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Shehryar Khan

Senior Editor and Content Writer:

• Lead the comparison and blog writing teams at Tech4Gamers.
• Oversee teams with a keen eye for detail and precision.
• Ensure hands-on writing, with benchmarks and testing as guiding principles.
• Guarantee the delivery of the best possible results in concise yet impactful tech tales.

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Pros And Cons

Comparison Table

Architectural Differences

1. Process Nodes: The RTX 4090 was built with 5nm process nodes, whereas the RTX 5080 has slightly more advanced 4nm manufacturing nodes.
2. Clock Speeds: The RTX 4090 clocks from 2235MHz to 2520MHz, whereas the 5080 has a range from 2295MHz to 2617MHz, which is a slight improvement.
3. VRAM: The RTX 5080 uses 16 gigabytes of GDDR7 memory, which is a smaller buffer than the 24 gigabytes of GDDR6X memory that the RTX 4090 uses.
4. TDP: The RTX 4090 has a rated TDP of 450 watts, which is noticeably higher than the 360-watt TDP of the RTX 5080, with both being very high.
5. Supported Technologies: The feature set of the RTX 5080 and the RTX 4090 is very similar, with the newer card supporting multi-frame generation, a feature that will sadly not make its way to the RTX 40 series cards, among others.

Nvidia has recently launched its high-end 80-class card, and users are shocked at how little it improves on its predecessor. Does this small increment in performance knock out the top-of-the-line card from the last generation? Keep reading the RTX 5080 vs RTX 4090 comparison to find out!

Gaming Benchmarks – 4k

Though Nvidia has shifted to a focus primarily on AI, the majority of people buying these cards will do so for their gaming performance. To compare how they perform, we have constructed a top-of-the-line test bench, the specs of which are written below:

Test Bench

• OS – Windows 11 
• CPU Cooler – Enermax LiqMaxFlo 360mm
• Processor – AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• SSD – XPG Gammix S50 Lite
• Power Supply – be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1300W
• Mobo (AMD) – ASRock X870E Taichi Lite

Marvel Rivals

• With all the settings cranked to the maximum and Lumen enabled, we saw that the RTX 4090 got an average framerate of 76 FPS, which was about 17% higher than the 65 FPS of the RTX 5080.
• The RTX 4090 produced minimums that were almost 10% higher at 45 FPS instead of the 41 FPS of the RTX 5080. The RTX 4090 is thoroughly more capable in Marvel Rivals than the RTX 5080.

Stalker 2

• There was a massive 22% difference in performance in Stalker 2, which had an average framerate of 72 FPS on the Blackwell card in our testing, while the RTX 4090 hovered closer to around 88 FPS.
• The minimums stood 20% apart, with the RTX 4090 being in the lead with 65 FPS, whereas the RTX 5080 took another backstep, getting 1% lows of 54 FPS.

God Of War Ragnarok

• This game also shared the 22% difference as the last one, with the RTX 4090 getting an average framerate of 143 FPS, significantly higher than the 117 FPS of the RTX 5080, both smooth results in their own right.
• The 1% lows were worlds apart as well, with the RTX 4090 going down to around 129 FPS in our testing, which was 31% ahead of the 98 FPS of the RTX 5080.

War Hammer 40K: Space Marine 2

• The difference simmered down to around 13% with this game, with the RTX 5080 getting a framerate of around 85 FPS, whereas the RTX 4090 got a performance closer to 96 FPS.
• The 1% lows were around 75 FPS on the RTX 5080, whereas the RTX 4090 went above and beyond with a 16% lead, netting it lows of around 87 FPS in our testing.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

• The 22% difference once again reared its ugly head in our test of Star Wars Jedi, with the RTX 5080 getting an average framerate of around 69 FPS, significantly lower than the 84 FPS of the RTX 4090.
• There was a difference of about 24% in the minimum framerates, with the RTX 5080 hovering closer to about 58 FPS, whereas the RTX 4090 stuck closer to about 72 FPS.

Alan Wake (RT + DLSS Q)

• When we tested Alan Wake with all the settings cranked up, and DLSS turned to quality, both GPUs fell short of our expectations. The RTX 5080 had a framerate of 38 FPS, which was 24% lower than the 47 FPS of the 4090.
• The 1% lows jumped down to about 31 FPS on the RTX 5080, which was 16% lower than the 36 FPS lows of the RTX 4090.

Cyberpunk 2077 (RT + DLSS Q)

• With Ultra RT and DLSS quality, the RTX 5080 got an average framerate of 50 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 in 4K, whereas the RTX 4090 was about 28% faster with an average of 64 FPS.
• Minimums hung around 41 FPS on the Blackwell card, which was about 29% slower than the 53 FPS we saw with the RTX 4090.

Black Myth Wukong (RT + DLSS Q)

• Very high RT settings and DLSS quality netted the RTX 5080 an average framerate of 39 FPS, which was about 13% higher than the 44 FPS of the RTX 4090 in our test of Black Myth Wukong.
• The RTX 5080 had 1% lows of around 29 FPS in this game, which was about 21% lower than the 35 FPS we saw with the RTX 4090.

Productivity Benchmarks

The gaming tests have been pretty conclusive in their results, but how are these cards evaluated when looking at productivity performance? We used the same test bench used in the gaming tests to gather results, which are displayed below:

Blender Barbershop

• The 4090 took around 20% less time than the RTX 5080 to completely render than the Barbershop scene in Blender using Optix rendering.
• The RTX 5080 finished this render in about 41 seconds, whereas the RTX 4090 was noticeably faster, with a render time of only 34 seconds.

Davinci Resolve

• The Pudget Benchmarks Davinci Resolve test ran about 6.6% better on the RTX 5080, its first win in this comparison so far.
• The last gen RTX 4090 had a score of around 10573 points in our test, whereas the RTX 5080 hovered around 11273 points in the same benchmark.

Premiere Pro

• The RTX 5080 surprised us once again with a higher score in the Pudget Benchmarks Premiere Pro test, in which it performed around 5% better than its rival.
• The Blackwell card got a performance of around 14252 points, whereas the older RTX 4090 got a score of around 13607 points in our testing.

Overall Performance

Average Framerate

In the eight games we tested, 3 of which utilized ray tracing and slight amounts of DLSS, the RTX 4090 came on top with a margin of 20%. It is impressive that the RTX 5080 is in close range of this higher-end card, though its last-generation counterpart was not much farther behind in this race.

1% Lows

The minimum framerates were around 22% higher on the RTX 4090 in the games we tested on average, which is in line with the result we saw with the average framerates. In some games, especially the RT ones, the minimum framerates dropped well below the enjoyable level.

Productivity

Surprisingly, the RTX 5080 does better in productivity than its competitor. The 50 series cards support new 4:2:2 encoding that is more efficient for productivity tasks, and this bleeds over into its performance in Premiere and Davinci Resolve. Sadly, it still loses its footing in tasks that do not need encoding, like Blender.

Power

The RTX 4090 does take more power than the 5080, but not to a concerning level on average. The gaming power consumption was only about 6% higher on the beefier card, but the transient spikes of the 4090 demand a power supply that is a tier higher than the RTX 5080 for safe operation.

Price And Value

For various reasons, the RTX 4090 has crept up in price dramatically since its launch. Our research shows that it comes at over 150% of the price of the RTX 5080. The RTX 5080 starts looking more appealing package when we consider this difference, though it might also be scalped and price-hiked to oblivion.

What We Recommend

RTX 5080: The performance of this card is disappointing in our books, with a small improvement over the last generation. However, with some of its new bells and whistles turned on, it has the ability to beat the RTX 4090 for a much lower price tag if you believe that these features benefit your experience.

RTX 4090: The high price is understandable for a high-tier card, but the price hikes are still outrageous. While nothing matches Nvidia’s 90-class cards, current prices are absurd. Though the RTX 5080 will also probably receive multiple price hikes, the RTX 4090 isn’t worth buying at this price tag.

In our opinion, if you’re deciding between the RTX 5080 and the RTX 4090, and if price-to-performance is even the slightest concern to you, you should definitely get the RTX 5080. If you want the best of the best, the RTX 4090 still doesn’t make sense with the release of the RTX 5090.