Nvidia’s phased rollout of new RTX 40 series cards (launched under the “Super” moniker) is over, what have we learned? Essentially, it’s a value play at the top and bottom of the new stack, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super landing awkwardly in the middle. The RTX 4070 Super has the largest increase in computing power. Compared with the ordinary 4070, the performance has been greatly improved for the same price, while the 4070 Ti Super has a good increase in VRAM, but the frame rate increase is smaller. RTX 4080 Super? There are some minor spec changes, but the reality is that, for the most part, you’re looking at pretty much the same performance as the outgoing RTX 4080.You do get a significant drop in price, though – but again, this feels like maximum The RTX 4080 was the price it deserved at launch, and 14 months after the Ada was released, we finally got our hands on it.
The spec sheet below gives you an idea of how Nvidia is rebalancing the RTX 40-series line into the mid-to-high end range – but it illustrates the issues of beefing up the existing 4080. There’s little room to add specs without moving to RTX 4090’s AD102 silicon. The company has pushed the AD103 as far as it can go, which means having a full complement of 10,240 CUDA cores – but only a 5% increase in compute power compared to the standard RTX 4080. Enhancements This is the fastest GDDR6X module Nvidia can find, but we still think the memory bandwidth is only a 2.6% increase over the stock 4080.
What we’re left with reminds me of the days when Nvidia launched Titan products – like the Titan Product performance. We’ve got the benchmarks done, but as you can see, in most cases the RTX 4080 Super performs one to two percentage points better (three to four percentage points if we’re really lucky!), but Basically the same, really. Some of these gains are so slight that a single benchmark run may actually be lower than the RTX 4080 equivalent – likely due to small changes in boost clock on a run-by-run basis. What’s the bottom line? The specs are improved, but this is essentially a cut-price and repainted RTX 4080.
RTX 40 Series Super Makeover: Specs look great, but what about the price?
| 4080 super | 4080 | Chapter 4070 Awesome | Chapter 4070 | 4070 super | 4070 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| processor | AD103 | AD103 | AD103 | AD104 | AD104 | AD104 |
| CUDA color | 10240 | 9728 | 8448 | 7680 | 7168 | 5888 |
| boost clock | 2.56GHz | 2.51GHz | 2.61GHz | 2.61GHz | 2.48GHz | 2.48GHz |
| memory allocation | 16 GB | 16 GB | 16 GB | 12GB | 12GB | 12GB |
| memory interface | 256 bit | 256 bit | 256 bit | 192 bits | 192 bits | 192 bits |
| memory bandwidth | 736GB/sec | 717GB/sec | 672GB/sec | 504GB/sec | 504GB/sec | 504GB/sec |
| Three Gorges Project | 320W | 320W | 285W | 285W | 220W | 200W |
| US suggested retail price | $999 | $1199 | $799 | $799 | $599 | $599 |
| UK recommended retail price | £969 | £1199 | £769 | £799 | £579 | £589 |
| release date | 31/1/24 | go out | 24/1/24 | go out | 17/1/24 | go out |
For review, we received two versions of the RTX 4080 Super – the Founders Edition produced by Nvidia and the Asus TUF Gaming Edition. They both run to reference specs and, according to my best testing, produce identical performance outside of the margin of error. However, in essence, they are two distinct propositions.
The Founders Edition card is – at least from my perspective – a known entity. It uses the exact same cooler and overall design as the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090, which means you’re getting a very large three-slot card with an impeccable industrial design and cool and quiet operation. In keeping with the design changes to the RTX 4070 Super, the new offering comes in pure black and looks absolutely fantastic. Power is provided via the usual 12VHPWR socket, and video output consists of a standard complement of Nvidia: three DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1.
The ASUS TUF Gaming version is frankly huge – 348mm long, while the Founders Edition is 310mm long. It has a four-slot design with a large, clearly visible heatsink and relatively discreet RGB lighting. The shroud is plastic, which means it feels cheaper than the FE model, although the back panel is metal. Similar to the Nvidia version, the 12VHPWR socket is used for power input, but in addition to the 3 DisplayPorts on the back, there are 2 HDMI outputs, compared to just one on the FE.
Both cards operate identically, perform identically, and are available at MSRP. In fact, none of them have any acoustic issues – they’re both so quiet that the fan on my Noctua D15 CPU cooler is much louder when my Core i9 13900K is under load. I’d go with the Founders Edition because of its good looks and obviously superior build quality, but if you want RGB or a second HDMI port, Asus has those.
With the preliminaries out of the way, it’s time to get into the real benchmarking. As always, we used high-end gear, pairing a Core i9 13900K with 6000MT/s G.Skill DDR5 and an Asus ROG Maximus Hero Z690 motherboard to minimize CPU bottlenecks and thus show the GPU differences more clearly.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super Analysis
- introduce [This Page]
- RT Benchmark: Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Control
- RT Benchmarks: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, F1 22, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- RT/DLSS/FSR2/DLSS3 Benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, Forza Horizon 5, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Game Benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 22, Forza Horizon 5
- Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Homecoming, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Conclusions, Values and Recommendations
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