Intro
The $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition Performance of 50+ Games, VR, Pro Apps, & More
Although the $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition has been out for nearly a month, a lingering bad case of COVID-19 caused BTR’s Part 1 VR review to be a week late and we were then unable to conclude if the card is a good value. This Part 2 RTX 4080 review concludes BTR’s 53 game performance analysis versus the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti, the RTX 4090, and the RX 6900 XT. Although the RTX 4080 is not a workstation card, we have also summarized VR, workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps.
It may be that the RTX 4080 Founders Edition at $1199 delivers a good value as an upgrade from the last generation Ampere RTX 3080 Ti which also launched at $1199 but a $400 launch price increase over the $799 RTX 3080 may be very difficult to accept. We benchmark using FCAT VR and Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use recent drivers.
Let’s check out our test configuration.
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Hardware
- Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
- ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
- T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
- Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
- RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
- AMD reference RX 6800 XT 16GB, stock clocks, supplied by AMD
- RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (5,000/4,400MB/s – one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
- T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD (2,000/2000MB/s – supplied by TeamGroup
- Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
- MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
- Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
- BenQ EW3270U 32″ 4K HDR 60Hz
- LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display
Test Configuration – Software
- GeForce 526.98 drivers for RTX 4080/4090 and 527.37 for RTX 3080/3080 Ti, and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
- High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
- High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
- VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
- AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for the nine DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
- All games have been patched to their latest versions
- VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
- Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate identical NVMe SSDs.
- Latest DirectX
- SteamVR latest beta
Games
Vulkan
- Sniper Elite
- DOOM Eternal
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Wolfenstein Youngblood
- World War Z
- Strange Brigade
- Rainbow Six: Siege
DX12
- A Plague Tale: Requiem
- Spiderman: Remastered
- F1 2022
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- Elden Ring
- God of War
- Dying Light 2
- Forza Horizon 5
- Call of Duty: Vanguard
- Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
- Far Cry 6
- DEATHLOOP
- Chernobylite
- Resident Evil Village
- Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
- Hitman 3
- Godfall
- DiRT 5
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Watch Dogs: Legions
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Death Stranding
- Borderlands 3
- Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
- Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
- Battlefield V
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
DX11
- Overwatch 2
- Total War: Warhammer III
- Days Gone
- Crysis Remastered
- Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
- Total War: Three Kingdoms
- Grand Theft Auto V
VR Games
- Assetto Corsa: Competizione
- Elite Dangerous
- F1 2022
- Kayak Mirage
- Moss: Book II
- No Man’s Sky
- Project CARS 2
- Skyrim
- Sniper Elite
- The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Synthetic
- Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
- 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
- Superposition
- VRMark Blue Room
- AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
- Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
- Geekbench
- Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
- SPECworkstation3
- SPECviewperfect 2020
- Octanebench
- FCAT VR benching tool
- OpenVR Benchmark tool
NVIDIA Control Panel settings
Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.
Let’s check out performance using 41 pancake and 5 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches on the next page.