GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Review: Chasing RTX 4090, For Under $1K

Speed Way is the most recent addition to the UL 3DMark graphics test suite. Speed Way uses the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and leverages advanced features like DirectX Ray Tracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time raytraced reflections, Mesh Shaders, and high resolution textures and artwork…

UL 3DMark Speed Way DX12 Ultimate Benchmarks

The GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER scores another tight victory over the original RTX 4080 here, and significantly outruns even the fastest Radeon, the top-end Radeon RX 7900 XTX (which trails the recently lauched RTX 4070 Ti SUPER).

UL 3DMark Time Spy Extreme DX12 Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy Extreme is a synthetic DirectX benchmark test from UL. It features a DirectX 12 engine built from the ground up to support bleeding-edge features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading. Time Spy is designed to test the DX12 performance of the latest graphics cards using a variety of techniques and varied visual sequences. This benchmark was developed with input from AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and the other members of the UL Benchmark Development Program, to showcase the performance and visual potential of graphics cards driven by close-to-the-metal, low-overhead APIs.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme doesn't make use of any ray tracing; it's all about traditional raster, texturing, and memory bandwidth. With that in mind, you can see exactly where NVIDIA was targeting with the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER. The GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER just misses the mark set by the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. So, roughly the same rasterization performance between the two, but better ray tracing performance for the GeForce...

DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) Feature Test

We also tested the cards with UL's DirectX Ray Tracing Feature test. This test is laser-focused on path-tracing performance, and uses few of the card's other resources.

Unlike Speedway (and the older Port Royal test), 3DMark DXR Feature Test relies solely on ray tracing for its lighting, reflections, and shadows. Here, the differences between the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER and the original are somewhat more pronounced, but still relatively small. The GeForce RTX 4090, however, is in a class all its own. And the Radeons all fall to the bottom of the stack.

VR Benchmarks: VR Mark & Unigine Superposition

Superposition is the latest benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in too. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some excellent visuals. We ran Superposition's VR Future benchmark to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition VR Future Test

With its most taxing options selected, Unigine's VR Future benchmark shows the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER tying the RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX -- in terms of the overall score at least. The overall score, however, tops out at 10,000. Looking at the individual results, we see the flagship Radeon score another victory over the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, but nothing comes close to the RTX 4090.

UL VR Mark Blue Room Benchmarks

UL's VRMark is designed to test a PC’s readiness for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is currently the most taxing test offered by the tool.


VR Mark doesn't reveal any big surprises. This is another test (like Unigine's), that doesn't make use of any ray tracing. Once again, we see the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER nearly catch the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, and edge out the original RTX 4080 by a couple of percentage points. Dang that RTX 4090, though.