Best RTX 4080 Graphics Cards (Which is the Best?)

Nvidia has finally dropped the latest generation of RTX graphics cards, with one of their fastest being the RTX 4080.

This graphics card is one of the highest-end GPUs you can buy, and it can play any game you want at 4K, cranked to Ultra with more than 60 frames per second.

When it comes to the specification of the founders’ edition RTX 4080, you are getting 16 GB of GDDR6X memory running on a 256-bit bus.

The card is rocking a whopping 9728 CUDA cores and 76 ray tracing cores. The base clock of the card is 2205, which boosts to 2505. The founder edition card has an HDMI port and three DisplayPort.

However, everyone knows that the Founder Edition cards do not offer the best out of their respective cards and are akin to more of being a statement of what the card is and how it performs.

To get the most out of your GPUs, you have to buy a card that comes from the board partners who arguably have better cooling on their cards and higher boost clocks.

So, to find out which are some of the best RTX 4080 available on the market right now, stay tuned to find out more.

Key Points:

• In this article, I will go over some of the best RTX 4080 cards available on the market.
• I am also going to be discussing the clock speeds of the card and their cooling.
• Finally, the design of the cards and the features are going to be discussed.

Best RTX 4080 – Specs Comparison Table

A quick look at the best rtx 4080:

1. ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 OC Edition (NeoGamr’s Pick)
2. MSI RTX 4080 16GB Ventus 3X OC (Best Value)
3. ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 Trinity OC (Premium Pick)
4. Gigabyte AORUS RTX 4080 Master (Best High-End)
5. GIGABYTE RTX 4080 Eagle OC (Best Budget)
6. ZOTAC RTX 4080 AMP Extreme AIRO (Universal Pick)

Best GeForce RTX 4080

There are many flavors of the RTX 4080 available on the market right now, which come in all shapes and forms.

These cards do not come directly from Nvidia but rather from the board partners who put their own spin on them.

So to find the best RTX 4080, I tested out most of them and came up with a list of the six best ones.

#1- ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 OC Edition

If you want a graphics card designed specifically with aesthetics that scream “gamer,” then the ASUS ROG RTX 4080 OC Edition is a card for you.

For many years, the cards that fall under the ROG brand have been some of the best-selling cards available on the market, and this tradition seems to continue, as everyone I spoke to who owned this card was thrilled with its performance.

ASUS ROG RTX 4080 OC Edition has some of the best-looking designs ever. Despite being very beefy, the card looks very sleek with its rectangular frame and three-fan design.

ASUS has also filled this card to the brim with RGB, enough to light up an entire room. You are going to be hard-pressed to find a better-looking card, hands down.

Performance And Overclocking

When it comes to the raw performance of the ASUS ROG RTX 4080 OC Edition, you are getting a lot for your money here. The reference models were used for comparison as this is the best benchmark here.

The card is given a boost from the factory with the 2505 MHz card, now running at 2625, which results in better performance in gaming and productivity.

Special care has been put in when considering the card’s cooling performance. The card is a full fat three fan design, all being Axial-tech Fans.

The back of the card is also covered with a full back plate which does wonders for cooling and heat dissipation. At idle, the card stayed at a temperature of 35 degrees centigrade.

When the card was subjected to some of the most rigorous loads by using different benchmarks, the temperatures rose up to 61 degrees centigrade, which is some of the best cooling performance I have seen from a card.

The card also stayed extremely silent, producing only 33 decibels of sound.

Features and Connectivity

The ASUS ROG RTX 4080 OC Edition is a very big boy with dimensions 358 x 149 x 70mm, which will put many cases to shame.

To use the card to its full potential, you are going to need a large case to fit it in. Even though some may consider it a drawback, myself included, I would not say it is a deal breaker.

When it comes to the features on this card, you have 2 HDMI ports and 3 DisplayPort. This will allow you to run three monitors simultaneously.

ASUS also gives you software with this card, GPU Tweak III, which will enable you to overclock the card and monitor your systems.

#2- MSI RTX 4080 16GB Ventus 3X OC

The next card on my list is the MSI RTX 4080 16 Gb Ventus 3X OC has some moist cookie-cutter aesthetics compared to the other cards on my list.

However, that does not mean that you should scoff at it. Apart from the design language, the card is a perfectly capable RTX 4080, allowing you to run your games cranked to Ultra at 4K.

When it comes to the aesthetics of the card, there is nothing to write home about. You might even mistake this card for a 1080 Ti when you look at it from afar.

You have three fan design which is cooled by the TORX 4.0 fans. The card remains very cool under load and performs exceptionally well.

Performance And Overclocking

When it comes to the performance of the MSI RTX 4080 16Gb Ventus 3X OC, when compared to the reference design, the card is given a 105 Mhz boost from the factory.

The reference design is at 2505, while the Ventus boosts to 2610. This factory overclocks results in better frame rates and efficiency.

Special attention is given to the cards’ cooling capability. Being a three-fan design with a backplate on the back, you can observe the temperatures not rising up to any unsafe levels even when pushed to the brim.

During my tests, I found that the MSI RTX 4080 16 Gb Ventus 3X OC stayed at 60 degrees even when subjected to intensive loads. The fans did spin but were never obnoxiously loud, as the decibel meter calculated it to be just 36 decibels.

Features and Connectivity

The MSI RTX 4080 16 Gb Ventus 3X OC is a fat dual-slot card with three fans. Its dimensions are 337 x 140 x 62mm, which will take up a lot of space even in a mid-sized case. However, it is not as bulky as the ASUS ROG 4080, so you can get away with it fitting in most cases.

The card has an HDMI port and three DisplayPort on its back, which can connect three monitors simultaneously.

To overclock the card, MSI has software that is also available to other GPUs. This software is known as the MSI afterburner, which is very popular with PC enthusiasts.

This will not only allow you to monitor the overclock but also monitor the performance of your GPU.

#3- ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 Trinity OC

If you are looking for a 4080 which looks unique with RGB, then the ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 16 GB Trinity OC is the card for you.

When it comes to the design, this card is one of a kind. It has chamfered edges which give it a very aerodynamic design. This was done to maximize the airflow, which will do wonders for the thermal efficiency of the card.

When it comes to the RGB lights, you should not expect to light up an entire room with it; however, it is enough that it would look very good while sitting in a case.

This card’s backplate is also unique due to its chamfered edges. The ZOTAC logo is also embedded with RGB on the backplate.

Performance And Overclocking

The ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 16 GB Trinity OC has a base clock of 2205 Mhz which boosts to 2520 MHz, which is not a large increase when it comes to the reference 4080.

However, where you see the most performance increase on this card, here are the temperatures and the thermal efficiency on the card.

When idle, the card stayed at a very respectable 34 degrees centigrade. The idle use cases mostly were general use and internet browsing.

However, when tasked with an intense benchmark running for an hour, the temperatures never exceeded more than 66 degrees.

Features and Connectivity

The ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 16 GB Trinity OC has a very aerodynamic design that maximizes the card’s airflow. You are going to get some of the best temperatures with this card here.

However, being a quad slots design with dimensions of 356 x 150 x 71 mm, you would be scrambling to get a very large case to fit this beast in.

The card also has many features, which are mostly marketing speak and do not matter when it comes to the raw performance of the card.

These features include Spectra 2.0 ARGB lighting and other marketing jargon. Using this card, you can run three monitors using HDMI 2.1 and 3 DisplayPort.

#4- Gigabyte AORUS RTX 4080 Master

Arguably one of the most beautiful cards on this list which made my jaw drop the moment it came into the office, is the Gigabyte AORUS RTX 4080 Master.

It has a very breathtaking design. Despite being very large, the aesthetics of this card are so phenomenal that you actually want just to sit there and admire it.

The card comes in two shaded black and silver with a ton of RGB embedded into it. On the front, you see three fans which are embedded with RGB on the circumference.

The front view, top view, and back plate have the AORUS branding, which is also embedded with RGB.

On the Top, you also get a small screen which you can make your own by customizing it to say whatever you want. This addition to this card makes it very personalized, and I added my initial to show whenever the card was running.

Performance And Overclocking

The performance of the Gigabyte AORUS RTX 4080 Master is also great. You get a small overclock from the factory on the boost clock, which sits at a modest 2550 Mhz.

However, with this much cooling capability added to the card, you can push this card to its limit. I got a 100 Mhz to overclock on my first try, which speaks volumes about the potential of this card.

Speaking of the cooling, the card has three fans which Gigabyte dubs the shark fin fans. These fans work very well and keep the card very cool.

The card never exceeded 68 degrees centigrade during my testing, even when subjected to intensive benchmarks. The card also did not make a lot of noise, with the decibel meter showing just 32 decibels.

Features and Connectivity

The Gigabyte AORUS RTX 4080 Master is a big card with 357 x 163 x 75mm dimensions. These large dimensions make it a pain to fit in most cases.

You are going to need a very large case to fit it in. However, the large size is also very beneficial to the thermal performance of the card.

Moving onto the feature set, the card has an HDMI port and three DisplayPort. This will allow you to run four monitors simultaneously while using this card. However, I believe that an additional HDMI slot would have justified its quad-slot design even more.

#5- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Eagle OC

The Gigabyte RTX 4080 Eagle OC is a sleek triple slots card with a unique design. The card is a three-fan design which keeps the card cool even when subjected to high loads. The front of the card is unique, with small slivers of RGB embedded into the fans and the Top.

The card also has a backplate which increases the card’s surface area for maximum heat dissipation. The Eagle branding is visible on the card at the front and back.

The emphasis here was clearly not on looks but on the raw performance of the hard, which I will discuss later.

Performance And Overclocking

When it comes to the performance of the Gigabyte RTX 4080 Eagle OC compared to the reference, you will find that a very small overclock of just 15 Mhz is given to the card.

However, with the three-fan design and backplate, I could not stop myself from overclocking it. I could easily achieve a 150 Mhz overclock with the temperatures remaining as stable as they should be.

Coming to the card’s temperatures, I could stay at 72 degrees while the card was under load and overclocked. This is a very good result which means that this card has a lot of potential for overclocking.

The Gigabyte RTX 4080 Eagle OC also did not get very loud on me, either. With the overclock enabled, the card only produced a sound of just 38 decibels.

Features and Connectivity

The Gigabyte RTX 4080 Eagle OC is a triple slots card with dimensions of just 342 x 150 x 70mm. You can get away with fitting it in a mid-sized case; however, in such scenarios, you are going to deal with slightly higher temperatures.

You can run four monitors simultaneously using this card by using the solitary HDMI port and three DisplayPort on the IO of the card.

#6- ZOTAC RTX 4080 AMP Extreme AIRO

The ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 AMP Extreme AIRO is the final card on my list of the best 4080 on the market. There is a lot for me to say about this card.

The card has a unique look with its chamfered edges. This design language was given to it s that airflow can be maximized, resulting in a very thermally efficient card.

The card has three fans, which work well in conjunction with the aerodynamic design. The Top of the card has RGB embedded, which can light up an entire room.

Performance And Overclocking

The ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 AMP Extreme AIRO has a small 2 percent boost from the factory when compared with the reference design.

However, I overclocked the card so that I could get its full potential of it under perspective. I was able to achieve an overclock of 120 Mhz with ease, and the temperatures remained under control.

Speaking of the card’s temperatures, I was getting 44 degrees centigrade at idle. However, when subjected to the load test, the temperatures increased only to 62 degrees centigrade.

The decibel meter could only detect 36 decibels of sound, making it virtually a silent card.

Features and Connectivity

The ZOTAC Gaming RTX 4080 AMP Extreme AIRO is also a very large card with 356 x 150 x 72 mm dimensions, making it a quad-slot card. To fit this card in comfortably, you are going to need a very large case.

This card gives you the ability to connect four monitors to it simultaneously by using the HDMI port and three DisplayPort on the back.

How To Pick The Best RTX 4080 GPU?

There are a lot of things that you need to keep in mind while buying your next RTX 4080. Here are a few of those things.

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Pricing and Value for Money

The first thing to keep in mind while buying a variant of the RTX 4080 is the pricing of that variant. All 4080s more or less perform the same, so you do not need to spend more than what is necessary for bells and whistles like RGB lights.

Design and RGB Lighting

Even though I said that you should not spend more on RGB lights on a GPU, it does not mean they are unimportant.

The outlook of a GPU speaks volumes about it, and if you have a GPU with good-looking RGB lights, it will look very good while sitting in a case.

Cool and Quiet

The thermal performance of a GPU is also very important to keep into account while considering a GPU. Look up reviews about the thermal efficiency of the various GPUs you will purchase and choose between the best of them.

A cooler GPU is less prone to failure than a hotter GPU. Also, take into account the fan noise of the GPU. A GPU fan noise can be very obnoxious while gaming and can break immersion. So consider a very quiet GPU even when the fans are spinning.