GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition

Does it measure up to the RTX 4090?

- JARRED WALTON

WE WERE INCREDIBLY impressed with Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture and the first graphics card to use it, the RTX 4090 (see December 2022, page 74). The 4090 offered massive generational performance gains with only a slight price increase relative to its 3090 predecessor. For the second outing, the RTX 4080 delivers a sizeable increase in performance over the old RTX 3080, but it inherits the substantially higher price point of the RTX 3080 Ti.

It’s not that the 4080 is a bad card, but previous generations have kept the 80-class models in the $500–$800 price bracket. The 3080 Ti got away with its high price because it launched during the worst graphics card shortage we’ve ever witnessed thanks to chip shortages and cryptocurrency mining. After the painful availability and value of GPUs all last year, the 4080 launch price feels like a slap in the face to gamers. It’s very much out of reach for mere mortal PCs.