We’ve got the new RTX 5080 here thanks to ASUS India, and we’re testing it to compare against the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Super.  Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 is their previous generation flagship GPU, and the GeForce RTX 4080 Super is the predecessor, although it was released after the RTX 4080 as a ‘refresh’ with slightly better performance. Still, the RTX 4080 Super is what we’re using for the benchmark comparison. So, how does the RTX 5080 fare against the last generation high-end GPUs of Nvidia? Is RTX 5080 faster than RTX 4090?

The RTX 5080 is a great GPU offering flagship performance that is very close to the RTX 4090. And with DLSS 4, it is faster than RTX 4090 too. Overall, it is a great upgrade over its predecessor (RTX 4080 & RTX 4080 Super) but we’re not surprised that some people are disappointed, as many people including myself were hoping for a bigger VRAM upgrade along with faster performance. Without wasting more time, here are the benchmarks and why we think the RTX 5080 is (effectively) faster than the RTX 4090 for gamers and surely will be a top choice in 2025.

• CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K

• Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max DDR5

• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360 Atmos ARGB 360mm Liquid Cooler

• RAM: XPG Adata Lancer 32GB (16GB x 2) 5200MHz

• GPU 1: ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 16GB Nvidia Graphic Card

• GPU 2: Colorful RTX 4080 Super Loong Edition 16GB GDDR6X

• GPU 3: Colorful RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V 24GB GDDR6X

• SSD: Crucial P3 Plus 1TB NVMe Gen 4 SSD

• PSU: Cooler Master MWE 1250W V2 80+ Gold Fully Modular ATX 3.1 

• Case: Cooler Master HAF 700 ATX Case

We tested these three Nvidia RTX GPUs (5080, 4080 Super, and 4090) with Intel Core i9-14900K, one of the fastest CPUs available today with extremely capable single core & multi-core performance. The case and power supply are from Cooler Master, the HAF 700, and MWE 1250 V2 respectively, ensuring our PC has no cooling issues and the GPUs can demand as much power as needed to flex their muscles.

The rest of the testing setup has been mentioned for those interested, we ensure to use a high-end setup for our testing. Below, we have tested RTX 5080 in 4K Gaming without DLSS. Then, we tested RTX 5080 in 4K Gaming with DLSS On with super-resolution & frame generation technologies turned on wherever supported. We also tested the RTX 5080 in multiplayer games. Let’s have a look at how RTX 5080 performs in gaming!

Here is the RTX 5080 vs RTX 4090 vs RTX 4080 Super performance measured in 4K Gaming without DLSS. As you can see, the RTX 5080 performs very close to the last-generation flagship. The new RTX 5080 is only 6-7% behind comparing it to the RTX 4090 in our testing across Black Myth Wukong, Forza Horizon 5 and Red Dead Redemption. This was without DLSS, using max settings in each game with resolution set to 4K (3840x2160).

In Cyberpunk 2077, ray tracing is set to maximum quality, i.e. Path Tracing turned on. But with no DLSS, these settings in Cyberpunk 2077 are hard to run on any GPU. We see the RTX 5080 struggle here too, only getting 18 FPS. But wait for our next set of benchmarks, because you are in for a real treat. The RTX 5080 is faster than the RTX 5090 once you employ DLSS 4.

Now we test RTX 5080 with DLSS 4 frame generation enabled (DLSS 3 was used in games where DLSS 4 had not come out yet), along with DLSS Quality preset for super-resolution. The RTX 5080 vs RTX 4090 vs RTX 4080 Super benchmark comparison gets very interesting here. With DLSS enabled, you can see the RTX 5080 is such a beast! On Cyberpunk 2077, When compared to the RTX 4090 which doesn’t support the new DLSS 4 4X Multi Frame Generation mode, we see 53% better FPS on the new RTX 5080. This is amazing, and playing at such insanely high FPS with maximum ray tracing fidelity in this game was simply unachievable before! By the way, we got more than 500 FPS in Cyberpunk when we were testing the RTX 5080 for fun at 1080p in Cyberpunk at lower settings.

Speaking of other games, we see that in Forza Horizon 5 the RTX 5080 is performing much better than the RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 Super, although this was slightly unexpected and we consider this one to be an outlier. In Black Myth Wukong, DLSS 4 support is not here yet. With the normal DLSS 3 frame generation, the RTX 5080 is 18% faster than its predecessor and 8.2% slower than the RTX 4090. In Red Dead Redemption 2, we get very close to the RTX 5080 being only 2FPS behind the RTX 5090! This GPU is really amazing - while we only showed the RTX 5080 outperforming RTX 4090 in Cyberpunk 2077 all thanks to DLSS 4, we’ll see so many more games later with MFG support making the RTX 5080 a very compelling buy in 2025.

We also compared RTX 5080 vs RTX 4090 vs RTX 4080 Super in two popular multiplayer FPS games. All these high-end GPUs provide extremely fast performance perfect for the competitive gamer. Although, Counter-Strike 2 at maxed-out settings in 4K is quite intensive, and we see the RTX 4080 Super struggling here managing 158 FPS. The RTX 5080 is 55% ahead in this game compared to the RTX 4080 Super, and 18.5% behind when compared to the RTX 4090. In Valorant, the RTX 5080 seemed to be faster than both the other GPUs.

But this game gets extremely high frame rates anyway and it is more CPU-dependent, so it doesn’t make too much sense to compare the GPUs here. Still, we wanted to give you an idea of RTX 5080 performance in popular esports multiplayer games of 2025. By the way, Nvidia also introduced Reflex 2 with RTX 50 Series which reduces input lag making your competitive experience even better.

Nvidia with the release of RTX 50 Series has brought us an arsenal of new innovations such as DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, better streaming quality with NVENC, New Transformer model for Super Resolution, GDDR7 Memory, and enhanced power efficiency to name a few. Team Green has pushed boundaries yet again! The GPU we tested was ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 16GB GDDR7 graphics card, and its thermal performance was quite impressive too. Overall, we are really satisfied with the performance.

This new RTX 5080 graphics card has received mixed reviews in the PC hardware community, depending on how much of a performance gain was measured versus its predecessor. For scenarios without DLSS 4 MFG mode, and in productivity use as well, the RTX 4090 is surely better than the RTX 5080 . It has more VRAM too and is a more powerful card in raw terms.

But consider this perspective - with DLSS 4 MFG support coming to most games, RTX 5080 will simply have better gaming performance compared to Nvidia’s last generation flagship, RTX 4090. Hence, for the average gamer, the RTX 5080 is faster than RTX 4090 .

What do you think of the RTX 5080? Let us know in the comments. To build your RTX 5080 PC, contact us here on EliteHubs.com !