NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Graphics Card Specs, Performance, Price & Availability – Everything We Know So Far

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 will be the next-generation gaming flagship, offering the latest graphics architecture based on Ada Lovelace GPUs. The graphics card will be replacing the RTX 3080, a very popular gaming graphics card on its own.

While there's no denying the enthusiasm around the higher-end GeForce RTX 4090 series graphics cards that offer the best of the best gaming performance, the RTX 4080 series graphics cards are the tier that most high-end gamers will be getting considering it doesn't break your wallet and still offers a huge amount of gaming performance. It's simple, the RTX 4090 series will be aimed at users who want the best of the best without worrying about the amount of money they are spending while the RTX 4080 series is aimed at users who want the best gaming performance at the best possible price.

The previous GeForce RTX 3080 was touted to offer a huge improvement over the RTX 2080 and while that claim fell a little short, it looks like the RTX 4080 has the potential to exceed far beyond its predecessor due to several reasons which will be apparent in this roundup detailing its specs & performance figures.

We should expect similar things with the next-generation gaming powerhouse too but an important factor to consider is that GPUs are becoming more power-hungry and more pricey. It is a trend that might continue into the future as we get better products but in return, there's always a cost to pay for end consumers. So starting with what we know so far, first we should take a look at the brand new Ada Lovelace or AD10* class GPUs that will be powering the next-gen GeForce RTX 40 series cards.

You can also read the expected specs, prices, and performance of other upcoming RTX 40 GPUs in the posts below:

Starting with the GPU configuration, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 series graphics cards are said to utilize the AD103 GPU core. Think of AD103 as an optimized version of AD102 that sits between the AD102 and AD104 GPUs. The GPU is said to measure around 400mm2-450mm2 and will utilize the TSMC 4N process node which is an optimized version of TSMC's 5nm (N5) node designed for the green team.

The NVIDIA Ada Lovelace AD103 GPU is expected to feature up to 7 GPC (Graphics Processing Clusters). This is the same GPC count as the Ampere GA102 GPU and one additional GPC over the GA103 GPU. Each GPU will consist of 6 TPCs and 2 SMs which is the same configuration as the existing chip. Each SM (Streaming Multiprocessor) will house four sub-cores which is also the same as the GA102 GPU. What's changed is the FP32 & the INT32 core configuration. Each sub-core will include 128 FP32 units but combined FP32+INT32 units will go up to 192. This is because the FP32 units don't share the same sub-core as the IN32 units. The 128 FP32 cores are separate from the 64 INT32 cores.

So in total, each sub-core will consist of 32 FP32 plus 16 INT32 units for a total of 48 units. Each SM will have a total of 128 FP32 units plus 64 INT32 units for a total of 192 units. And since there are a total of 84 SM units (12 per GPC), we are looking at 10,752 FP32 Units and 5,376 INT32 units for a total of 18,432 cores. Each SM will also include two Wrap Schedules (32 thread/CLK) for 64 wraps per SM. This is a 50% increase on the cores (FP32+INT32) and a 33% increase in Wraps/Threads vs the GA102 GPU.

NVIDIA AD103 'Ada Lovelace' Gaming GPU Block Diagram:

Moving over to the cache, this is another segment where NVIDIA has given a big boost over the existing Ampere GPUs. The Ada Lovelace GPUs will pack 192 KB of L1 cache per SM, an increase of 50% over Ampere. That's a total of 2.5 MB of L1 cache on the top AD103 GPU. The L2 cache will be increased to 64 MB as mentioned in the leaks. This is a 10.6x increase over the Ampere GA102 GPU that hosts just 6 MB of L2 cache. The cache will be shared across the GPU.

Finally, we have the ROPs which are also increased to 32 per GPC, an increase of 2x over Ampere. You are looking at up to 112 ROPs. There are also going to be the latest 4th Generation Tensor and 3rd Generation RT (Raytracing) cores infused on the Ada Lovelace GPUs which will help boost DLSS & Raytracing performance to the next level. Overall, the Ada Lovelace AD103 GPU will offer (versus the GA103 GPU):

NVIDIA AD103 'Ada Lovelace' Gaming GPU 'SM' Block Diagram:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080

At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card lies the Ada Lovelace AD103 GPU. The GPU measures 608,4mm2 and will utilize the TSMC 4N process node which is an optimized version of TSMC's 5nm (N5) node designed for the green team. The GPU features an insane 45.9 Billion transistors.

NVIDIA is first introducing three brand new Ada GPUs which include the AD102, AD103 & AD104. The AD102 GPU is going to be featured on the GeForce RTX 4090, the AD103 is going to be used by the GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB graphics cards and the AD104 GPU is going to be featured on the GeForce RTX 4080 12 GB graphics cards.

The Ada GPUs are based on the TSMC 4N process node which is a custom process designed exclusively for NVIDIA. It is essentially an optimized version of the N5 (5nm) process, offering drastic increases in transistors, cores, and frequency. The top AD103 GPU packs 16% more cores and also offers 45.9 Billion transistors while offering over 2x the performance per watt.

NVIDIA Ada AD103 GPU

The full AD103 GPU is made up of 7 graphics processing clusters with 12 SM units on each cluster. That makes up 84 SM units for a total of 10752 cores, 76 RT cores, 304Tensor Cores, 320 Texture Units, and a 256-bit bus interface in a 45.9 billion transistor package measuring 378.6mm2.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 will use 76 SMs of the 84 SMs for a total of 9728 CUDA cores. The GPU will come packed with 64 MB of L2 cache and a total of 112 ROPs which is simply insane. The clock speeds for the graphics card are rated at 2210 MHz base and 2510 MHz boost clocks and we have already seen over 3 GHz speeds with overclocking which you can read more about here.

As for memory specs, the GeForce RTX 4080 features 16 GB GDDR6X capacities that will be adjusted at 22.5 Gbps speeds across a 256-bit bus interface. This will provide up to 720 GB/s of bandwidth. This is still a tad bit slower than the 760 GB/s bandwidth offered by the RTX 3080 since it comes with a 320-bit interface but a lowly 10 GB capacity. To compensate for the lower bandwidth, NVIDIA could be integrating a next-gen memory compression suite to make up for the 256-bit interface.

As far as the power consumption is concerned, the TBP is rated at 320W. The card will be powered by a single 16-pin connector which delivers up to 600W of power. Custom models will be offering higher TBP targets.

As for the performance of these monster GPUs, NVIDIA shared the computational and gaming performance figures and it looks like the GeForce RTX 4080 will be sitting slightly ahead of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti with around 50 TFLOPs of Compute power.

Just for comparison's sake:

Based on a boost clock speed of 2.5 GHz, you get up to 49TFLOPs of compute performance and you can definitely squeeze out a lot more with an overclock as we had demonstrated with the RTX 4090. One should remember that compute performance doesn't necessarily indicate the overall gaming performance. Even so, it will be a huge upgrade for gaming PCs and an 8.5x increase over the current fastest console, the Xbox Series X.

This will be a 2x compute performance uplift and a 2x gain in gaming performance as NVIDIA has demonstrated for each graphics card versus its predecessor and this is without even factoring in the RT and Tensor core performance which are expected to get major lifts too in their respective department.  A 2-4x gain over the RTX 3090 & RTX 3090 Ti would be very disruptive.

Gamers should expect 4K gaming to be buttery smooth on these graphics cards and with DLSS, we might even see playable 60 FPS at 8K resolution which is something that NVIDIA has been trying to achieve with its RTX 3090 series BFGPUs for a while now.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB graphics card will be available starting tomorrow for a price of $1199 US. The card will be available in both Founders Edition and custom graphics card flavors at launch.

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