The last of the NVIDIA RTX 40-series cards has arrived. Unless NVIDIA decides to make an RTX 4090 SUPER, this 4080 SUPER is the second-best 40-Series card you can get your hands on.
Watch the ASUS ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER review below:
NVIDIA says the RTX 4080 SUPER is twice as fast as the RTX 3080 Ti when you compare DLSS performance and 1.4 times as fast when you look at the raw power without DLSS.
The RTX 4080 SUPER doesn’t shy away from the performance and its specs are quite impressive. It packs 10,240 CUDA Cores, 320 Fourth-Generation Tensor Cores and 80 Third-Generation Ada RT Cores. It includes 16GB of GDDRX RAM running at 23Gbps and It includes 64MB of L2 cache.
When you compare the RTX 4080 to the RTX 4090, there’s still quite a substantial difference in performance. To put this into comparison, the RTX 4090 includes 16,384 CUDA cores, 512 Tensor Cores and 128 RT Cores. It also has 24GB of RAM. It is still levels above the RTX 4080 but that’s okay because the average gamer isn’t buying the RTX 4090. It is way too expensive, uses a lot of power and is cumbersome to install. The RTX 4080 SUPER aims to be the next best thing.
NVIDIA is marketing the card as the so-called “4K Monster” and after spending a week with the GPU, I can agree. Of course, terms and conditions do apply here and in this case, the T’s and C’s mean DLSS.
ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER Design
Before we get into the performance and technical jargon, let’s go over the card featured in this review. ASUS sent over the ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER. I have recently reviewed the TUF Gaming RTX 4070 SUPER from ASUS too. Check it out here.
In the box, you’ll get the GPU itself, the 16-pin to PCI-E adapter, a GPU mount, some ROG-theme velcro, a collector’s card and some paper manuals.
The ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER comes with a few performance perks. The card features an overclocked mode that boosts the clock speed to 2670MHz compared to the 2640MHz found on the reference card. ASUS has also tweaked the fan design on the card to help improve airflow up to 23%. This is done thanks to the slightly larger new Axial-Tech Fans which are 10mm wider in diameter.
The card also boasts the other usual ROG features including reverse fan spinning and the 0dB technology that sees the fans stay completely still if temperatures are below 50C. Of course, we have seen this tech for a while now so nothing particularly new here. Still, cool to have.
When it comes to the design of the ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER, this card is quite a large unit. It measures 357mm x 149mm and is 70mm thick. You’ll need an 850W power supply to bring it to life as recommended by NVIDIA. Ports include 2 HDMI 2.1a ports and 3 DisplayPort 1.4a ports. There’s also a FanConnect II port on the far end of the GPU.
The ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is a stylish card. It comes with some cool RGB on both the edge and top of the GPU. This includes light strips that shine across the ROG logo and on the translucent plastic shell. There’s also a sort of ombre ROG design across the fan cover and shiny decals on the actual fans. On the bottom, there’s the ROG logo cut into the air vent and some smaller finer details.
I have always enjoyed the ROG GPU lineup when it comes to the design. These cards look solid, feel heavy and come with some nice RGB finishes. This ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is no different. When plugged into my PC, it looks fantastic and even though it was pretty huge in the case, I could get used to it.
ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER Performance
It goes without saying that ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is a 40-series card and, as a result, comes with the latest support for all the NVIDIA AI technology under the sun. The Ada Lovelace architecture takes the card and turns it into a 4K capable unit. In most cases, you can pull off 4K without even looking at DLSS to help provide the performance boost but if you’re looking at more frames, you can easily start tweaking your settings to enjoy higher frame rates too. I guess that is one of the perks of these higher-end cards.
A year ago I stated that DLSS 3 was cool but the games were limited. However, that is no longer the case. NVIDIA has really pushed the agenda here and mostly every new release ships with DLSS support and older games have been patched to support the tech too.
With that being said, I did some tests. Given the card is being marketed as a 4K GPU, I tested everything at 4K and used various DLSS settings to show how the card can get more out of it thanks to a few tweaks here and there.
ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER Benchmarks
I ran some benchmarks on the ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER GPU. These tests were all done in 4K due to NVIDIA’s push that this is a 4K card. Here are the results:
The ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER definitely delivers on the 4K promise even though some games cannot run natively at 4K. That’s why we have DLSS and frame generation. In some cases, Alan Wake 2, for example, the card struggled to hit a stable 30FPS at 4K without DLSS and frame generation. However, a few tweaks to the settings and these issues went away.
For those who want the raw power of native 4K without any AI magic, this card sort of provides that but there are terms and conditions where it can’t. These games are far and few between though. Even Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora kept a stable 45FPS at native 4K on the max settings.
When it comes to the power consumption, just like other RTX 4080 SUPER cards I have reviewed, the GPU maxed out at 315W. It seldom hits that number though. Most of the time, it idled just under 300W. The ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER GPU also remained quite cool at 62C. The fans revved up to 1720RPM and the GPU Max Clock hit 2820MHz with a memory clock of 11501MHz.
The ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is definitely the more expensive 4080 SUPER on the market. It sells for R34,000 which is a few thousand rand higher than say, the Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER. Of course, this is an ROG Strix card so you’re getting a super premium design, some cool RGB and some additional features like a FanConnect II port.
You’ll have to judge for yourself whether or not you want to spend the extra and if they will benefit you. Outside of its asking price, the card is quite impressive. It is NVIDIA’s swansong to the 40-series range, we hope anyway and it does an excellent job delivering 4K games. If you’re a 1440p gamer, this might be slightly overkill but you’ll be able to turn off all upscaling and frame generation which is a plus. Generally speaking, the ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is definitely an enthusiast’s card.
The ASUS ROG Strix Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER is available in South Africa now starting at R34,000. You can find out more about the card here.
ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 SUPER Review
Summary
The ASUS ROG Strix Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is a powerful GPU that manages to push native 4K gaming in most cases and in others with the help of DLSS. It is a tad pricier than other 4080 SUPER GPUs but the ROG stylings help cushion the asking price.
