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Native 1080p gaming, whether at medium or ultra settings, really isn't the primary use case for a card like the RTX 4080 Super. Sure, 4K with Performance mode 4X upscaling uses 1080p as the render resolution, so if you're curious about how that would run, these results are at least somewhat useful. But 4X upscaling does require a decent amount of computational work on the GPU, meaning actual 4K with Performance mode upscaling will probably run about 20~30 percent slower than what you'll see here.
Given the price and target audience, we're only going to provide limited commentary on the 1080p results, but they're included for the sake of completeness. CPU bottlenecks are very much a factor here, especially at medium settings.
RTX 4080 Super 1080p Overall Performance
Against the vanilla 4080, the RTX 4080 Super only delivers 2% more performance overall — and that applies to both the medium and ultra results. More telling is that the 4090 only offers 13% more performance at 1080p ultra, and that dips to just 9% at 1080p medium. Similarly, the 4080 Super's lead over the 4070 Ti Super is down to 12% at ultra settings, and just 7% at medium settings.
Interestingly, the matchup against AMD's 7900 XTX doesn't change much. The 4080 Super remains 17% faster overall at ultra settings, and 13% ahead at medium. That's mostly thanks to a big boost for Nvidia for 1080p performance in Horizon Zero Dawn, which is also the oldest game in our test suite.
RTX 4080 Super 1080p Rasterization Performance
Rasterization really doesn't push the 4080 Super hard at all at 1080p, or most other high-end GPUs for that matter. Where the gap between the 4080 Super and 4070 Ti Super was 18% at 4K, it's only 9% at 1080p ultra and 4% at 1080p medium. There are even a few instances where, due to CPU bottlenecks and the need to distribute the workload among more GPU cores, the 4070 Ti and some of the 'slower' Nvidia GPUs end up beating the fastest Nvidia options.
RTX 4080 Super 1080p Ray Tracing Performance
Ray tracing is still demanding, however, even at 1080p. The 4080 Super leads the 4070 Ti Super by 15% overall at ultra settings, and 12% at medium settings. That's a smaller delta than at 1440p and 4K, but it's also quite a bit larger than the gap in our rasterization suite.
That goes for AMD's 7900 XTX as well. The 4080 Super delivers 39% higher performance at 1080p ultra — the same margin as at 1440p. DXR medium isn't quite so bad, with the lead shrinking to 30% overall. That's still pretty sizeable, however, and shows how much ground AMD still needs to make up in the future.
The 4090 lead shrinks at 1080p, even with DXR. It's 19% faster than the 4080 Super at ultra settings, and 15% faster at medium settings. That's with a current retail price that's 80% to 100% higher.
Upscaling at 1080p is still possible, but the quality definitely starts to suffer. Quality mode shows noticeable artifacts, like moiré patterns on certain textures (grilles and other finely lined surfaces being the main example), and there's not much need for upscaling at lower resolutions with high-end hardware.
RTX 4080 Super 1080p Bonus Games
Despite what we just said, we still used Quality mode upscaling in both Alan Wake 2 and Avatar. Medium settings in Alan Wake 2 are far less brutal than full path tracing, so the gap between AMD and Nvidia shrinks a lot: The 4080 Super is 'only' 53% faster at 1080p medium, while it's 139% faster with high settings.
Avatar meanwhile shows a 20% delta between the same AMD and Nvidia GPUs at medium settings, and a 23% delta with ultra settings. The 4080 Super hits some CPU (and possibly DLSS) limitations at 1080p medium, though, with the 4080 Super only leading the 4070 Ti Super by 6%.
And wrapping up our gaming benchmarks, cache and bandwidth requirements change a lot at 1080p in The Last of Us. Now, the 4080 Super beats the 7900 XTX by 5% at ultra quality, and that margin increases to 17% at medium settings.
The RTX 4090, if you're wondering, is basically tied with the 4080 Super in Avatar and The Last of Us at 1080p medium, but has a 26% lead in Alan Wake 2. At ultra settings, it's 8% faster in Avatar, 15% faster in The Last of Us, and 27% faster in AW2.
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