Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition Review: $999 card effectively makes the RX 7900 XTX redundant

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition brings the best of the Blackwell architecture to mainstream enthusiast gamers at half the price of the RTX 5090 FE Goliath.

The RTX 5080 FE offers the complete GB2023 die with all 10,752 CUDA cores enabled. Still, the increase in CUDA core count from the RTX 4080 Super is modest, and the RTX 5080 FE sports offers the same 16 GB VRAM capacity. However, all RTX 50 series cards come equipped with GDDR7 memory, which brings with it considerable improvements to bandwidth and power efficiency.

From a performance standpoint, the RTX 5080 FE offers significant 19% and 22% gains over the RTX 4080 FE in synthetics and 4K gaming, respectively while the corresponding uplifts from the Radeon RX 7900 XTX are 7% and 17%.

Ray tracing gets big uplift from the Ada generation as well. However, the 16 GB VRAM limitation means that very intense path tracing settings at high resolutions can potentially bring the RTX 5080 FE to its knees.

There are no major qualms with Nvidia's build quality and emissions, and things have only improved from the already excellent RTX 40 series FE design with the added benefit of perfectly complementing SFF builds.

If you already own an RTX 4080 Super or even the original RTX 4080, there's no immediate reason to jump on to the RTX 5080 bandwagon.

However, the RTX 5080 FE makes perfect sense over any other RTX 4080/Super or RX 7900 XTX variant currently available if you can purchase one at $999 MSRP — a feat in itself given the current market paucity.

Best Buy currently offers the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition at its $999 MSRP, but the card is out of stock at the time of writing.

In India, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition is officially priced at ₹1,07,000. The card is not listed on Amazon India yet, but interested buyers can place a query at RP Tech India, the official importer of these cards.

Review now complete with new GPU comparisons, added games, thermal, noise, and power measurements.

Nvidia's latest RTX 50 Blackwell GPUs have seen divided opinion. The GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition continues to be the GPU to aspire for, and the surprising 2-slot design has been generally lauded by reviewers including us.

The RTX 5090 is Blackwell's Big Kahuna that caters to professionals who also game and commands an equally boisterous $1,999 MSRP. But what about mainstream gamers?

Enter the RTX 5080. The RTX 5080 comes with customary architectural improvements and hinges a lot on its AI prowess in hopes of taking over the baton from the RTX 4080 / RTX 4080 Super.

In this review, we take a look at the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition (FE) and see what kind of an uplift the $999 asking price can offer from the Ada generation.

Nvidia has opted for a radically different design this time around. Both the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition cards sport the exact same aesthetics and nearly the same thickness, with the RTX 5080 FE being about 180 g lighter.

Compared to the RTX 4080 FE, Nvidia has reduced the card's footprint to occupy just two slots, making it ideal for small form factor (SFF) builds.

Despite the smaller footprint, the RTX 5080 FE is built to a premium finish. We will look into how this new design impacts thermals and noise emissions shortly.

Many of our desktop GPU reviews in the recent past have been performed on an Intel Core i9-13900K test bench. From this generation on, we are transitioning to newer CPU options including the Core i9-14900K and the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

We have limited number of GPUs on hand as we go about this, but we are trying our best to re-test as many GPUs as possible into our database over the coming weeks and months. 

The following components make up our current test bench:

• Cooler Master MasterFrame 700 open test bench
• Intel Core i9-14900K with Intel Extreme profile set in the BIOS
• Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 2 TB NVMe SSD and 2x Crucial MX500 1 TB SATA SSDs for OS, benchmarks, and games
• 2x 16 GB Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5-6400 RAM with timings 32-39-39-80 at 1.40 V
• Alienware AW3225QF 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED monitor
• Thermaltake TH420 V2 Ultra EX ARGB AiO cooler
• Cooler Master MVE Gold V2 1250 ATX 3.0 fully modular PSU

Windows 11 24H2 with the latest patches, together with Nvidia Game Ready Driver version 572.12 issued to the press was used.

We would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying the test bench and PSU, Gigabyte for the motherboard, Sabrent for the SSD, Dell for the Alienware monitor, Thermaltake for the AiO cooler, and Kingston for the memory.

In cumulative synthetic benchmarks comprised of 3DMark and Unigine tests, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition manages only a slight edge over the XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

While the Blackwell card offers obvious gains over the Radeons in tests involving some amount of ray tracing such as 3DMark Port Royal and Speed Way, the RX 7900 XTX is on par with the RTX 5080 in raster.

In MLPerf, the RTX 5080 FE manages a 19% higher token generation rate compared to the RTX 4080 FE, although it trails the RTX 4090 by 10%. Needless to say, the RTX 5090 FE is nearly 60% faster than the RTX 5080 FE in token generation thanks to a 102% higher core count.

The RTX 5080 FE demonstrates leads of up to 17% over the RX 7900 XTX in cumulative pure raster gaming tests at 4K Ultra. This narrows down to up to 9% at 1080p and 2K Ultra settings, while trailing behind the RTX 4090 by a similar margin. 

Expect an average of 22% gains at 4K and 29% at 1080p and 2K combined if you are upgrading from an RTX 4080 FE.