Overall and Final Verdict

Tomorrow both the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 hit stores and if you have been reading up until now you may already have an idea of what you are planning on doing. If not I’m going to recap some of our coverage and then dive into where the RTX 5080 fits in the market. Nvidia’s new dual slot design changed the entire card up while surprisingly still giving the card that same signature Founders Edition look that all of the cards have. Part of that Founders Edition styling is the infinity loop shape that outlines the entire card with its cast aluminum shroud. The thick aluminum shroud design sets the Founders Edition cards ahead of a lot of the aftermarket cards on build construction. You never have to worry about a Founders Edition sagging or having those types of issues. They are heavy, but the construction is solid. With the RTX 5080 Founders Edition (and with the 5090 I previously took a look at) the PCB is mounted in the center of the card with the PCIe slot and display connections on breakout boards. This allows for a complete blow-through design with both of the cards fans. Another aspect that I didn’t consider before is that it might also make card repairs easier in the future in cases where the PCIe slot is broken or the display connections are broken which could be interesting. The unique card design allowed them to keep the card thinner which should help in some SFF cases and for servers that are packing as many cards as they can into a server. The card design is still tall and long, just like with previous xx80 and xx90 cards so there will still be some compatibility issues with some older cases. I know I’m going to have to upgrade from my Case Labs case to upgrade my GPU for example.

The new design now has a blacked-out rear PCI bracket, something I have been pushing for years to see cards move too. Not only does it match the card better, but it will also blend in better when installed in most cases as well. Its details like that put the Founders Edition up at or near the top for styling. Nvidia also made improvements to the power connection. It is now recessed and angled to reduce the possibility of strain on the connection. They have also improved the included power adapter and the connection itself on the card is now a 12V-2x6 plug which has longer pins to be less likely to get a bad connection and shorter sense pins to detect if it isn’t plugged in all the way. Hopefully, this addresses the issues that some users had with the previous design. Small details that I would love to see changed in the design style-wise. I would like to see the model name itself be the backlit branding up on top. I would much rather show off my RTX 5080 than the generic RTX GeForce branding. With that and with the accent lights on the front and back of the card, the white lighting that they went with looks great but I wouldn’t mind having the option to also change it to match a build if needed. BTW the new packaging is once again nothing I have ever seen before and also an improvement in sustainability as well, always cool to see that improve.

For performance, it will depend a lot on what your goal is for the card on whether you would say it did well in testing or not. Nvidia markets the card as a 2k or 1440p card and at that resolution and at 1080p it did extremely well, outperforming last generation's flagship RTX 4090. At 4k I would still say it did very well, but on average the RTX 4090 does edge back in ahead of it in our tests. The RTX 5080 has 16GB of memory and a smaller memory interface than the RTX 4090. It does have faster memory which makes up the difference a lot, but that does make a difference at 4k in some tests. That said, if you haven’t experienced DLSS 4 with the improved transformer models making significant improvements in the visual quality and frame generation x4 giving mind blowing performance, I would take that over the 8 extra FPS at 4k. Not only do you see a lot of those improvements even in CPU-limited situations, but you can see 300-500% performance improvements over not using DLSS at all. I didn’t run into as many of the bugs as I saw when testing the RTX 5090, but OpenCL-based workloads were still a problem but Nvidia is aware and working on it.

graph48

At the end of the day though, it always comes down to pricing. The RTX 5080 Founders Edition has an MSRP of $999. That is $200 less than the RTX 4080 launched at but is $300 more than what the RTX 3080 launched at. It’s also half of the price of the new RTX 5090. More importantly, how does it compare to other cards with current pricing? For that, I put the graph above together that takes every card I’ve tested’s Time Spy Extreme GPU Score and divides it by its current price as well as its launch MSRP. For current pricing, it is the lowest available price on PCPartPicker and it is interesting to see how much pricing and card availability has changed from last week when the performance of the RTX 5090 was shown. The RTX 5080 Founders Edition is sitting in the middle of the pack for value right now but there aren’t any cards faster or even near it in performance on the chart. With all of the talk on how it compares with the RTX 4090 for example, the only 4090’s you can currently get are $2598 or more. I wouldn’t call it a value, but if you are looking for high-end 1400p or 4k performance and the RTX 5090 isn’t in your budget this is the clear choice, that is assuming you can find these anywhere near the launch price once they hit stores.

fv6recommended

Live Pricing: HERE

 

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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