Can you play 8K games with an RTX 4080?

The RTX 4080 Founders
The RTX 4080 Founders' Edition (Image via Nvidia)

Nvidia has unveiled the performance charts of the RTX 4080. Along with improvements to DLSS 3 and the raw rasterization performance, the graphics card looks like an exciting choice for most high-end gamers.

The 12 GB variant of the graphics card was recently canceled by Nvidia. Thus, only the AD103-based RTX 4080 16 GB variant will hit the market come November 16, 2022.

The $1,199 RTX 4080 is being introduced as an RTX 3090 Ti killer. Nvidia marketed the last-gen flagship BFGPU (Big Ferocious GPU) as 8K capable. Thus, it is no surprise that users will want to game at 8K with this graphics card too.

Nvidia has not marketed any RTX 40 series video card as being 8K capable, and the official reviews of the 4080 are still a few weeks away. However, the company has revealed enough data for educated guesses and speculation.


The RTX 4080 graphics card is incredibly fast for video games and can run them at 4K 120+ FPS in most cases

The RTX 4080 is a very capable graphics card. It packs 9,728 CUDA cores, 304 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs), 112 Render Output Units (ROPs), and 16 GB of GDDR6X memory, which is based on a wide 256-bit memory bus.

All of these specs make the graphics card incredibly fast for video games. In most titles, the GPU can run the latest games at 4K 120+ FPS. Thus, many times, it makes the $1,599 RTX 4090 look like a waste of money.

Nvidia marketed the last-gen flagship RTX 3090 Ti as an 8K-capable GPU. The GPU can run most titles at 30-40 FPS in that resolution, albeit with some compromises (ray tracing turned off or DLSS turned into a Performance preset).

However, according to the recently published performance metrics from Nvidia, the RTX 4080 16 GB card is much faster than the 3090 Ti.

In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the new GPU delivers 66.4 frames, while the 3090 Ti only manages up to 53.4 FPS. A similar trend continues in other titles.

The RTX 4080 beats the 3090 Ti both in terms of raw rendering performance, and DLSS is an added boon (Image via Nvidia)
The RTX 4080 beats the 3090 Ti both in terms of raw rendering performance, and DLSS is an added boon (Image via Nvidia)

Another key benefit of the 4080 16 GB is DLSS 3. Not only can the new iteration of the temporal upscaling formula deliver much higher framerates than the last generation, but it is also capable of better output picture quality.

Turning DLSS 3 on in most games multiplies the framerate by a massive 200% or more. This vastly improves the experience one can expect from an RTX 40 series GPU.

Thus, with all of the architecture improvements, innovations, and upscaling formulas like DLSS 3, the RTX 4080 seems like a more superior card when compared to the RTX 3090 Ti. It is also more power-efficient and physically smaller than the last-gen BFGPU.

It is no wonder that the 4080 will deliver a better 8K gaming performance when compared to the 3090 Ti.

However, it is worth noting that 8K gaming is a premium experience. It packs four times more pixels when compared to 4K. Monitors supporting the resolution are quite scarce, and the available options are expensive.

However, pricing is expected to improve with time as the industry slowly transitions from 4K. However, the move will take a few more years.

Edited by Rachel Syiemlieh
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