ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5080 OC Edition Review

The ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition is a first for the brand. Usually, the PRIME series focuses on mid-ranged reference cards and steers away from the high-end GPUs. However, this time ASUS decided that we needed a PRIME RTX 5080 so here it is.

Watch this review below;

The ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition is a relatively small GPU that boasts a Small Form Factor-ready design. It occupied just 2.5 slots and promises all the performance you’ll find from the RTX 5080 architecture.

This means the card boasts DLSS 4 support with multi-frame generation and improvements to basically everything we had seen with DLSS 3. Before I get into the tests, let’s cover what you get when picking up the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition.

The GPU itself measures 304 x 126 x 50mm. It is made mostly of plastic with a plastic shell wrapping around the entire front of the card. The back then includes a metal plate that extends the cooling capabilities. Speaking of which, there are three 120mm Axial-Tech Fans on the card with so-called longer blades for better cooling. ASUS claims these fans include dual-ball fan bearings for twice the lifespan compared to the rest.

The card includes 3 DisplayPort 2.1b ports and 1 HDMI 2.1b port. It makes use of the 12VHPWR power connector which comes bundled in the box. I didn’t use it because my power supply has this connector on the unit itself. If you don’t have a power supply like this, you’ll need 3 x 8 pin connectors to use the 12-pin adapter. The card then comes with a dual-BIOS switch to change between Performance and Quiet modes. I ran all my tests on the Performance mode.

Apart from that, the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition is a plain-looking GPU. There’s no RGB on it anywhere and the general design is fairly streamlined. In comparison to the recently-reviewed AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER ICE card I covered, this thing looks like the ugly step sister. But then again, this card does cost a bit less so the simple design makes sense.

To add, ASUS doesn’t include any sort of GPU mount for this PRIME OC GPU. This is likely due to the SFF form factor of the card. I always like to prop the card up anyway using my own mount. To be safe.

When it comes to the specs of this ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition, the card packs 10,752 CUDA cores, 336 Sensor Cores, 84 RT codes, 16GB of GDDR7 RAM with a 256-bit memory bus and 30GBp/s of bandwidth.

This is an OC card so it comes overclocked at 2685MHz compared to the reference card at 2,655MHz. The card has a max TGP of 360W but this can also be easily bumped up to 400W.

I ran benchmarks. Considering I recently covered the AORUS GEFORCE RTX 5080 MASTER ICE GPU, I used the exact same set up and build for that review so I could compare that card with this card during some scores. They are both RTX 5080 GPUs so scores are very similar. I also left the PRIME OC Edition with the basic settings out of the box without tweaking any overclocking performance.

During my tests, the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition held up quite well when it came to thermals. During my stress test on Steel Nomad, the GPU peaked at 74C. Keep in mind that this was with the power limit set to 360W and the actual power reading hitting 340W. Most of my daily gaming tests keep the card at around 68C when using around 300W of power. So there’s a lot of room to tweak the performance to get better thermals here if need be.

Fan noise was also manageable. I measure a peak of 45dBA during my tests with the card on Performance Mode. This was with the GPU peaking at 74C. Fans were sitting at 1900RPM. I could hear the fans but at the same time, my PC system was muzzling out the sound. I do think due to the GPUs smaller form factor, the fans are design to work a bit louder in order to handle the cooling across the heat pipes. Smaller card, fewer heat pipes, more heat build up because of less spread space. Makes sense.

So where does this card sit amongst its more direct competition? Well, the ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 PRIME OC Edition is around 10% more powerful than the RX 7900 XTX when looking at raw power. Of course, the AMD card doesn’t have DLSS 4 so you’ll need to keep that in mind. The 5080 does have a high power draw and DLSS 4 is a hit or miss with the handful of available games, but it is likely a feature that every game will launch with in the future.