The Nvidia RTX 4080 has been officially unveiled, becoming one of the very first graphics cards in the new Nvidia RTX 4000 Series.
The Nvidia RTX 4080 is built upon the new Lovelace architecture, which uses TSMC’s 4nm process node. This is the same architecture used by the card’s more powerful sibling, the Nvidia RTX 4090.
The new card is apparently 2-4x more powerful than a Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti card, depending on which game you’re playing.
Keep on reading for everything you need to know.
Release date
The Nvidia RTX 4080 is confirmed to launch in November 2022. Nvidia hasn’t offered a specific release date just yet, but we’ll be sure to update this article as soon as we hear more.
Meanwhile, the Nvidia RTX 4090 will launch a month sooner, on the 12 October 2022 to be precise.
Price
The Nvidia RTX 4080 is available in two flavours: with 12GB of memory and with 16GB of memory.
The 12GB model has a starting price of $899/£949, while the 16GB version will set you back by a whopping $1199/£1269.
Specs
The Nvidia RTX 4080 uses the new Lovelace architecture. The upgrade to TSMC’s 4nm process node has allowed Nvidia to squeeze in an impressive 76 billion transistors – for comparison, the Ampere cards are limited to 28 billion. More transistors generally results in a faster performance.
The new architecture not only sees an improvement to ray tracing performance, but also enables compatibility with the new DLSS 3.0 feature which can the frame-rate performance of a game.
The RTX 4080 is available with either 12GB or 16GB of GDDR6X memory. This is an upgrade on the preceding generation, with only 10GB and 12GB models on offer.
The Nvidia 4080 (16GB) boasts 9728 CUDA Cores, while the 10GB version packs in 7680 CUDA Cores. Again, this is a big upgrade since the RTX 3080 was limited to a maximum of 8960 CUDA Cores.
The 16GB model has a boost speed of 2.51GHz, while the 12GB model is capable of speeds of 2.61GHz.
Nvidia claims that the RTX 4080 is between 2-4x faster than the existing RTX 3080 Ti. The extent of those performance uplifts are dependent on the game, with a 2x boost for Microsoft Flight Simulator, and a 3x boost for CyberPunk 2077 when using the new ray tracing update.
Despite the impressive performance boost, Nvidia has actually managed to reduce the power consumption for the RTX 4080 series compared to its predecessors. The 16GB version has a graphics card power of 320W, while the 12GB model comes in at just 285W.
You can check out the specs in more detail with the comparison table below:
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
