NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Performance Revealed: Slower Than RTX 4090 in Time Spy & Geekbench Tests

NVIDIA’s latest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 5080, achieved a score of 32, 701 points on the Time Spy benchmark. This performance figure is approximately 10% lower than the RTX 4090’s score of 36, 318 points, raising some eyebrows about the anticipated advancements of the new generation.

Underwhelming Performance of the RTX 5080

The RTX 5080, while intended to succeed the RTX 4080, appears to fall short of expectations, particularly when compared to its more powerful sibling, the RTX 4090. Historically, NVIDIA’s 80-class GPUs have not outperformed the 90-class models, and the RTX 5080 seems to perpetuate this trend.

Early synthetic benchmarks indicate that the RTX 5080 is lacking compared to its predecessor. Recent tests from @Olrak29_ on Baidu forums revealed insights into the graphical capabilities of the RTX 5080 via results from both Geekbench and 3DMark.

The Time Spy benchmark results reveal a concerning trend, with the RTX 5080 landing at 32, 701 points. This notable gap of 10% in performance compared to the RTX 4090 contradicts the substantial performance improvements seen with prior models, such as the RTX 4080 versus its predecessor, the RTX 3090.

Geekbench Findings: A Lackluster Showing

While Geekbench scores are often regarded as less reliable, they can still provide insight into a GPU’s raw capabilities. Testing conducted on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D setup reported the RTX 5080 achieving 281, 746 points in Vulkan and 278, 138 points in OpenCL benchmarks.

In contrast, using the same Ryzen 7 9800X3D configuration, the RTX 4090 amassed an impressive 365, 013 points in the Vulkan test and 337, 319 points in OpenCL. This represents a staggering 23% drop in Vulkan performance and a 17.6% decrease in OpenCL performance when juxtaposed with the RTX 5080.

Comparative Performance with the RTX 4080

On a slightly brighter note, the RTX 5080 does outperform the RTX 4080. The latter recorded 259, 403 points in Vulkan and 254, 007 points in OpenCL, implying an 8% to 9% performance uptick with the RTX 5080. However, these results suggest that the advancements may not be as significant as many enthusiasts had hoped.

As the gaming community awaits more robust benchmarks, particularly from real-world gaming scenarios, the RTX 5080’s full potential remains to be seen. For now, the initial indications raise questions regarding NVIDIA’s strategy in the high-performance graphics card market.

Sources for further reading include: Geekbench Vulkan, Geekbench OpenCL, Baidu

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