Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: the 4K GPU shoot-out

RT benchmarks: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, F1 22, Marvel's Spider-Man; Miles Morales.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on Jan. 31, 2024

A trio of excellent ray tracing titles are put through their paces in this second battery of RT testing. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition remains the first - and only - triple-A gaming experience to be released requiring a GPU capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing, while F1 22 is an interesting example of a fully-featured RT game that perhaps doesn't benefit from all of those effects, especially when it's so brutally fast from a rasterisation perspective. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales? It's Nixxes, let's do it!

To reiterate if you're jumping straight to this page without looking at prior results, our benchmarking system offers a number of ways to get to the data you want, the presentation varying according to the device you're using. You'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is an interactive bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

4A Games' revised version of its excellent action adventure shooter remains the only triple-A title that demands the use of a graphics card that supports hardware RT - though of course, the non-enhanced edition is there if you need it. No surprises here on the 4080 vs Super comparison, with a mere two percent dividing them - but the 4090 is still in a class of its own, with a 35 percentage point lead.

Again, the $999 pricing haircut does the job in addressing the value proposition - so even though it's still very expensive, at least are getting a relatively better deal in comparison to the flagship. Once again, RX 7900 XTX is lower division stuff - it's got 80 percent of the 4080 Super's performance at a very similar price-point.

Metro Exodus Enhanced, Extreme, Ultra RT, No Nvidia Features

F1 22

Yes, we'll inevitably move onto a newer iteration of the Codemasters racer at some point but for now, we're sticking with the tried and tested rendition of the game, which effectively follows the established performance pattern: nothing noteworthy divides RTX 4080 and Super, while the 4090 screams ahead with a 38 point lead, meaning that no sustainable overclocking will ever bring the 4080 Super anywhere near it. On the flipside, we're a generation apart from RTX 3090.

F1 22 is a game where AMD's RT performance seems much closer to Nvidia than we'd typically believe - the RTX 4080 Super is only about eight percentage points ahead, which means that the 7900 XTX is offering up 92 percent of the 4080 Super's throughput on this one.

F1 22, Ultra High, Ultra RT, TAA

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

It's a warm welcome back to Miles Morales, rejoining our benchmark suite with both RT reflections and RT shadows maxed for your enjoyment. In this benchmark, the RTX 4090 doesn't quite have the commanding lead seen elsewhere - though it's still well ahead of the 4080 Super with a 31 percentage point lead.

We return to the similar kind of performance differential with AMD seen elsewhere in the RT section, with the 4080 Super around 25 percentage points ahead of the 7900 XTX (which is biding its time for the raster benches!). That means the AMD card is delivering around 80 to 81 percent of the 4080 Super's capabilities on this extended introduction sequence.