Nvidia has had a bit of a tumultuous time lately, but it looks like the upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card could raise our hype level again. That’s thanks to a new leak that suggests the GPU could be up to 15% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti – which was itself the most powerful graphics card in Team Green’s previous generation RTX 3000.
The leak that was reported by wccftech (opens in a new tab)contains what appears to be several benchmark results against the RTX 4080, which – if accurate – give us an idea of the performance the upcoming graphics card will be able to offer.
Of course, benchmark scores are not the only indicator of performance and we cannot verify them. Also if they are indeed, the RTX 4080 may be using early pre-release drivers, which may impact performance.
Still, from what we see here, there’s certainly cause for excitement.
Test results
In the CUDA Geekbench 5 benchmark, the RTX 4080 apparently scored 300.7k. points, making it about 15% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and a whopping 45% faster than the RTX 3080 which, as the name suggests, is the card the 4080 was meant to replace.
However, the gap between the 4080 and the high-end RTX 4090 above is quite large, with the 4080 said to be 30% slower than the highest spec card.
The OpenCL benchmark shows a similar pattern, with the 4080 being 9% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 37.5% faster than the RTX 3080. In these results, however, the RTX 4090 is 36% faster than the 4080.
In the final revealed Geekbench 5 test that looks at how GPUs handle Vulkan API loads, the RTX 4080 beats the mighty RTX 3090 TI again – but this time by only 5.5%. It is also 20% faster than the RTX 3080 and 45% slower than the RTX 4090.
Analysis: what does it mean?
While the benchmark results, especially those unverified for an unreleased graphics card, only tell us part of the story, they do at least give us an idea of where to set our expectations.
Looking at the performance difference between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 4080, there seems to have been a big generational leap, so 3080 owners may be very tempted to buy the 4080. However, the 4080 will be available for $1,199 (around £1,050 / AU$1,790), which is significantly more than the $699 (£649, around AU$950) price the 3080 was supposed to launch at.
Of course, in reality the RTX 3080 has often been sold for much more due to stock shortages, and while prices have come down, the RTX 4080 will still be an attractive buy if available at face value.
The fact that the RTX 4080 appears to be more powerful than the RTX 3090 Ti is also quite exciting, especially since the 3090 Ti is a flagship card that sold for a whopping $1,999 (around £1,600 / AU$2,700).
This makes the RTX 4080 look like an impressive value, albeit expensive on its own. However, the people who pounced on the RTX 3090 Ti are likely true enthusiasts who want the best, and the slight performance boost offered by the 4080 is unlikely to please, despite its much lower price tag. Instead they will look at how much more powerful the 4090 is and go for it.
However, for people who can’t afford the 4090, the 4080 can be an excellent choice that still beats the best 3000 series GPUs.
We’ll know more when we get the RTX 4080 for review and run a full suite of benchmarks. Will the 4080 be good enough to make it onto our list of the best graphics cards? With the launch scheduled for November 16, we won’t have to wait long to find out.