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Despite new competition from companies like Intel and Apple, one name still dominates the landscape of PC gaming hardware: Nvidia. The GeForce graphics cards have been a staple in the arsenal of desktop PC builders for more than two decades. Nvidia released its next generation of GPUs, the RTX 40 series, last October, with the RTX 4080 positioned between the RTX 4070 and the RTX 4090. If you’re eyeballing an RTX 4080 for your build and are wondering how it will handle gaming at 4K, here’s what you need to know.
Can the GeForce RTX 4080 run games at 4K?
Considering that the GeForce RTX 4080 is one of Nvidia’s newer high-end cards, you’d expect it to be able to run games at 4K, and it certainly can. A more discerning gamer might ask how well the RTX 4080 can run 4K games and how its performance compares against other Nvidia GPUs, namely its flankers in the RTX 40 family.
Source: Nvidia
The GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs launched in October 2022. When we analyzed and compared the best graphics cards, we named the RTX 4070 the best GPU for most builders and the RTX 4090 Founders Edition the best Nvidia GPU overall. As you can probably tell just from the name, the RTX 4080 falls somewhere between the two on the horsepower spectrum. That doesn’t tell us much about its performance, however.
| Ada Lovelace |
Ada Lovelace |
Ada Lovelace |
| 4nm |
4nm |
5nm |
| 35.8 billion |
45.9 billion |
76.3 billion |
| 46 |
76 |
128 |
| 46 |
76 |
128 |
| 1,920MHz |
2,205 MHz |
2,235MHz |
| 2,480MHz |
2,505 MHz |
2,520MHz |
| 12 GB GDDR6X |
16 GB GDDR6X |
24 GB GDDR6X |
| 192-bit |
256-bit |
384-bit |
| 504.2 GB/s |
716.8 GB/s |
1,008 GB/s |
| 200W |
320W |
450W |
In our side-by-side comparison of the RTX 4070 and RTX 4080, we noticed that while the 4070 could run games at 4K, it struggled a bit at framerates above 50-60FPS. The RTX 4080, by contrast, had little trouble running 4K at 60FPS and is even at framerates up to 120FPS, provided you’re willing to knock down the settings a bit (and maybe disable ray tracing) for certain games.
That makes the RTX 4080 “good enough†for 4K gaming in our estimation, although the RTX 4090 is the superior gaming graphics card. See our direct comparison of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 for a more in-depth analysis, including in-game performance tests for titles like Cyberpunk 2077. However, these are expensive GPUs, to be sure: The RTX 4080 rings in at $1,200, while the RTX 4090 retails for $1,600. Compare that to the RTX 4070, which is much more affordable at around $600.
Source: Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
$1190 $1270 Save $80
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4080 is an impressive graphics card that’s capable of smooth 4K gaming with ray tracing enabled. It’s expensive and likely not the best value GPU for your PC build, but it’s still an incredible card for gaming.
** (Disclaimer: This video content is intended for educational and informational purposes only) **
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