Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: the 4K GPU shoot-out

Game benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 22, Forza Horizon 5.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Jan. 31, 2024

The proliferation of ray tracing in both RT and upscaling tests on the prior pages effectively leaves AMD for dust - but now it's time to move onto rasterisation, where we expect Team Red to deliver far more impressive results, making the case for its latest RDNA 3 cards as raster value champions.

Owing to the way users may be jumping around our benchmarking pages, you may be missing out on an explainer of how our benchmarking system presents. Our system offers a number of ways to get to the data you want, the presentation varying according to the device you're using. You'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is an interactive bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Control

This is where things start to get more interesting perhaps, because not only should we expect AMD's raster-heavy hardware to more readily outperform the RTX 4080 and 4080 Super, but Control also has a bizarre power-sapping impact on Ada Lovelace cards. With that in mind, it's no real surprise to see the 7900 XTX to deliver a five point lead over the 4080 Super... though I did expect more!

The gap between 4080 and 4080 Super exceeds the typical one to two point lead (to 3.4 percent - woo!) but a 29 percentage point lead from the RTX 4090 effectively puts it in its place.

Control, High, 4x MSAA

Cyberpunk 2077

It's almost a shame to play Cyberpunk without upscaling, ray tracing or even path tracing at this class of hardware given how transformative these technologies can be - especially with frame generation and path tracing on RTX 40-series hardware - but it does at least level the playing field for AMD with 7900 XTX a good 18 percent ahead. Check out the frame-rates though: even without RT, ultra is punishing.

Though there are gains for the 4080 Super over 4080 at 1080p and 1440p, multiple runs saw no real difference at 4K, which is somewhat baffling. The RTX 4090 is still triumphant with a 29 percent lead over 4080 Super, but the 7900 XTX is closer to the 4090 result than it is to 4080 Super.

Cyberpunk 2077, Ultra, TAA

Forza Horizon 5

We return to Forza Horizon 5 in perhaps its most natural configuration: RT disabled with native rendering for the best mixture of fine detail, performance and that signature 4x MSAA. It's an AMD win again, though the four to five percent lead isn't seeing the 7900 XTX at its very best.

Once again and to the surprise of nobody, there's barely any difference at all between 4080 and 4080 Super and the 4090's dominance starts to erode... though it is still 26 points clear of 4080 Super and 20 to 21 percent ahead of the 7900 XTX. You pay for what you get, but with both Nvidia and AMD at the $999 level now, proportionate value clearly isn't with the 4090 - which is how it should be.

Forza Horizon 5, Extreme, 4x MSAA

F1 22

F1 22 is a legitimate esports title often played on high refresh rate displays, so even with averages in the hundreds of frames per second, having a powerful enough graphics card can be impactful. The good news is that all of our major contenders can effectively power a 4K 144Hz screen, but AMD beats Nvidia as 7900 XTX has an eleven point lead over RTX 4080 Super.

Perhaps it's down to those bandwidth-heavy rain effects, but the 4080 Super is ever-so-slightly ahead of the trend with a 3.8 percent lead over the vanilla 4080, but with a nigh-on 33 percentage point lead and an average frame-rate in excess of 200fps, RTX 4090 has Max Verstappen-level dominance.