Packaging

RTX 4080 Founders Edition comes in a huge flip-open package.


The card sits neatly in the center, underneath the card you'll find documentation and the PCIe adapter cable.

The Card

NVIDIA's Founders Edition looks stunning—it could be an Apple product. Compared to the GeForce 30 Series, NVIDIA has made small improvements to the design language, making it an even cleaner design than before. Visually the GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition looks identical to the RTX 4090 Founders Edition, both cards use the same cooler. The PCB is also very similar, although there are small differences. As with Ampere, the card is designed for airflow to go through the card—that's why there's two fans. One sucks in cool air from the bottom, is pushed through the card and then blown out towards the case top on the other side.


NVIDIA includes an illuminated "GeForce RTX" logo and three illumination zones near the card center, between the two fans.


From left to right: GTX 1080, RTX 2080, RTX 3080, RTX 4080


Compared against AMD's recent offerings it becomes clear how large this card really is.


Dimensions of the card are 31.0 x 14.0 cm, and it weighs 2131 g.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4a ports and one HDMI 2.1a (same as Ampere).

NVIDIA introduces the concept of dual NVDEC and NVENC Codecs with the Ada architecture. This means there are now two independent sets of hardware-accelerators; so you can encode and decode two streams of video in parallel, or one stream at double the FPS rate. The new 8th Gen NVENC now accelerates AV1 encoding, besides HEVC. You also get an "optical flow accelerator" unit that is able to calculate intermediate frames for videos, to smooth playback. The same hardware unit is used for frame generation in DLSS 3.


The card uses the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR connector, which is rated for up to 450 W of power draw. An adapter cable from 3x PCIe 8-pin is included. Of course the 4x 8-pin to 16-pin adapter cables from RTX 4090 will also work with the RTX 4080.


The tail end of the card has a small lid that covers the mounting holes for a support rail, used in certain workstation form-factors such as the x86 Mac Pro.

Teardown

Taking the RTX 4080 Founders Edition apart isn't much different to previous Founders Edition cards and can be done in a few minutes, if you know what you're doing.


First pop off the top cover with the "RTX 4080" text on it. To do that carefully lift it up from the PCIe slot cover side, it's attached magnetically, but there's also a small metal tab that you might have to press inwards if the cover doesn't lift off immediately. Remove the screws that become accessible, and then take off the backplate.


Now you can remove the six Torx screws on the slot cover, and one more screw near the top right in the second picture, that holds the slot cover in place.


We've seen these before, flip up the flat-ribbon connector carefully (I prefer to use my fingers rather than pliers), and carefully pull out the flat-ribbon cable. The other connector with the silvery cover requires you to push the cover sideways, and then you can lift the black plastic connector upwards. More info here.


The main heatsink is a beastly cooling solution. It provides cooling for the GPU, memory chips and VRM circuitry. A large vapor-chamber sucks up heat from the GPU and moves it to the heatsink using heatpipes.


This "backplate" is designed so that air can flow through it, that's why it doesn't cover the whole card.


NVIDIA uses six fat heatpipes and a vapor-chamber plate to move heat away from the GPU quickly.