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Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super can be summed up in just a few words: It's like the RTX 4080, only less expensive. That's not to say it's inexpensive, as it still costs over $1,000 (after taxes), but $200 cheaper is at least something. Meanwhile, the performance side of the story is a gigantic snorefest. The RTX 4080 Super does technically offer more performance than the RTX 4080, but only by about 2~3 percent on average. Even a piddly overclock of an RTX 4080 could improve performance at least that much.
If you were on the fence and trying to decide between AMD's RX 7900 XTX and Nvidia's RTX 4080, with the latter costing on average $200 extra, the RTX 4080 Super effectively wipes away the price difference. The only real reason to opt for a 7900 XTX now — barring any price cuts — is if you specifically want AMD's top card, or you want any GPU that has more than 16GB of memory. Otherwise, the RTX 4080 Super is almost always the better option.
Yes, there are exceptions, like a few rasterization games and certain professional applications, as well as workloads that need more than 16GB (but less than 24GB) of VRAM. If you're specifically interested in one of those use cases, that's fine, and AMD is still technically about $40 cheaper for the least expensive 7900 XTX cards. At the same time, you give up access to Nvidia's DLSS features and potentially lose a lot of performance in other use cases. In other words, you 'win' in a few specific cases and lose in a lot of other situations.
It's hard not to be at least somewhat disappointed with the RTX 4080 Super. Sticking with the AD103 GPU — even if we understand all the reasons behind that choice (specifically, AI money) — hurts the performance potential tremendously. We would have loved to see something striking for more of a middle ground between the 4080 and 4090. Instead, we got an incremental bump over the 4080 with "Super" tacked onto the name.
There's no indication that Nvidia will offer a consumer card with higher performance than the RTX 4090 any time soon — we'll likely need to wait for Blackwell consumer GPUs for that, and we don't expect those until sometime in 2025. Sooner would be nice, but even then, how much will the top GPUs like RTX 5090 and 5080 cost? Given what we're seeing from the current AI trends, don't be surprised if they cost proportionally more than the RTX 4080 Super, and we'll still have to wait to find out where they land on the GPU benchmarks hierarchy.
Ultimately, the RTX 4080 Super delivered precisely what we expected to see. It's a cheaper and barely faster take on the RTX 4080. The price means it's now in direct competition with AMD's 7900 XTX, but either one still costs as much as an entire midrange gaming PC. It's fine for what it is but doesn't offer anything new other than a stealthier black aesthetic for the Founders Edition.
If you're in the market for a top-tier graphics card and can't justify doubling the price and picking up an RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 Super now ranks as the second fastest GPU overall, and it's cheaper than the existing 4080. It's slightly faster and less costly than the 4080, but we were never particularly pleased with the $1,199 launch price of the 4080 in the first place. $200 represents a welcome and necessary price correction, and unlike the RTX 3080, which was generally selling at over $1,000 for the majority of its life cycle, the 4080 Super should at least be readily available.
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