Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review: big expectations, small gains
Nvidiaâs new RTX 5080 graphics card isnât as exciting as I was hoping it would be. While the sleek new Founders Edition redesign dramatically shrinks the size of the card compared to the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super, youâre getting the same 16GB of VRAM and only small performance improvements over the previous generation of cards.
The RTX 5080, which arrives January 30th for $999, is about 15 percent faster than the RTX 4080 at 4K without the use of any AI-powered upscaling tricks. While the RTX 4080 managed to beat the RTX 3090, and the RTX 3080 dethroned the RTX 2080 Ti, the RTX 5080 isnât enough to topple the RTX 4090. Nvidia has built up an expectation that the 80-series card will surpass the previous generationâs flagship, and thatâs simply not the case this time around.
The RTX 5080 does comfortably beat its only competition at this price point: the $999 AMD RX Radeon 9700 XTX. That makes the RTX 5080 a good card for 4K if youâre willing to drop settings in some games and more GPU than you probably need for 1440p. For meaningfully better 4K performance, youâll have to spend $2,000 on the RTX 5090.
If youâre upgrading to the RTX 5080 from the RTX 3080 or …