MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC Review - Fast, Quiet, and Cool

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

The GeForce RTX 5080 is a GPU where overclocking delivers more performance, and with that in mind MSI's new GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is a winner. From the beautiful new design to the excellent thermal performance, this is 4K gaming unleashed.

Pros

• 4K 120 FPS performance
• MSI's new VANGUARD design runs cool and quiet
• Faster than NVIDIA's Founders model
• DLSS 4 is a game-changer for image fidelity and performance
• Multi Frame Generation is impressive when paired with the right game

Cons

• Falls short of hitting GeForce RTX 4090 levels of performance
• MSI's new premium RTX 5080 design carries a high price tag

Should you buy it?

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Introduction

With the arrival of the new GeForce RTX 50 Series, MSI has not only updated and revamped its line-up regarding the physical design, aesthetics, and underlying cooling, but it's also introducing a few new models and SKUs - with one of the absolute highlights being the new VANGUARD design. As for how it fits into MSI's line-up, which has the VENTUS design as the entry-level model and SUPRIM as the absolute best of the best, VANGUARD sits slightly below the SUPRIM - or beside it. This new premium design is all about blending sch-fi lines and metallic edges with stylish RGB lighting.

A quick look at the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC

And to celebrate the launch of the new design and the latest generation of GeForce RTX graphics cards, MSI has created a limited number of MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC LAUNCH EDITION cards that ship with limited edition packaging and a mystery Lucky Blind Box where you get one of nine "around the world" figurines depicting the MSI dragon character 'Lucky' in a faraway setting. Or local if you happened to live in Paris, London, or Taipei. MSI was kind enough to send us a Launch Edition model, and inside our Lucky Blind Box was the astronaut figurine depicting Lucky on the moon's surface. This was the one we were hoping to find.

It's a fun little surprise, and the Launch Edition packaging is impressively premium. However, the real prize would be finding a GeForce RTX 5080 that performed well, with enough headroom and cooling prowess to deliver a great OC experience. Thankfully, MSI has delivered on this front, too. The new VANGUARD model is more compact than the massive MSI GeForce RTX 5080 SUPRIM SOC variant we reviewed earlier, and it's also remarkably quiet even when overclocked beyond the out-of-box OC you get.

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After thoroughly testing and benchmarking six different GeForce RTX 5080 models, we've found that although the reference spec for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition design shows a modest gen-on-gen performance uplift over the GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 SUPER, this can dramatically improve with overclocking.

Regarding premium models like the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC, bumping up the boost clock speed by 200 MHz delivers up to 10% extra performance in some titles when gaming in 4K. This makes the GeForce RTX 5080 a great card, and OC models or those with excellent cooling are the ones to keep an eye on.

RTX Blackwell - NVIDIA's Gaming Architecture for the AI Era

Below is a summary of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Blackwell architecture, applicable to all models.

NVIDIA describes 'Neural Rendering,' which includes all previous versions of DLSS and the brand-new DLSS 4, as the 'next era for computer graphics.' They're not alone; the Lead System Architect for the PlayStation 5 Pro console, Mark Cerny, recently said that ray-tracing is the future of games and that AI will play an integral role in making that happen. DOOM: The Dark Ages developer id Software shared a similar sentiment, adding that the arrival of DLSS was an 'inflection point' for PC game visuals and performance and on par with the arrival of dedicated GPUs and programmable shaders.

With the arrival of the Blackwell generation and the GeForce RTX 50 Series, AI is now being used to accelerate programmable shaders with the brand-new RTX Neural Shaders. Yes, these are actual neural networks that use live game data, and the power of Tensor Cores to do everything from compress textures, render lifelike materials with a level of detail impossible to match using traditional rendering methods, and even use AI to partially trace rays and then infer "an infinite amount

of rays and bounces for a more accurate representation of indirect lighting in the game scene."

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RTX Mega Geometry is incredible in its own right; it essentially increases a scene's geometry detail and complexity (triangles or polygons) by up to 100x. 100 times the detail, it's hard to wrap your head around - but the added benefit in a game like Alan Wake 2 is dramatically improving the performance of the game's Full Ray Tracing or Path Tracing mode. With DLSS 4 and RTX Neural Shaders, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Blackwell architecture (which includes the same AI optimizations as data center Blackwell) can be viewed as the turning point for PC gaming - the moment when AI becomes integral to everything from designing a game to programming and then finally rendering it on a 4K display to play.

DLSS 4 includes more goodies than NVIDIA's highly touted new Multi Frame Generation technology, but let's start there. DLSS 3's version of Frame Generation has evolved with DLSS 4, powered by Blackwell hardware and software, and an innovative use of AI to generate frames 40% faster while using 30% less VRAM. Switching to a new model also means that Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation could soon come to GeForce RTX 20, 30, and RTX 40 Series owners. DLSS 4 benefits all GeForce RTX gamers.

However, with the 5th Generation of Tensor Cores in the GeForce RTX 50 Series delivering 2.5X more AI performance, NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs can execute five complex AI models - covering Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Multi Frame Generation in a couple of milliseconds. Part of the reason it happens so quickly is the addition of hardware Flip Metering, which shifts frame pacing to the Blackwell display engine - the result is frame rates of up to 4K 240 FPS and higher without stuttering issues. With up to 15 of every 16 pixels generated by AI, the result is up to 8X the performance when compared to native rendering or rasterized performance.

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DLSS Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction are also switching to a new 'Transformer' model, with over double the parameters and four times the compute requirement. This is one of the most exciting aspects of the GeForce RTX 50 Series, as it pushes DLSS into a new realm of image quality and performance. The best part is that it will work on all GeForce RTX GPUs; however, there will be a performance hit compared to running it on an RTX 50 Series GPU. Already available in games, DLSS 4's Transformer model is another DLSS 2.0-like moment for the technology, and the results speak for themselves.

Even better, DLSS 4 is being integrated into the NVIDIA App with a new 'DLSS Override' feature that allows users to experience the latest tech without waiting for a path or game update. DLSS 4 is built to be backward compatible, with 75 games and apps supported.

It doesn't stop there, as the new AI Management Processor (AMP) allows AI models to share the GPU with graphics workloads. As a result, expect to see digital humans in games alongside AI assistants like NVIDIA's Project G-Assist become more prevalent in the coming years. This filters down to the creator side, with AI assistants for streamers, who will also benefit from the GeForce RTX 50 Series' expanded creator features.

RTX Blackwell introduces 4:2:2 chroma-sampled video encoding and decoding. The ninth-generation NVENC encoder also improves AV1 and HEVC quality. The flagship GeForce RTX 5090 supports up to three encoders and two decoders to deliver a 50% gen-over-gen improvement in speed compared to the GeForce RTX 4090. The GeForce RTX 5080 adds a second decoder compared to the GeForce RTX 4080. The RTX Blackwell is a game changer for creators and editors, especially with the new low-voltage and cutting-edge GDDR7 memory that dramatically improves memory bandwidth and speed.

Specs and Test System

Specifications

Here's a look at the specs for the flagship GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, the GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090, compared to the previous Ada generation.

Built on a similar custom TSMC 4N process, the new RTX Blackwell-powered GeForce RTX 50 Series feels more like an incremental update rather than a dramatic redesign and overhaul over the Ada Lovelace GeForce RTX 40 Series. The architecture has seen several improvements, namely when it comes to AI and supporting new DLSS 4 technologies like Multi Frame Generation and RTX Neural Shaders that are set to be a game changer for real-time ray tracing in the future. However, sticking with the same process node does mean that the GeForce RTX 5080 - on paper - looks very similar to the GeForce RTX 4080.

With 11% more CUDA, Tensor, and RT Cores - albeit next-gen versions of these cores - and a power rating increase to 360W from 320W, NVIDIA's benchmark data it provided at CES 2025 showed a modest 15% raw performance uplift over the GeForce RTX 4080. Throw DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation into the mix, which, granted, only makes sense to enable in certain single-player games, and that 15% grows exponentially.

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However, what NVIDIA didn't communicate was that if you take the 2617 MHz boost clock speed of the GeForce RTX 5080's reference design and push that to the 2745 MHz of the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC, that 15% uplift becomes 20% or higher depending on the game. Also, with the VANGUARD model's excellent cooling and quiet fans, 2745 MHz can quickly become 2800 MHz or even 2850 MHz - which sees that 15% turn into 25%, a respectable and decent generational uplift. Depending on the gaming workload, this brings performance very close to the GeForce RTX 4090, with the GeForce RTX 5080 drawing less power.

However, setting raw performance aside for a moment, the more significant selling point for the GeForce RTX 50 Series is the arrival of DLSS 4 - which introduces levels up DLSS Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction in a big way thanks to a new and more complex and powerful AI 'Transformer' model. The dramatically improved image quality means that the more performative DLSS presets like 'Balanced' and 'Performance' deliver image quality better than or similar to the previous 'Quality' preset - which was, until now, the gold standard for upscaling to 4K or 1440p. Essentially, this is free performance - highlighting what sets the GeForce RTX 50 Series apart from even the GeForce RTX 40 Series.

Granted, adding 35% faster GDDR7 memory in the GeForce RTX 5080 is a welcome addition, as is the improved hardware encoding and decoding for video and the arrival of DisplayPort 2.1 for higher resolution and higher refresh-rate display output. But the promise of RTX Neural Shaders is already something you can see in Alan Wake 2. A groundbreaking AI method for increasing the detail in a ray-traced scene improves performance in the game by 10-15% before you get to the hardware improvements and new RT Cores of the GeForce RTX 5080.

Kosta's Test System

Physical Design and Cooling

To put it right out there, MSI's new VANGUARD design for the GeForce RTX 5080 is brilliant. Featuring a similar 'HYPER FROZR THERMAL DESIGN' cooling solution as the flagship SUPRIM card, it's more compact, lighter, and just as quiet, a testament to the quality of engineering at MSI. You've got the same brilliant STORMFORCE fans (which you'll barely hear), an advanced vapor chamber for the GPU and VRAM, square-shaped core pipes, and a fin stack designed to reduce noise and direct airflow.

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Compared to the SUPRIM, which features a more minimal look, the VANGUARD celebrates MSI with the company's iconic dragon logo and branding on all sides of the card. The two-toned black and brushed metal grey are stylish, but here, you've also got a big LED strip that runs diagonally across the fans and looks like a lightning bolt when lit up. On the top and side, you've got little windowed RGB pieces that look very cool once you customize them to suit your rig's lighting. All the grooves around the fans double as airflow channels, which is one reason the VANGUARD's cooling is so impressive.

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Weighing in at 1945 grams and with a 3-slot thickness, it's still a decent-sized GPU. However, the premium build quality that extends to the reinforced PCB, power delivery, and high-quality clay-based thermal pads means that it's an OC model that lives up to its name and the promise of tinkering with its settings to boost performance even further without having to worry about hitting a thermal limit. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC ships with a Dual BIOS, with the Silent mode simply applying a less aggressive fan curve to the out-of-the-box overclock.

The Games and Tests

PC gaming not only covers a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing technology. With that, the needs and requirements of each gamer vary. High refresh rates and latency reduction become more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, ray-tracing and high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward immersion.

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Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the GeForce RTX 5090, all tests are run at 4K and 1440p and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies like NVIDIA DLSS 4 - including Frame Generation and the new Multi Frame Generation. In many ways, DLSS numbers are more important in 2025 than native rendering - a title with ray tracing isn't meant to be played without Super Resolution. Also, DLSS technologies like Ray Reconstruction and the new RTX Mega Geometry dramatically improve visual fidelity and detail compared to native rendering. However, our benchmark results are still sorted using 'raw performance' or native rendering.

Here's the breakdown of games, settings, and what's being tested.

Games and Settings Benchmarked

Path Tracing Games and Settings Benchmarked

Gaming Performance Analysis

Average Gaming Performance - 4K Results

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The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is an excellent gaming GPU and tailor-made card for 4K or Ultrawide displays. Our full benchmark suite includes many games with hardware-intensive ray-tracing effects. The average FPS at 4K is 95, which climbs to 117 FPS when you enable DLSS with the 'Quality' preset. Compared to the GeForce RTX 4080, you're looking at 23% faster performance, or 19% faster performance compared to the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER. Go back a little further to the GeForce RTX 3080, and the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is 90% faster, on average, for 4K gaming.

There are a handful of titles where the c is around 30% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080 for 4K gaming, including Counter-Strike 2 and Hogwarts Legacy. There are games where the performance uplift, even with overclocking, hovers at around 15% compared to the GeForce RTX 4080 and 12% compared to the RTX 4080 SUPER. When looking at the individual 4K gaming benchmark results below, the DLSS number is the one to note as this represents real-world performance, especially with DLSS 4 introducing better image quality than running the games natively with TAA.

The only game we found where the GeForce RTX 5080 and other NVIDIA cards seem to struggle is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Not that 115 FPS in 4K with DLSS is bad, but it's the one game where AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX beats the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC in raw or rasterized performance. However, with the superior ray-tracing performance, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is 30% faster than AMD's flagship for 4K gaming.

Average Gaming Performance - 1440p Results

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Drop the resolution to 1440p, and the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC's lead over the GeForce RTX 4080, RTX 4080 SUPER, and Radeon RX 7900 XTX drop to around 10-15% - which is not all that exciting. At this resolution, when you get to this level of performance, returns diminish because you run into various bottlenecks and limitations. Plus, because the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC isn't being stressed, it's a super-efficient 1440p GPU. One of the only gaming workloads where the GeForce RTX 5080 excels at 1440p is ray-tracing, but only those titles with several RT effects enabled or running them in Full Ray Tracing mode.

Benchmarks - 3DMark Synthetic Tests

3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to test GPUs in various scenarios. 3DMark Steel Nomad is a cutting-edge DirectX 12 benchmark with newer, modern rendering techniques designed to push GPUs to their limit. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Port Royal is a benchmark focusing exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects like reflections, shadows, and more.

As the successor to Time Spy, Steel Nomad is the latest synthetic 3DMark benchmark designed to test the capabilities of modern GPUs in games. The 4K test sees the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC deliver a respectable score of 8331, which is 26% higher than the GeForce RTX 4080's score and within 11% of the GeForce RTX 4090. This result does match what we see in some titles, but not always. For example, Horizon Forbidden West, which features similar high-quality visuals as the Steel Nomad test, only runs 16% faster on the RTX 5080 than the RTX 4080.

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3DMark Port Royal has been around for a while; it's a synthetic ray-tracing benchmark designed to test the ray-tracing capabilities of a GPU. Here, we see the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC delivers a score that is 27.5% higher than the GeForce RTX 4080. This result matches what we see in Full Ray Tracing titles like Alan Wake 2, but for the most part, the ray-tracing performance improvements of the GeForce RTX 5080 line-up with its raw or rasterized performance improvements. This is due to RTX Blackwell and the new RT Cores, including optimizations and enhancements for the new RTX Neural Rendering technologies like RTX Mega Geometry instead of general RT performance. Once developers add them to games, RTX Neural Shaders will significantly improve ray-tracing image quality and performance on GeForce RTX 50 Series cards.

Benchmarks - 4K Gaming

Benchmarks - 1440p Gaming

DLSS 4, Frame Generation, and the new Multi-Frame Generation

DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation are impressive bits of technology, thanks mainly to the overall improvements to performance and latency on the Frame Generation side and the new 'Transformer' model for Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction. We used the DLSS 'Quality' mode preset for these benchmarks, often delivering better-than-native image quality.

DLSS Frame Generation and the new Multi Frame Generation have become the focus of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX marketing, and it's not hard to see why. If you're using these technologies correctly, they can be a game changer for smoothness, latency, and performance. And by that, you essentially want at least a baseline of 60 FPS or up to 80 FPS before turning them on. Boosting this performance up to 240 FPS is like watching a magic trick, except that several cutting-edge AI technologies work seamlessly together. DLSS and Frame Generation exist not only to boost the performance of titles with ray-tracing but to let PC gamers make full use of their high-refresh-rate displays.

1440p and 4K displays with a 240 Hz refresh rate are becoming increasingly common, and Multi Frame Generation helps you hit this refresh rate ceiling. The result is a smoother gaming experience with improved motion clarity and responsive controls. With DLSS 4's new enhanced Super Resolution, it's a showcase for how AI is being used to improve gaming in 2025 - because this level of performance would be impossible to achieve otherwise unless you want a 2000W GPU the size of a PC case. Even though there are some artifacts (on occasion), Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Cyberpunk 2077 are absolutely two titles where DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation deliver.

Path Tracing Performance

Path Tracing, or Full Ray Tracing, arrived with the GeForce RTX 40 Series and DLSS 3 and is leveling up with the GeForce RTX 50 Series and DLSS 4. It's only possible thanks to AI technologies like DLSS Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and RTX Neural Shader technology like RTX Mega Geometry. It's designed specifically for these technologies, and we're only including native or rasterized performance to highlight just how intensive it is on a GPU as powerful as the GeForce RTX 5080. In fact, outside of the massive increase in performance, these games also look notably worse without DLSS 4.

When looking at immersive cinematic AAA gaming experiences like Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, these are, first and foremost, brilliant games. The best visuals in the world won't make a bad game good, but when you pair great gameplay with stunning image quality and performance, the overall experience is taken to the next level. Or the next-next-level when Full Ray Tracing or Path Tracing is concerned. With DLSS 4's new 'Transformer' AI model, Multi Frame Generation, and RTX Mega Geometry, Alan Wake 2 goes from looking great running on a PlayStation 5 or PC with a GeForce RTX 3060 to something genuinely mind-blowing. 202 FPS levels are mind-blowing, thanks to a mixture of hardware, software, and groundbreaking new AI-enhanced rendering.

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But even the DLSS 3-powered Indiana Jones and the Great Circle look stunning running on the GeForce RTX 5080 with Full Ray Tracing. This title is set to get a DLSS 4 upgrade in the coming weeks (February 2025). Still, it's another excellent example of taking a great-looking game and enhancing its visuals with Path Tracing.

Temperature and Power Efficiency

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Even though the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is a 360W card, the overall power draw is impressively efficient for gaming in 1440p or 4K - which is fantastic. And MSI's VANGUARD design runs cool and silent even when overclocked beyond the out-of-the-box specs you get. The overall power use is, in fact, similar to the GeForce RTX 4080 - with the 360W power limit increase coming into play when you push the boost clock speed to 3 GHz, which is possible with MSI's VANGUARD model. Interestingly, the idle power draw varies considerably from RTX 5080 to RTX 5080, which could be a driver-related issue. The 22W of the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC isn't high, but it is higher than the 18W of NVIDIA's Founders Edition card.

Final Thoughts

Looking at the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC GPU's raw performance, overclocking capabilities, DLSS 4's excellent suite of AI technologies for enhancing performance and image quality, and how RTX Neural Shaders will shape the future of in-game visuals, you've got one of the most powerful 4K gaming GPUs currently available. The big criticism we have, even with its cutting-edge GDDR7 memory and bandwidth, is that we would have loved to have seen NVIDIA introduce the GeForce RTX 5080 at a lower price point ($899 or even $799).

Opening the door to this level of performance to more PC gamers is a good thing. Of course, we're living in a world where the price of everything has gone in recent years, so you could chalk that up to wishful thinking.

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Ultimately, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC proves that the GeForce RTX 5080 narrative you might have seen online doesn't tell the whole story. Yes, it's the first GeForce RTX GPU that doesn't match or exceed the previous generation's flagship when it comes to performance - but it is closer to the GeForce RTX 4090 than it is the GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4080 SUPER. When you look squarely at 4K gaming, where GPUs like this are properly unleashed, the GeForce RTX 5080 delivers impressive results for a GPU generation that has arrived without a process node shrink.

The GeForce RTX 5080's story is nowhere near as exciting as the one we saw with the GeForce RTX 3080 compared to the GeForce RTX 2080, but the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 VANGUARD SOC is a GPU up to 90% faster than the GeForce RTX 3080. And for those with an Ampere-era card looking to upgrade, you're looking at a massive upgrade. And as far as RTX 5080 models go, MSI's new VANGUARD design is a winner. Not only in terms of how it looks but also its exceptional cooling and silent performance make it tailor-made for overclocking and unleashing the GeForce RTX 5080's true potential.