MSI RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT Review & Benchmarks

The RTX 4080 SUPER is the final RTX 4000 SUPER graphics card to release from NVIDIA’s announcement at CES 2024. This card is designed to be more powerful than the original RTX 4080, whilst also dropping the price down to $999 MSRP.

With AMD’s RX 7900 XTX having a tight grip on the high-end market, mainly thanks to its stellar value proposition, NVIDIA have decided to respond with the RTX 4080 SUPER. This GPU is targeted towards gamers that want to experience fluid and responsive gameplay without having to sacrifice visual fidelity.

Like any new graphics card, plenty of variants have arrived alongside the RTX 4080 SUPER. However, MSI’s RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT has taken a lot of the headlines, as this design offers an alternative that shares a lot of similarities with the premium look found on NVIDIA’s beloved Founders Edition cards.

But does the MSI RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT live up to the lofty expectations? To find out, we’ll be looking at this graphics card in more detail, evaluating how the design and performance matches up with the competition.

Suggested Article: NVIDIA RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition Review & Benchmarks

Specification

Looking at the specs of the RTX 4080 SUPER, this graphics card includes a number of enhancements from the original RTX 4080. Along with improvements to clock speeds and core counts, the RTX 4080 SUPER also comes with a price reduction, allowing it to be more competitive with the rest of the market.

Like all of the RTX 4000 SUPER series cards, there seems to be an emphasis on improvements that will enhance DLSS performance. With increased CUDA cores, RT cores, and tensor cores, the RTX 4080 SUPER can handle ray tracing and Frame Generation with ease, resulting in better performance when these settings are enabled.

When compared to the RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition, the MSI RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT elevates the clock speed up to 2.62GHz, leading to a small bump in framerates. However, these enhancements come with an increased size, which could cause case clearance issues. Plus, the higher price tag nullifies the value proposition of this card, which is one of the key areas the RTX 4080 SUPER looks to address.

What Is RTX 4000 SUPER?

One of the biggest questions that comes with the release of the RTX 4000 SUPER is in regards to what makes these graphics cards different from others already on the market? Well, the RTX 4000 SUPER series can be seen as a mid-generation upgrade of the original RTX 4000 series, that brings refreshed versions of existing GPUs with marginally improved performance gains into the market.

The areas of improvement vary depending on the graphics card, but all of the RTX 4000 SUPER cards include enhancements to DLSS upscaling, as well as place a priority on offering greater value for money. Whilst the RTX 3000 series didn’t include any SUPER variants, NVIDIA have decided to bring the variants back for RTX 4000, in an attempt to compete with AMD’s Radeon 7000 series line-up.

Out of all the GPUs within the RTX 4000 SUPER line-up, the RTX 4080 SUPER arguably makes the most substantial changes to the original. In fact, the changes offered have caused NVIDIA to stop production on the original RTX 4080, leaving the RTX 4080 SUPER as its replacement.

Whilst the increased VRAM on the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is also a major improvement that helps justify NVIDIA’s decision to replace the original RTX 4070 Ti too, the lower price point of the RTX 4080 SUPER made this stand out when the SUPER variants were first announced at CES 2024.

Design & Aesthetic

Unsurprisingly, the RTX 4080 SUPER comes with a plethora of design variants to choose from, with various manufacturers adding their own unique twist to this GPU. However, out of all the different models available, MSI’s RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT has gained the most traction, as the new design subverts expectations by taking inspiration from NVIDIA’s Founders Edition design.

Typically, manufacturers use the Founders Edition as a reference in order to develop their own designs with enhanced cooling systems and modified aesthetics to cater to a certain audience. However, MSI have decided to embrace the original design to forge an adaptation that is reminiscent of NVIDIA’s reference model.

Though it may sound strange at first, this strategy from MSI actually makes a lot of sense. The Founders Edition is often amongst the favourite designs for each GPU, but the limited stock makes it hard for PC builders to pick up this card for their system. Because of this, MSI’s EXPERT variant is a close alternative that can fill the gap when the Founders Edition isn’t readily available.

That being said, the MSI RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT also includes plenty of features that allows it to differentiate itself from the reference design. Along with an improvement to boost clock speed, MSI’s offering takes advantage of their FLOW FROZR technology, which provides a push-pull cooling system that includes a large vent for greater heat dissipation.

In terms of aesthetic, the metallic grey shroud is very smooth, which gives the card a premium look that is ideal for professionals looking to build a more sophisticated PC. For some reason, this finish looks a lot better on camera than in real life, where some of the glossy effects captured on a screen failed to make the same impact in person.

However, the most eye-catching aspect of the design can be found on the front plate, as the exposed fan and ventilated panel adds some much-needed variety to the die-cast exterior. The sense of luxury this card portrays is exaggerated further on the front vent, as the clear notches across it create a sparkling effect that is hard to look away from.

Whilst the overall design of the RTX 4080 SUPER EXPERT does exude quality and sophistication, the lack of consistency throughout the design leaves some areas to look bland and uninspiring. Because of this, we’d suggest orienting this GPU to show off the bedazzling front panel, as it is by far the best part of this design.

Performance

To see how the RTX 4080 SUPER performs in all the latest titles, we asked our in-house benchmark tester, Harry Coleman, to put this GPU through the wringer in a variety of games, including competitive online multiplayers and AAA blockbusters. After gathering the data for the RTX 4080 SUPER, we threw the results into graphs that compare this GPU to other options on the market, all of which can be found below.

Fortnite

Settings: 1080p, Quality Low, Anti-aliasing & Super Resolution TSR High, Temporal Super Resolution Performance, View Distance Far, Textures Low

With Fortnite still being one of the most popular competitive titles on the market, we wanted to give the RTX 4080 SUPER the best chance at showing what it can do. Compared to the extensive list of graphics cards we’ve tested in this title, the RTX 4080 SUPER sits towards the top of the charts, sitting between the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX. With 320FPS on average, gamers will be able to enjoy buttery smooth performance in this battle royale.

Alan Wake 2

Settings: 1440p, Post-Processing High, Texture Resolution High, Texture Filtering High, Volumetric Lighting High, Global Illumination Quality High, Shadow Detail High, Terrain Quality High, Ray-Tracing: Disabled, DLSS: On/Off, Frame Generation: On/Off

As a more graphically demanding title, Alan Wake 2 is the perfect opportunity to see the benefits that DLSS can provide to performance. Our results focus on comparing the RTX 4000 SUPER cards to their non-SUPER counterparts. From the selection of cards we’ve tested in this title, the RTX 4080 SUPER came out on top, beating the original RTX 4080 by a slim margin. Whilst DLSS provided a substantial increase in frames per second, the 133FPS average on the RTX 4080 SUPER with DLSS enabled provides little improvement on the RTX 4080’s 132FPS.

F1 2022

Settings: 1440p, Ray Tracing Quality Medium, Lighting Quality Ultra High, Post Process High, Shadows Ultra High, Weather Effects Ultra High, Ambient Occlusion HBAO+, Asynchronous Compute On, Texture Streaming Ultra High, Anisotropic Filtering 8x, DLSS: Enabled

In F1 2022 at 1440p with the settings dialled up to the max, the RTX 4080 SUPER provides a whopping 299FPS on average, which surpasses the original RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. However, this graphics card fails to keep up with AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which reached a 322FPS average.

Cyberpunk 2077

Settings: 1440p, Shadow Quality High, Indirect Lighting High, Reflections High, Crowd Density High, Particle Quality High, Volumetric Lighting High, Motion Blur off, GTAO Quality High, Grass Quality High, Contact Shadows High VSync Off, DLSS/FSR: On/Off, Ray Tracing: On/Off, Textures: High

In Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 4080 SUPER went toe-to-toe with the RX 7900 XTX, offering 141FPS on average with DLSS switched off. Whilst this does go down to 117FPS on average when DLSS and ray tracing is enabled, the bright lights of Night City will look much better on this GPU than most, as AMD’s cards struggle to keep up with the optimised performance available on RTX 4000 series cards with this title.

COD Warzone

Settings: 1440p, Upscaling/Sharpening FSR 2.1/DLSS Quality (80 Sharpness), Texture Resolution High, Texture Filter Anisotropic High, Level of Detail High

In COD Warzone, the RTX 4080 SUPER manages to once again outperform its predecessor, with the 188FPS average allowing gamers to experience smooth and responsive gameplay. However, the RX 7900 XTX offers a higher framerate once again, reaching 195FPS on average.

Cost Per Frame

To make it easier to see where the RTX 4080 SUPER lies in terms of value for money, we calculated the cost per frame of each of the GPUs we’ve tested in both Apex Legends and Hogwarts Legacy. Our results are indicated in US Dollars (USD) which means the results may vary slightly depending on pricing within your region.

Apex Legends

Our results in Apex Legends show that the RTX 4080 SUPER is a much better value proposition than its predecessor, as it brings the cost per frame score down by almost 1USD. However, this GPU still sits at the higher end of the scale. Though it is somewhat expected for high-end graphics cards to be less valuable, the RX 7900 XTX offers a lower cost per frame while offering better overall performance in this title.

Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy provides a similar tale, as the RTX 4080 SUPER provides a major increase in value compared to its non-SUPER counterpart. However, the 7.63 USD still waivers in comparison to AMD’s offerings, all of which sit below 7 USD.

Conclusion