The RTX 5080 Founders Edition uses the same lovely shroud as the top RTX Blackwell card, and brings the same DLSS/MFG feature set to the table. But that’s all that is really setting the second-tier card apart from the RTX 4080 Super as the gen-on-gen performance difference is marginal at best. It might not be an exciting GPU, but at least the veneer of Multi Frame Generation will make it feel like a generational leap to most gamers.
The NVIDIA RTX 5080 is like the Moment Tricky album by the band RTX Blackwell GPU. It’s a card that gets completely part of the value of its RTX 5090 sibling, and it presents us with a graphics card that, even more than the previous card, tells me a lot about its old last-gen stablemate, the RTX 4080 Super.
I do not need to have to refer to this circular moment of the Blackwell wheel such as the RTX 4080 Ti Super extensible, however, there are a lot of similarities between the adapt and this new RTX 5080 with GB203 engine and if there is ever one one one one Explanation why so that NVIDIA does not allow its new generation of multiple generation on RTX 40 cards, is its physical incarnation.
But while it doesn’t replace much between the two cards, it does come with the value. We’re talking about a GPU that prices separate the value of the maximum client graphics card on the planet, and that’s more than part. Of course, you’re going to pay more for that last ultra-enthusiastic force to step up, I mean you shouldn’t feel so bad if you can’t drop $1,000 on a new GPU and not for the RTX 5090’s $2000. Poor lamb.
And, of course, there’s AI. But actually useful AI, which makes our games run faster through the magic of AI models and yet still look damn good in the process. Yes, DLSS 4 with its Multi Frame Generation feature is the sign the RTX 5080 will continually tap whenever anyone brings up its striking resemblance to an RTX 4080 Super.
I do not hate the RTX 5080, it turns out that it is an ada gpu with changed tensioner and RT nuclei, a little rotation silicon with the demonstration engine and an AI control processor that queues the entire new AI-PEIs of This neuronal representation of ours. What we are going to have to expect and see what ends those final benefits.
I mean, you expect two years and a little for a new graphics card architecture and the silicon we present is remarkably to what happened before, but with the promise that there is baked revolutionary generation. While developers go forward and use everything.
But it’s not like Nvidia hasn’t been sincere in what we expect with this new chip. It’s just that perhaps their initial numbers of those too explosive didn’t make it too apparent that the MFG was guilty for the maximum of their first perf nurses.
This gave us the vital specs and generation functionality figures related to generating a building of 15% compared to the previous generation on the next editor’s day. And this is what I saw in my own tests, in our new series of GPU tests, the RTX 5090 offers an average 4K gaming functionality lift on the RTX 4080 Super of just over 15%.
Though just 9% and 14% compared with the same card’s performance at 1080p and 1440p respectively.
And it is not as if Nvidia asked us to pay more for the new card compared to what necessarily replaces, as for a typical. However, I do not know how it can have gained more for this card, given the brakes that the green team put the silicon progression of this GPU, and did not end with a complete in its hands star
Seeing One Hundred IPS on major 4K settings in Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 is something to watch, latency on AW2 highlights a challenge we’ll have more on battery.
I just don’t feel a whole lot of affection for the RTX 5080. Right now, without any neural rendering shiz to actually get excited about, it feels like the GB203 on its own just kinda isn’t trying. It’ll slot in exactly where the RTX 4080 Super did, filling prebuilts and the hearts of those who balk at paying $2K for a GPU, yet are able to convince themselves and their significant others that $1,000 is worth it.
Except it will have far worse stock levels and a likely RTX 50-series premium attached to any build and non-MSRP card. This is definitely a concern for the RTX 5080. While the $999 MSRP means there’s no price hike over the RTX 4080 Super it’s replacing, the manufacturers and retailers will be keen to exploit its initial scarcity and newness by slapping a hefty tax on top of that base MSRP. $1,500 RTX 5080s aren’t going to be uncommon, I would wager.
If it wasn’t for Multi Frame Gen, the RTX 5080 would be a total non-event. But of course there is DLSS4 and MFG here to salve a good chunk of the pain one might be feeling in regard to the relative performance of Nvidia’s second-tier RTX Blackwell card. The still impressive technology smooths out the gaming performance of the RTX 5080 and delivers exceptional high frame rates in all the games I’ve tested it in. Which admittedly isn’t the full 75 games and apps Nvidia has been promising, but the innovative DLSS Override feature of the Nvidia App isn’t working even on the review drivers.
But seeing 100 fps+ at top 4K settings in Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 is quite something to behold, though the latency in AW2 does highlight a problem we’ll have further down the stack. So long as that level of performance uplift remains consistent across all the supported MFG games in its long list of Day 1 supporting titles, then there are going to be a huge volume of games where the actual gaming experience of running the RTX 5080 will feel entirely different to that of the RTX 4080 Super.
And that is where we have to end up, because however I might feel about the lack of tangible silicon advancement with the RTX 5080’s GPU, what it’s going to feel like when the average gamer gets the card slapped into their PC is arguably all that really matters.
So, if you’ve ever entertained the thought of spending $1,000 on an RTX 4080 Super, then this is the obvious next object of your affections. It’s a like-for-like drop-in GPU, with an MFG magic trick, which is just as effective and strangely unexciting as that sounds.
RTX Blackwell’s global architecture remains the same as with the previous card, and covered it in intensity in my RTX 5090 review. Just say that the big replace of a NVIDIA GPU, to have the CUDA programming, which will allow a point of integration of the game we have. It was not noticed before.
You also get an internal chip compromised AI management processor (AMP) that allows you to program AI and popular graphics workloads so you can still carry out all your DLS generation responsibilities and frameworks along the other neuron rendering elements when the RTX is loaded. Neural skin, RTX neural materials, RTX neural faces, and RTX neural radiance cache are at the forefront in long-term gaming worlds.
It may also come with a bit of multi-frame generation as a component of this architecture, at least for now. Given that it’s completely locked into the RTX 50 series, the scant thing is that MFG is only imaginable at those degrees of PC latency due to the strength of the fifth-generation tensor cores, that amp programmer, and the forward spin counting functions of the in-house RTX Blackwell Silicon spin forward, the GB203 internal GPU, the RTX 5080.
I said it like magic before, but it makes Nvidia engineers who worked on it. The ability to generate up to 3 additional frames in between is impressive in itself, but to be able to do so without adding a ton of extra. Latency to the image, walking it perfectly, and with only a very small artifact for the worst is anything else.
It is this characteristic that makes the RTX 5080 as it is, without it, it would have another GPU, or at least a much less expensive card. But anything has taken its place, you would not have a card that can succeed at one hundred IPS + in the last games in its main 4K environments.
So, what is this GB203 GB203 GPU, then? Well, it has 5% more hearts than RTX 4080 Super, with 10,752 internal CUDA cores. Despite the same 4N 4N TSMC 4N Custom lithography, it’s also a smaller chip, if only through a little. There are 45. 6 billion internal transistors of the GB203 where there are 45. 9 billion AD103 chips, and in terms of total array length, we are 378 mm2 compared to 378 Array 6 mm2.
It is also observed that the RTX 5080 uses the full GB203 GPU; Given the scale of the chip and the adulthood of the 4N process, it is probably not a massive surprise. But what it means is that any Super update RTX 5080 in the long term will have to paints in the GB202 or an absolutely new chip. This would also mean that you will have to block much more memory, or use 1 GB of deaths to fill the 512 -bit bus to adapt to the same 16 GB.
So yes, you are still getting the same 16 GB of VRAM in the card as you did with the RTX 4080/Super cards, except this time you’re getting GDDR7 instead of GDDR6X, running at 30 Gbps versus 21 and 23 for the previous Ada cards. That means there’s a fair chunk more memory bandwidth available to the Blackwell chip.
There are other changes in the GB203 silicon that separates it from the AD103 chip of RTX 4080 Super. There are more than texture units, which means more texture processing force and more L1 cache. Although you look at the same point of 65 MB of L2 cache through the chip.
Nvidia also throws a little more force on the card, the TGP evaluated at 360 W opposite to 320 W for RTX 4080 Super. And that means that the PSU specifications also have more than one hundred W. This 750 W would not be enough to maintain its new Nourished GPU, you know.
According to the extra power, Nvidia is locking through the card, the higher bandwidth reminiscent and the handful of extra cores, the overall functionality of the RTX 5080 generation is precisely what the green team said Bearía gets a reliable building. In the game functionality of 15% 4K on average in our suite of checks.
Yes, if I expected the RTX 4090 functionality of the RTX Blackwell Point card, it will be disappointed.
If this is a lot of exciting percentage, it becomes even less when you look at the frequencies of raw images. When 47 IP to 55 IPS or 31 IP at 36 IP, stop looking like any type of tangible generational improvement in game performance. In fact, this will not be to put on flames with acquisition heat.
Anyone at a RTX 40 series GPU will probably be satisfied to see this; Taking the tension of any trivial preference to update your graphics card already darling.
Delta functionality: with RTX 5090 – it falls as we get rid of the solution scale. At 1080p and 1440p, it falls to 9% and a key less than 14% respectively. At least, if you are going to run 4K with quality DLSS, see a similar increase in functionality like the local 4K.
But the functionality symbols settings once you start looking at what the generation of multiple pictures does at the frequency of card symbols. Going from 20 IP to 4K local to 130 IP with Overdrive RT in the Cyberpunk 2077 and DLSS with 4x MFG provides the generational improvement we want. And also looks wonderful, even the latency of 67 ms is quite good.
As much as it sometimes feel like magic, MFG is not.
However, what would say about latency is that Alan Wake 2’s figures highlight a prospective challenge for MFG as panacea for the images of the RTX 50 Dymustre class. Nor is it easy for RTX 5080.
It only gets 19 fps locally and only 35 fps when it allows DLS. sure, it hits 117 fps when you hit 4x FG on the table, but the local latency is too much higher for DLS enough to make the next frame the latency really leverageable. At 102ms, you might be able to get away with playing Alan Wake 2, however, that’s definitely things for me.
Again, we have to return to the position where the characteristics of a generation of frames inevitably fall. As much as magic seems, MFG is not; If you do not have a sufficiently higher input photographs, the final latency will be absolutely punitive even if the FPS figures seem good.
For the lowest RTX 50 series cards, it turns out that the MFG will be a little less exciting. Although we will have to wait and see how it is at RTX 5070 / TI when they arrive in February.
It’s also worth noting that, while 75 apps and games with DLSS 4 and MFG support at launch is great, it’s notably not all games that sport Nvidia’s Frame Generation. The DLSS Override setup in the Nvidia App is great and impressively comprehensive, but it needs game support, and can’t just be used to add MFG into any existing Frame Gen game.
Black Myth Wukong is a popular fashion title, and also graphically intensive. Good old bear in the area.
It is only a game, however, it is an example of where possibly the RTX 5080 will not look like a step in the position in the RTX 4080 Super even when the frame generation switch rotates.
With respect to the system, this additional 15% increase in functionality is delivered with normal construction in force requests and at temperature. Admittedly, the latter is basically due to the fact that the Founders Edition should be had in a dual-slot configuration rather than the RTX 4080/Super’s triple cooling chonky. The cool-down on the Big Boi is more effective, but I will say that I will excitedly take 71°C at 63°C if the card itself is much smaller.
If the Gen-on Gen gaming functionality doesn’t excite you, the map author’s cheat sheets will leave you absolutely cold. When it comes to raw rendering functionality, its switching functionality is about 12% higher than the RTX 4080 super, and so on the AI side, it’s only 5% larger on the Pugetbench bench for Davinci solution testing, but it’s at least 14% faster than the ADA board when it comes to generating AI photographs with the 1. 5 solid reference broadcast.
What would Nvidia have done if Multi Frame Generation didn’t work out? Brian Catanzaro freely admitted at the Editor’s Day during CES 2025 that it was not something Nvidia could have done around the Ada launch.
“Why didn’t DLSS 3 launch with Multi Frame Generation?” He asks. “And the answer is, we didn’t know how to make the experience good.”
Catanzaro points out that there were two great disorders that had to be resolved to make the generation of multiple paintings be attainable for the lack of giant advances in the GPU silicon.
“The first is that the quality of the symbol was not smart enough. And when you think about it, when you’re spawning multiple frames, the time that you’re hunting in the spawn frames is much higher, so if there are artifacts, they’ll stand out.
Nvidia has solved the upheavals with a transition to a new AI style for its frame generation serves to manage motion artifacts, the new transformer style to resolve the symbol, and the opposite to make sure that additional executives are well banned, and all without also adding much more than 2x Gener Frame in terms of PC latency.
It’s fortunate from the effects of Nvidia’s gaming division, it has such wise people that it works for it that it can solve problems with the generation of multiple bartenders
The work Nvidia has done in making Multi Frame Generation work is truly impressive, but if that hadn’t worked out what sort of GPU generation would we have in place of the current crop of RTX Blackwell chips? Maybe the RTX 5090 wouldn’t have been much different; you’d still get the extra silicon, the extra VRAM, and essentially a rendering, gaming monster of a card, though with only 30% higher overall performance.
It would have been difficult to load it superior than the RTX 4090 to $ 1,600, however, taking into account the relative construction in the performance.
Things would have to have been different for the RTX 5080 and its GB203 GPU, though. This is the full chip being used at launch, which means there’s no more headroom here to offer more than the 15% 4K performance bump that it offers over the RTX 4080 Super. There’s no way it could have been released for the same $999 with such a slight bump and no MFG in sight.
Or else it would have had to be an entirely different, much more powerful GPU. And that would have necessarily translated further down the RTX 50-series stack, too.
It’s good that, despite being half the price of the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 isn’t delivering half the performance; it’s better than that. The RTX 5090 is some 50% quicker than the second-tier RTX Blackwell card. Though what I will say is that the price delta was much lower between RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4090, and the top Ada was only 35% quicker. So, that gen-on-gen comparison isn’t too favourable for the RTX 50-series, either.
Actually, this is a debatable point. I suppose it is fortunate of the effects of the Nvidia Games division, it has other people so wise that are running for it that can fix multiple generation disorders in time for the launch of the RTX 50 series.
In the end, the generation of multiple paintings exists, and the RTX 5080 is the silicon that it will obtain due to excessive crime and the functionality that can be presented in the games that can explode DLSS Four and Mfgarray Thank you Jen-Hsun for AI, Hey?
Dave has been playing since the time of Zaxxon and Lady Bug in Colecovision and Code Books for the Comodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first PC game at the age of 16 and despite the end of the insects of the Cyrix -based formula around a year later. When he took it out the window. First he began writing for the official PlayStation MAG and the Global Xbox several decades ago, then he went to complete the time PC format, then PC Gamer, Techradar and T3, among others. Now it is back, writing on the market for nightmare graphics cards, processors with more hearts than meaning, hottest portable games than the sun and SSD more capacity than a cybertruck.
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