Review: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition

Nvidia’s newest 50 Series GPUs are slowly trickling out, and as usual, the very top-end RTX 5090 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is the graphics card that everyone is talking about. It boasts extreme 4K gaming, the latest in AI-powered gaming enhancements, and a power draw to match.

I can’t blame you for not wanting to spend $2,000 on a GPU; that’s enough to build a midrange gaming PC on its own. At just $1,000 for the RTX 5080 Founders Edition, this still-expensive step-down card will be the model that more people seriously consider, even if it's still a splurge. It's a better choice from a performance perspective, meeting people where they already are in terms of monitor resolution, game choice, and existing power supplies.

But how does it fare against the more expensive card, and how does it handle some of the more popular and evergreen games? Well enough to my eyes. If you're building your next high-end gaming PC and are looking for a high-end video card to match, this might be exactly what you're looking for—if you can find one for sale.

Same Size, More Efficient

The form factor of the RTX 5080 is identical to its more powerful counterpart, with a true two slot design that should fit in most cases very comfortably. I really appreciate the size reduction overall, and I hope AIC cards follow suit.

Where the RTX 5090 draws an immense 575 watts, the 5080 only asks for 360 watts with the same new power connector. Like the RTX 5090 FE, the RTX 5080 includes an adapter, and I imagine most partner cards will as well.

That means a lower overall system power requirement, with Nvidia recommending just 850 watts for the Founders Edition. I expect this will be an easier requirement for existing rigs to meet without needing to buy a new 1,000-watt or higher PSU.

DLSS Performance

Nvidia introduced a new version of its AI-powered enhancement tools for the RTX 50 Series. These notably add support for multi-frame generation, which uses AI to generate up to three frames between. If you’re interested in learning more about the effects of using this tech on image quality, make sure to check out the RTX 5090 review.

The short version is that multi-frame generation can produce minor artifacts, particularly in areas where two objects at different depths overlap, such as looking through a fence. These are hard to spot across a whole screen though, and the higher frame rate makes the gaming experience much smoother, so the frames are onscreen less time.

I’ll start by checking out performance in Cyberpunk 2077, one of the more demanding games that currently supports multi-frame generation.

While it isn’t perfect, I’m impressed that the RTX 5080 is able to maintain a relatively smooth 60 frames per second while running at 4K, even without having to turn on multi-frame generation. I’m not averse to using the feature, as it does a great job providing extra smoothness with minimal artifacts, but I’d rather just use the card’s natural horsepower when possible.

I'm just using ray tracing here, with everything on the highest setting, but Cyberpunk 2077 has an additional setting for path tracing that’s even more demanding.

Unsurprisingly, the RTX 5080 has trouble keeping up with path tracing, the most demanding and graphically intensive form of ray tracing. Fortunately, you can break the 60-fps mark by just turning on a single AI-generated frame, which should have a minimal effect on the overall visual quality. I do appreciate the balance here of fine-tuning settings to get close, or turning on frame generation for a big jump in FPS, then comparing the outcomes on a per-game basis.

The RTX 5090 takes a big lead over the RTX 5080 here, but whether that extra performance is worth it will depend on your existing rig. The RTX 5090 needs a 1,000-watt or higher PSU, and it really benefits from a high-refresh 4K or 1440p screen. If those don’t describe you, know that there are additional costs associated with the highest-end card.

Common Games

Where the RTX 5090 review focused on the top end of performance, I want to zoom in here on games that are less graphically demanding but more commonly played. I cranked the graphics up to Ultra wherever I could, because that’s just what you do with a new GPU. For this first round I used native resolution, but I’ll discuss supersampling as well.

These are the kind of numbers I’m excited to see as a daily gamer. These games are meat and potatoes for a lot of folks, and especially at 1440p or lower, you won’t need to tweak much to get them running smoothly.

If you’re playing at 1080p and 120 Hz or lower, I recommend supersampling, which lets you render games at 4K and then display them at your monitor’s native resolution. Running Helldivers 2 at 1080p, for example, only used a portion of the GPU’s power. While using Ultra Super-Sampling, the frame rate dropped, but the image quality was much better, and the GPU was running at its full potential.

While it may run on mobile phones, the PC version of Minecraft can still demand a lot from your GPU, particularly with the updated ray-tracing models. If you can run it smoothly, it gives the game an incredible boost from what you’re used to, letting light shine through windows and bounce off different textured surfaces.

Hard to Get

In a forum post early in the morning on January 28, just two days before launch, Nvidia warned buyers of limited availability for the 50 Series cards.

“We expect significant demand for the GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 and believe stock-outs may happen. Nvidia & our partners are shipping more stock to retail every day to help get GPUs into the hands of gamers.”

If previous releases are any indication, the Founders Editions may be even harder to come by than their AIC counterparts. I hoped they might be more plentiful this time around, but the forum warning doesn’t help. If you want a Founders Edition of either card, I’d make sure to bookmark the purchase pages on multiple retailers and check often for restocks.

In the RTX 5090 review, I mentioned that the card felt more like a showpiece, or a demonstration model for the new generation’s capabilities. I expect to see more RTX 5080s out in the world, and not just because it’s half the price. Over 50 percent of users in the Steam Hardware Survey reported using a 1080p display as their main screen, and less than 5 percent of PC gamers in the study had a 4K monitor.

For a lot of people, having an RTX 5090 would be like buying a Lamborghini when the speed limit is 15 MPH. Meanwhile, the RTX 5080 clobbered basically every commonly played game I threw at it, and its lower power consumption makes it a much easier upgrade path for more people.

The biggest problem may just be getting your hands on one, which is a real shame. The RTX 5080 is the card in the 50 Series that I think will appeal to most people, balancing performance, power requirements, and price. The Founders Edition is a premium example too, with a compact form factor and understated styling.