KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG desktop GPU review: Great performance meets questionable pricing

We used the following system for the benchmarks and tests in this review:

• Lian-Li O11 Dynamic
• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master, BIOS: F8a
• Alphacool Eisbear 360 AIO
• Corsair RM 1000x power supply
• G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 2x 16 GB, EXPO (DDR5-6000 CL30-38-38-96)
• Corsair MP600 2 TB
• Crucial MX500 2 TB
• Microsoft Windows 11 Professional 64-Bit (Version 22H2)

In synthetic tests, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG delivered exactly the same level of performance as the Founders Edition by Nvidia. The KFA2 card was able to outperformed an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT by eleven per cent. AMD’s flagship GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, is within the same performance range and only negligibly faster than our review unit. After seeing a huge performance jump from the GeForce RTX 3090 to the RTX 4090, we observed a similar gain in performance when comparing the RTX 4080 with the RTX 3080 Ti. Overall, Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture delivers a whopping 26 per cent more performance than Ampere.

In terms of compute performance, Nvidia clearly has the upper hand sometimes, whilst AMD is decidedly better in other instances. So those who are primarily looking for high compute performance should carefully consider what software programs they intend to use and which graphics card has an edge in those particular applications. As such, we can’t definitively recommend a particular product in this regard.

Like the KFA2 GeForce RTX 4090 SG, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG offers immensely high gaming performance that only properly flexes its muscles at 2160p. Needless to say, the model can handle 1440p very comfortably, and the CPU is less of a limiting factor as with the faster RTX 4090. The AMD competitors don't put up much of a fight against the KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG, despite the fact that a few games run better on AMD graphics cards. On the other hand, there are also games that perform far better on Nvidia GPUs. Once ray tracing features are enabled, Nvidia cards pull even further ahead of the new RDNA3 graphics cards. Without DLSS, though, even the fastest Nvidia GPUs right now struggle with ray tracing at higher resolutions. As shown by Cyberpunk 2077, you'll have to settle for 1080p when DLSS is disabled.

In any case, it should be noted that DLSS 3.0 is available exclusively on the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. AMD has a similar feature at the ready in the form of the open standard FSR, which can also be used with Nvidia GPUs. Ultimately, it is up to game developers to integrate these features into their games. You can click here to find a list of games that support DLSS 3.0 right now or are going to so in future.