Even by the portable standards of Nvidia's RTX 4080 Founders Edition (opens in new tab), the PNY RTX 4080 XLR8 is one hell of a unit. Chomunk. He is also the best and most powerful graphics card available, capable of outperforming both Nvidia's previous-generation GPU, the RTX 3090 Ti, and AMD's latest RDNA 3 flagship chiplet card, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

But seriously, $1,200 is ......" The recent surge in graphics card prices has been endlessly exhausting. No longer are the duffers, scarcity, and crypto miners the only ones driving up prices, but the manufacturers themselves are driving prices up directly.

I don't lay the blame for that at PNY's doorstep, but it all stems from the MSRP Nvidia put on the RTX 4080 from the start. Thankfully, this RTX 4080 XLR8 Verto (open in new tab) card has at least stayed at its original retail price and not skyrocketed.

That said, if there was serious demand for the RTX 4080 and all the cards were selling the moment they hit the shelves, retailers must have been charging higher sticker prices; take a look at AMD's RX 7900 XTX (open in new tab), a card with an MSRP of $999 and an MSRP of $999. The card has an MSRP of $999, but there is no chance of finding one at this price now.

And when we talk about the RTX 4080, the actual price of the latest AMD card is very important: the RX 7900 XTX is AMD's counterattack against Nvidia's second-tier GPUs, and Dr. Su's gang knew that the RTX 4090 (open in new tab) was out of reach We were not. In our tests, however, the RTX 4080 and the RX 7900 XTX went toe-to-toe, the former with the might of DLSS 3 and the magical majesty of Frame Generation to enhance its performance potential.

One could forgive the Radeon card in this situation if it remained $200 cheaper as per the two MSRPs. But right now, it is at least $100 more than this PNY RTX 4080, so unless you really sign up for all-brand tribalism, why would you choose an AMD card?

Essentially, the RTX 4080 XLR8 Verto is a complete reference version of the Ada Lovelace GPU, with an AD103 chip running at a standard boost clock speed of 2,505 MHz. This is a significant increase in GPU operating frequency compared to the previous generation of Ampere graphics silicon. The actual clock speed is necessarily higher than Nvidia's rated value, effectively a full GHz faster.

The new Ada Lovelace GPU architecture (open in new tab), which we discussed in detail in our RTX 4090 review, is essentially not a million miles away from the Ampere design with a reduced die; the GPU configuration is almost identical, but the TSMC 4N lithography has resulted in an efficient core that can be tuned to surprisingly high clock speeds. Accompanying this is a significant increase in L2 cache capacity, which is about 10 times the level of the previous generation GA102 chip

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It is precisely this combination that allows the RTX 4080 to outperform Ampere in pure rasterized gaming performance.

Besides that, the RTX 4080 also has 16GB of 22.4Gbps GDDR6X memory and a 320W TGP. This may still seem like a lot (and it absolutely is if you care about environmentally conscious gaming), but when it comes to performance per watt, this card is actually one of the most efficient GPUs in the modern era.

4K gaming performance

1440p gaming performance

System performance

The RTX 4080 is second to the RTX 4090 in straight performance. The Zotac RTX 4080 Amp Extreme Airo (opens in new tab) and the MSI RTX 4080 Suprim-X (opens in new tab) are considerably higher than their already outrageous reference prices. However, they lag a bit behind both of these overclocking cards in terms of performance.

PNY's card also lags a bit behind the Founders Edition in some benchmarks. This is because the GPU clocks are not as high as the other RTX 4080 cards we tested. But honestly, the comparison does not affect the gaming experience in any way.

The difference between the factory overclocked cards is negligible, with only a few frames per second seen between the reference and OC GPUs.

In short, we can't get excited about such an overpriced option when the starting price is so high; MSI's card may look prettier in a shiny shroud, but we'd rather spend more time watching it spit out onto the screen than lovingly gazing through the see-through side panels of the chassis. If you spend more time gazing at game frames being spit out onto a screen than lovingly gazing through the see-through side panel of the chassis, then it doesn't matter.

Ideally, the cards are from the Founders Edition. Despite being a super chump, I'm a fan of its brushed metal look, and it's an MSRP card that punches above its weight against the Factory OC crowd.

However, if you can't get your hands on an RTX 4080 FE card (in fact, they are still available in the US and UK), I would definitely recommend opting for a reference priced card like this PNY RTX 4080 XLR8 Verto. The benefits of factory overclocked cards are ephemeral at best.

However, I would not recommend the RTX 4080 at all." Personally, I find it hard to recommend such an expensive card when it is not a) the fastest GPU, b) a mere scaled-down version of the fastest GPU, or even c) a full version of the second-best GPU. The new RTX 4070 Ti (open in new tab) launched at a significant difference in price compared to the performance drop against the RTX 4080, which is more of a value proposition and may sound crazy for an $800 card, but if you are obsessed with spending $1,000+ on a GPU If you are, I'd hold out for the RTX 4090, which is a genuine generational leap in performance.

Unless Nvidia caps the RTX 4080 at $999, I can't recommend buying it.