Review – ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition

Despite the high price compared to its predecessor at launch, the GeForce RTX 4080 is still the second most powerful GPU gamers who are into ray tracing aesthetics can get if they’re going for the RTX 4090.

In this review, we take a look at the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition, one of the RTX 4080 variants from ASUS, aside from the ROG Strix model, and compared it against the RTX 4080 Founders Edition just to see what kind of performance and difference we can expect from a custom design.

Specifications

Overview

Design-wise, the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 is pretty much identical to the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090, a massive triple fan cooler with a full coverage shroud that looks like an industrial metal frame.

The 3.65 slot card is measured 348.2mm in length and weighs about 1.9kg, which is the reason why ASUS included a GPU holder with the card if you’ve decided to mouth the card horizontally. Though you can actually find three screw holes at the end of the card, which I believe is meant for some specialized retention bracket to support the weight of the card.

While the previous-gen design feels like a better match to the OG design from the good old days, I think the design this time is a lot more subtle, more to my personal liking. I would love to see the same approach on the TUF Gaming motherboards in the future, if possible.

As for the power requirement, the recommended power supply is 750W as according to the official product page. As all the RTX 40 series cards now use the new 12VHPWR connector, you will need to use either the included adapter is a 3 x 8-pin PCIe to 1 x 12VHPWR, or a newer power supply that comes with the 12VHPWR cable.

Behind the card, we can see the label for the dip switch that allows you to toggle between performance mode and quiet mode to suit your needs. I would recommend going all the way with the performance mode because the fan noise is barely audible even at close range, but to those who are more sensitive to fan noise, this will probably be useful for you.

The display output, on the other hand, is a bit different that the commonly seen 3 x DisplayPort and 1 X HDMI, because of that one extra HDMI port.

Test System Setup

We have tested the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 against the RTX 4080 Founders Edition and RTX 3090 Founders Edition. For our games benchmark test, we’ve selected a number of AAA titles to run at their highest possible settings using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 30°C:

For the test, we’re using the Intel Core i9-12900K, ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX, and the Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5 memory kit mainly to minimize the chances of bumping into any performance bottleneck.

Games Benchmark – Raster Performance

We’ve tested a handful of games with all the graphics cards used for this comparison, all the way from 1080p to 4k resolution using the highest possible settings and DLSS quality preset if allowed. I’d still say it’s not a wise decision to buy an $1199 card and use it for 1080p gaming, but we got the numbers here just in case.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Cyberpunk 2077

Far Cry 6

Forza Horizon 5

Hitman 3

Horizon Zero Dawn

Red Dead Redemption 2

Watch Dogs: Legion

Games Benchmark – Ray Tracing Performance

Moving on to ray tracing, as DLSS is technically the way to go if you want to enjoy the best ray tracing gaming experience, we will be focusing on the DLSS + RT quality if the game allows.

Cyberpunk 2077

Far Cry 6

Forza Horizon 5

Hitman 3

Watch Dogs: Legion

Looking at the numbers, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition easily overpowers both the RTX 3090 and RTX 4080 Founders Edition across all the resolutions, but I’d say the 4K resolution is still where both RTX 4080 shines. At 4K resolution, the RTX 4080 can handle all the titles tested and maintain at least an average of 60 fps above with the highest graphics settings and ray tracing ultra.

DLSS 3 Hands-On

DLSS 3 is one of the main selling points of the new RTX 40 series graphics cards and we can now see more titles getting the support. Apart from new upcoming titles, existing titles like Portal and The Witcher 3 also gets DLSS 3 and ray tracing support to further enhance the gaming experience of these classic titles.

For the titles we’ve tested, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition easily maintain at least an average of 80 fps+ across titles we’ve tested. Though there are debates about some motion artifacts on the generated frames that are most noticeable only if you purposely slowed down recorded footage, which is mostly unnoticeable during actual gameplay.

As for the UI glitches or artifacts, it’s definitely there and that’s something that will bother some users for sure. It’s an obvious lie if I were to say that these UI glitches don’t really bother me at all, so I hope NVIDIA can look into this and improve the frame generation algorithm to solve this in the near future.

Thermals and Power Draw

Moving on to the thermals and power draw, I’m actually surprised with the results. Despite the size of the cooler, the highest load temperature recorded is 72.8°C, which is about 2°C higher than the Founders Edition model. The GPU memory junction temperature is also noticeably higher if we compared it to the Founders Edition model, which is about 16°C more.

While I’m expecting to see higher power draw on factory overclocked models like the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition, the highest power draw recorded during our tests is only at 317W. During gaming sessions, however, the load temperature only hovers at about 260-280W range, and barely hits 300W.

Final Thoughts

The RTX 4080 is a real beast when it comes to performance. Whether it’s pure raster performance or ray tracing performance, the RTX 4080 can easily handle these titles without a flinch. Based on the performance numbers we’ve collected, the performance per watt ratio for the RTX 4080 is truly impressive compared to the previous-gen RTX 30 series GPUs and the introduction of the new DLSS 3.0 feature just makes it even better.

For the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition, it’s just a tad bit faster right out of the box with some extra performance if you don’t really want to deal with any kind of performance tweaking at all. Though my concern with this card is actually the GPU load temperature and Memory Junction temperature that is higher than the RTX 4080 Founders Edition. It’s not really the alarmingly high temperature you should worry about, but it makes me wonder what is actually going on under that heatsink, as many of us are expecting a better cooling solution on a custom design from the AIC partners.

Price-wise, as much as I wanted to have this myself as a die-hard TUF fan, I find the retail price of RM 7,299 is pretty expensive if compared to models from the other AIB partners that lack the premium aesthetics. Don’t get me wrong though, for what it can deliver in both work and gaming, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition is an excellent card, but the price is just not right at the moment.