Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080: everything we know so far
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Leaks and speculation surrounding the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 are starting to pile up, which is not surprising. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is after all more than a year old, and in partial years it is rapidly approaching old age. That’s not to say it’s still incredibly hard to find, and at this point, we might as well go to the newer one Nvidia graphics card models.
It’s a good thing that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 is reportedly coming out in 2022. Although when exactly, time will tell – earlier rumors say we won’t see the next graphics cards until October 2022, although newer ones say it could arrive alongside the 4070 and 4090 as early in July 2022. It will also likely be based on Nvidia’s Lovelace architecture, which increasingly resembles the direct successor to the Ampere design on which the RTX 3080 is based. And if recent rumors are to be believed, then it will be… twice as fast as its predecessor.
We know most of you can’t wait to see this next generation Graphics Card in all its glory. However, it takes months before you see it on the shelves. So help you out, we collect everything we hear and learn about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 here.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? Nvidia’s next graphics card
- When is it out? To be determined, probably end of 2022
- What does it cost? To be determined
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 release date
We’re obviously pretty far from an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 release date right now, but we’ve seen a few rumors popping up about when we might be able to see the graphics card. The main one is from famed Twitter leaker @kopite7kimi, who suggested that Lovelace, the architecture the RTX 4080 is likely to be based on, will launch “slightly earlier”.
This was a reference to previous rumors suggesting that the next generation of graphics architecture would be launched on the end of 2022. Couple that with another leaker suggesting the next graphics card will launch in October 2022, and it’s starting to look like we’ll be seeing the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 almost exactly two years after the RTX 3080’s launch.
This would be on track as most generations of graphics cards last about two years. For example, the RTX 2080 launched in September 2018, just over two years after the GTX 1080 launched in May 2016. And of course, the RTX 3080 launched in September 2020, which was almost two years on the mark. So if Nvidia is going to maintain its normal cadence with its next GPUs, it will probably be September or October of next year.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 price
It almost feels crazy right now, but when we tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, we praised it for bringing such a massive performance boost at a lower price point than the RTX 2080 Super. Now, a year later, you can see how that turned out.
While many of the price hikes you’re seeing now aren’t Nvidia’s fault, we doubt Nvidia won’t benefit from the higher prices people are apparently willing to pay for upcoming graphics cards. It is still way too early to know how expensive Nvidia’s next graphics cards will be, but we’d be surprised if Nvidia didn’t raise the price.
This is all pure speculation on our part, but since we haven’t seen the RTX 3080 under $1,000 in the US since it launched a year ago, it wouldn’t be a big jump to price the RTX 4080 around that price. Nvidia could still surprise us and launch the RTX 4080 for the $699 (£649, around AU$950) price of the RTX 3080, but we’re definitely bracing for disappointment.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080: what we want to see
Since we don’t have any hard details at this point on what Nvidia Lovelace will be capable of, other than that it will likely be based on a 5nm manufacturing process and have ray tracing, we thought it would be best to think back to Ampere and come with a wish list of sorts about what we would like to see in the next generation of graphics cards.
A true 8K graphics card
Although the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 was billed as the first 8K graphics card when it launched in September 2020, it still struggled quite a bit with that resolution, especially once you started ramping up quality settings. Instead, to really get the full potential of 8K, you had to rely on DLSS, which, to be honest, is better than it’s ever been.
With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, we’d love to see it handle the latest games at 8K with high settings, without having to rely on DLSS to get it done. This could be kind of a dream, but we would like to see it.
More VRAM
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 only has 10GB of VRAM, and any GPU coming out in 2022 that should lead the pack just needs to have more than this.
And for the most part, it looks like Nvidia figured this out midway through this current generation, with 12GB on the RTX 3060 – meaning the entry-level graphics card has more VRAM than its flagship. With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, we would like to see at least 16 GB of VRAM.
More DLSS titles
Now that AMD has released its FidelityFX Super Resolution technology, we’re starting to see a lot of games using it, thanks to its open nature. But DLSS still looks like much better for those who use Nvidia graphics cards. We’d love to see Nvidia ready to launch the RTX 4080 with a slew of brand new AAA PC games that use the technology to really sell potential users on the map.
Better ray tracing performance
This one is actually a given, but enabling ray tracing on any graphics card right now has a huge impact on performance. It’s unrealistic to expect Nvidia to be able to release a GPU that can just handle RT effects as if they were nothing – at least for now – but we’d love to see enough of an improvement that we don’t have to choose between framerate or nice graphics.