ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition Review

TweakTown's Rating: 93%

The Bottom Line

The custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition is pretty much the best RTX 4080 so far, with outstanding thermal performance and a slick military-themed design.

Pros

• + Outstanding thermal performance
• + Better than RTX 3090 Ti
• + Dual HDMI 2.1 ports, thanks ASUS!
• + Best RT perf + DLSS 3 included
• + Great-looking card, TUF Gaming FTW.

Cons

• - No DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity... why!

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon

Introduction

I'm a big fan of the ASUS TUF Gaming family of graphics cards, with the company reaching out to me over the holidays asking if I'd like to check out their custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition graphics card... and of course, I did. It's a fantastic card that got me through some nights of Overwatch 2 at 4K 120FPS+ which I thoroughly enjoyed.

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The custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition is a stellar graphics card, offering more performance than the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition while running wicked cool. It has a slick military-themed style that you'll either love it hate, but I really dig the style that ASUS is going with the TUF Gaming graphics cards... versus the harder edges on the ROG GeForce RTX 40 series cards.

If you're pumping games at 1440p or 3440x1440 -- and even 4K -- the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition, depending on how much it costs in your country, is a goer. Let's dive right into our review on the card, and see just how it performs, and how those chilly thermals are.

ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX® 4080 Gaming

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$1434.99	$1448.99	$1489.89	$1479.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/17/2024 at 5:55 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Ada Lovelace

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Detailed Look

ASUS ships the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card in a fancy AF retail box, which you'll want to keep the box to show off on your shelf. You've got a nice shot of the card on the front of the packaging, while the back of the box runs you through the card itself and the technologies it packs inside.

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I'm loving the look and style of the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card, where the triple-fan cooler looks mean from the front, while on the back, I'm a huge fan of backplates as any TweakTown reader would know, and the backplate here on the TUF Gaming RTX 4080 looks fantastic.

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It's definitely thicker than I'd like, but it is a GeForce RTX 4080... it's gotta cool that AD103 "Ada Lovelave" GPU and 16GB of super-fast GDDR6X memory.

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The tail end of the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card looks great, too.

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The card comes with the usual RTX 40 series standard 16-pin "12VHPWR" power connector, which converts out to 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

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ASUS does something different to other AIB partners on its ROG Strix and TUF Gaming cards, with the new TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition rocking 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and not one, but two HDMI 2.1 ports for 4K 120FPS+ output goodness.

Test System Specs

I've recently upgraded my major GPU test bed for 2022, but I will be upgrading again soon, now that Intel has launched its new 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs and Z790 motherboards, and AMD with its new Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" CPUs and X670E motherboards.

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The new upgrades include the shift to the Intel Core i9-12900K processor, ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, 64GB of Sabrent Rocket DDR5-4800 memory, and 8TB of Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD goodness. Intel's flagship Core i9-12900K is a beast, with the Alder Lake CPU packing 8 Performance cores (P-cores) and 8 Efficient cores (E-cores) at up to 5.2GHz.

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme

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I've got that installed into the bigger-than-life ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme motherboard, which is absolutely loaded to the brim with technologies and features that it houses everything you need. We're talking about one of the best-looking designs on a motherboard yet, PCIe 5.0 support, enthusiast-grade 10GbE networking, and oh-so-much more.

RAM: 64GB Sabrent Rocket DDR5-4800

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Sabrent helped out in a huge way by sending over 64GB of DDR5-4800 memory in the form of 4 x 16GB DDR5-4800 modules of its new Sabrent Rocket DDR5 memory. The company also helped out in an even bigger way, supplying us with a gigantic and super-fast 8TB model of its Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD.

SSD: 8TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus M.2

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We're talking about 7.5GB/sec+ (7500MB/sec) from a single M.2 SSD, along with a gigantic 8TB of capacity. The 2TB drives aren't big enough for all of our game installs for GPU testing... the 4TB is much better, but the 8TB gives us room to move into 2023 without worrying about installing multiple games that are 200GB+ in size.

Some glory shots, of course.

Displays: ASUS ROG Strix 43-inch 4K 120Hz

ASUS has been a tight partner of TweakTown for many years, with the fine folks at ASUS Australia sending over their ROG Strix XG438Q and ROG Swift PG43UQ gaming monitors for our GPU test benches. They're both capable of 4K 120Hz+ through their DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity.

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I will be upgrading these in the near future, over to some DisplayPort 2.0-capable panels and some new HDMI 2.1-enabled 4K 165Hz panels in OLED form of course...given that next-gen GPUs are right around the corner, there has been no better time to upgrade your display or TV.

I've been working on this system for a while now, but now we're stretching its legs with the newly-released PC port of Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered. Not just in 1080p or 1440p, not even in just 4K... but at 8K with a native resolution of 7680 x 4320. I've run through some of the very fastest GPU silicon on the planet.

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE LCD Display (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Sabrent Rocket 64GB DDR5-4800 (4 x 16GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 8TB Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: MSI MPG A1000G Gaming Power Supply 1000W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro x64 (buy from Amazon)
• Display: ASUS ROG Swift PG43UQ (4K 120Hz) (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Benchmarks - 1440p

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Benchmarks - 4K

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Temps & Power Consumption

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This was massively surprising, with some of the best thermal results on any graphics card I've seen out of the box... especially considering the super-fast GeForce RTX 4080 underneath. The custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition runs at just 58-59C under gaming and benchmarking loads, with the fans running at stock settings. Super cool to see, pun intended.

What's Hot, What's Not

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What's Hot

• Absolutely stellar thermal performance, under 50C: Yeah, you read that right... the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition has its AD103 "Ada Lovelace" GPU running at under 50C during benchmarking and gaming loads. That is seriously impressive stuff.
• Keeps up with, and beats the RTX 4080 FE: Depending on the resolution and game, you're either getting virtually identical, or better than GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition performance. That's a great thing to see, because you've also got far better thermal performance.
• Dual HDMI 2.1 ports: This is an ASUS thing only, across its ROG Strix and TUF Gaming variants of GPUs... and I love to see it. We don't have DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity -- which sucks, but that's not ASUS... that's NVIDIA's doing -- but dual HDMI 2.1 ports is great to see.

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• Commanding 1440p + 3440x1440 gaming FPS: Even without DLSS enabled you're still going to scream through games at 120FPS+ but with DLSS enabled (especially DLSS 3) then you're going to have even better-looking visuals, with even more performance. It's win-win, really.

What's Not

• No DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity: This isn't an issue of COLORFUL, but rather NVIDIA for not including the latest DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity on their GeForce RTX 40 "Ada Lovelace" GPU architecture. Sigh. Sigh, sigh, SIGH.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA already positioned itself in a great spot with the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition, but ASUS provides some improvements with its custom TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card. Wicked styling, absolutely stellar thermal performance, and more performance than you can poke a stick at.

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The ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition has the same AD103 GPU, but runs at 62-63C... while the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition with the same AD103 GPU runs 3-4C cooler at 59C under load. That's very, very impressive to see... something worth highlighting, that's for sure. There's a 60MHz difference in GPU clocks here, with the ROG Strix RTX 4080 running at 2885MHz for the most part, while the TUF Gaming RTX 4080 was hitting 2835MHz.

The style of the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card is also another winning point for ASUS, with a great triple-fan cooler and wickedly-styled backplate.

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If you're gaming at 1440p or 3440x1440 at over 120FPS -- there are a lot of monitors on the market hitting these resolutions and refresh rates -- the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 OC Edition graphics card will let you play those games with all of the visual bells and whistles enabled. If those games have DLSS support -- especially the Ada Lovelace GPU-exclusive DLSS 3 -- then you're in for an even bigger (much bigger) treat.