Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: Slightly faster than the 4080, but $200 cheaper

We really wish the 4080 Super had AD102 and 20GB.

Reviews
By
published
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition photos and unboxing
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super can be summed up in just a few words: It's like the RTX 4080, only less expensive. That's not to say it's inexpensive, as it still costs over $1,000 (after taxes), but $200 cheaper is at least something. Meanwhile, the performance side of the story is a gigantic snorefest. The RTX 4080 Super does technically offer more performance than the RTX 4080, but only by about 2~3 percent on average. Even a piddly overclock of an RTX 4080 could improve performance at least that much.

If you were on the fence and trying to decide between AMD's RX 7900 XTX and Nvidia's RTX 4080, with the latter costing on average $200 extra, the RTX 4080 Super effectively wipes away the price difference. The only real reason to opt for a 7900 XTX now — barring any price cuts — is if you specifically want AMD's top card, or you want any GPU that has more than 16GB of memory. Otherwise, the RTX 4080 Super is almost always the better option.

Yes, there are exceptions, like a few rasterization games and certain professional applications, as well as workloads that need more than 16GB (but less than 24GB) of VRAM. If you're specifically interested in one of those use cases, that's fine, and AMD is still technically about $40 cheaper for the least expensive 7900 XTX cards. At the same time, you give up access to Nvidia's DLSS features and potentially lose a lot of performance in other use cases. In other words, you 'win' in a few specific cases and lose in a lot of other situations.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

It's hard not to be at least somewhat disappointed with the RTX 4080 Super. Sticking with the AD103 GPU — even if we understand all the reasons behind that choice (specifically, AI money) — hurts the performance potential tremendously. We would have loved to see something striking for more of a middle ground between the 4080 and 4090. Instead, we got an incremental bump over the 4080 with "Super" tacked onto the name.

There's no indication that Nvidia will offer a consumer card with higher performance than the RTX 4090 any time soon — we'll likely need to wait for Blackwell consumer GPUs for that, and we don't expect those until sometime in 2025. Sooner would be nice, but even then, how much will the top GPUs like RTX 5090 and 5080 cost? Given what we're seeing from the current AI trends, don't be surprised if they cost proportionally more than the RTX 4080 Super, and we'll still have to wait to find out where they land on the GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

Ultimately, the RTX 4080 Super delivered precisely what we expected to see. It's a cheaper and barely faster take on the RTX 4080. The price means it's now in direct competition with AMD's 7900 XTX, but either one still costs as much as an entire midrange gaming PC. It's fine for what it is but doesn't offer anything new other than a stealthier black aesthetic for the Founders Edition.

If you're in the market for a top-tier graphics card and can't justify doubling the price and picking up an RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 Super now ranks as the second fastest GPU overall, and it's cheaper than the existing 4080. It's slightly faster and less costly than the 4080, but we were never particularly pleased with the $1,199 launch price of the 4080 in the first place. $200 represents a welcome and necessary price correction, and unlike the RTX 3080, which was generally selling at over $1,000 for the majority of its life cycle, the 4080 Super should at least be readily available.

Jarred Walton
Jarred Walton

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

94 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Lamarr the Strelok
    $1000 for 16 GB VRAM. What a ripoff. Personally the 7600 XT with 16 GB VRAM is the only GPU I'd consider.Nvidia has better performance but their greed is incredible.
    I'll be using my 8 GB RX 570 til it's wheels fall off. Then I may simply be done with PC gaming. It's becoming ridiculous now.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Lamarr the Strelok said:
    $1000 for 16 GB VRAM. What a ripoff. Personally the 7600 XT with 16 GB VRAM is the only GPU I'd consider.Nvidia has better performance but their greed is incredible.
    I'll be using my 8 GB RX 570 til it's wheels fall off. Then I may simply be done with PC gaming. It's becoming ridiculous now.
    I'm not going to tell you to continue PC gaming but there are plenty of options that are good enough for whatever you're doing, like an RX 6600. If you want more VRAM, grab a 6700 XT instead of 7600 XT, or an RTX 3060, while supplies last. Then if we later see the RX 7600 8GB migrate down to $200, and 7700 XT 12GB down to $350, those will be perfectly fine cards.

    By the time you're done hodling your RX 570, the 7600 XT should be under $300 and at least RDNA4 and Blackwell GPUs will be out.
    Reply
  • RandomWan
    Lamarr the Strelok said:
    $1000 for 16 GB VRAM. What a ripoff. Personally the 7600 XT with 16 GB VRAM is the only GPU I'd consider.Nvidia has better performance but their greed is incredible.
    I'll be using my 8 GB RX 570 til it's wheels fall off. Then I may simply be done with PC gaming. It's becoming ridiculous now.

    You're complaining about the VRAM (which doesn't matter as much as you think) and the price when you're sporting a bottom budget card. There's any number of cards you could upgrade to with a $300 budget that will blow that 570 out of the water.

    These should be over 2x the performance of your card with 16GB for $330:

    https://pcpartpicker.com/product/vT9wrH/xfx-speedster-swft-210-radeon-rx-7600-xt-16-gb-video-card-rx-76tswftfp
    https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sqyH99/gigabyte-gaming-oc-radeon-rx-7600-xt-16-gb-video-card-gv-r76xtgaming-oc-16gd
    Reply
  • Gururu
    I thought healthy competition between companies meant the customer wins. This proves not the case. They do just enough to edge the competition when they could do soooo much more for the customer.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Admin said:
    Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: Slightly faster than the 4080, but $200 cheaper : Read more
    Being cheaper is not a bad thing, it's not contradictory to the first thing being good ( the slightly faster) it's not but cheaper, it's but also or and(also) cheaper.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    RandomWan said:
    You're complaining about the VRAM (which doesn't matter as much as you think) and the price when you're sporting a bottom budget card.
    If nobody complains about ludicrously expensive GPUs having a bunch of corners cut off everywhere to pinch a few dollars on manufacturing off a $1000 luxury product, that is only an invitation to do even worse next time. No GPU over $250 should have less than 12GB of VRAM, which makes 16GB at $1000 look pathetic.

    Also, having 12+GB does matter as higher resolution textures are usually the most obvious image quality improvement with little to no impact on frame rate as long as you have sufficient VRAM to spare and 8GB is starting to cause lots of visible LoD asset pops in modern titles.

    Gururu said:
    I thought healthy competition between companies meant the customer wins. This proves not the case. They do just enough to edge the competition when they could do soooo much more for the customer.
    Corporations' highest priority customers are the shareholders and shareholders want infinite 40% YoY growth with the least benefits possible to the retail end-users as giving end-users too much value for their money would mean hitting the end of the road for what can be cost-effectively delivered that much sooner and be able to milk customers for that many fewer product cycles.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Gururu said:
    I thought healthy competition between companies meant the customer wins. This proves not the case. They do just enough to edge the competition when they could do soooo much more for the customer.
    The last time we had healthy competition in anything computer related was in the 90ies.
    AMD buying ATI in 2006 was the last of any "healthy" competition, every other GPU company at that point was already defeated, also every other CPU company other that intel and AMD with ARM, as a company, barely hanging on even though ARM as CPUs are almost everywhere.
    Reply
  • magbarn
    As long as Nvidia makes a killing on AI, they're going to reserve the fat chips like the 4090 only for the highest priced products. They're allocating most of the large chips to AI, hence why the 4090 at MSRP sold out in minutes yesterday. This 4080 Super really is what the 4070 Ti should've been.
    Reply
  • RandomWan
    InvalidError said:
    If nobody complains about ludicrously expensive GPUs having a bunch of corners cut off everywhere to pinch a few dollars on manufacturing off a $1000 luxury product, that is only an invitation to do even worse next time. No GPU over $250 should have less than 12GB of VRAM, which makes 16GB at $1000 look pathetic.

    It carries a bit less weight complaing about it when you're rocking what was a sub $200 video card. There's things other than a reasonable price keeping you from the card. By all means complain where appropriate, but unless people stop buying it, your complaints will acheive nothing.

    I don't know why you think a budget card should have that much RAM. You're not going to be gaming at resolutions where you can make use of those larger textures. I have a 1080Ti with 11GB (from the same timeframe) and the memory buffer isn't getting maxxed out at 3440x1440. Unless you're actually gaming at 4k or greater resolution, you're likely not running into a VRAM limitation, especially if you're making use of upscaling technologies.
    Reply
  • Lamarr the Strelok
    Well shadow of tomb raider at 1080p gets close to using 8 GB of VRAM. Far Cry 6 at 1440 uses close to 8 also.
    I admit I'm a budget gamer.(I have guitars and guitar amps to feed).But yes, UE 5 is a bit of a pig.Many UE5 games have an rx570,580, 590 as the minimum so the party's over for me soon.
    Reply