were still in the 120-239 FPS range with 2 over 240, 12 in the 120 range, and 4 in the 60 FPS category. Overall this shows that 4K is still capable here but a high refresh 1440p display would pair with it well.
To get a better look at some of the cards that are the closest competition to the RTX 5080 Founders Edition I have all of the results averaged out and listed by the resolution. This does a great job of showing how the RTX 5080 compares to the RTX 4090. In our synthetic tests the RTX 4090 was consistently out in front but in our game tests, you see that is only the case at 4k. The 4090 has more VRAM and a 384-bit memory interface to the 256-bit on the RTX 5080 and it shows. At 1440p and 1080p however the 5080 moves out in front. Compared to the RTX 4080 the 5080 is 25% faster at 4k, 20% at 1440p, and 16% at 1080p.
|
1080p |
1440p |
4k |
RTX 4090 |
280.9 |
245.9 |
170.7 |
RTX 5080 |
294.3 |
251.6 |
162.8 |
RTX 4080 |
254.0 |
210.5 |
130.0 |
RX 7900 XTX |
257.4 |
225.8 |
145.7 |
Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. All of the graphs are sorted by their 4k results so across the board the RTX 5080 comes in third on all of the results but when looking at the 1440p results you see it jumping ahead of the RTX 4090 in about half of the results.
Another new addition to my testing was a few additional tests using Cyberpunk 2077. This is one of only a few games that support most of the tech from all three of the GPU companies. So I did tests at medium and ultra detail while having Super Sampling on for all of the cards. Using whatever the latest and greatest is supported. In this case, I tested with DLSS with frame generation on (DLSS 3) and also again with Frame Generation turned up to x4. Just a note here, the AMD cards only allowed FSR when running windowed mode whereas Nvidia only performed well in fullscreen mode. In the base tests and with DLSS 3 on the RX 7900 XTX comes in ahead of the 5080 but the 5080 does outperform the 4090 in the DLSS 3 results. In the results with frame generation x4 turned on however performance is significantly better. The RTX 5080 FE goes from 94 FPS at 4k ultra detail to 209 FPS with DLSS 3 and then up to 332 with frame generation x4 on. If you are gaming at 1440p with it on you will see 490 FPS with ultra detail and 600 FPS with medium detail.