ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Review – Compact Firepower

Unboxing

The ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is mainly focused on creators, and features a very understated design with black and gold accents. The unboxing experience is mostly similar to that of the TUF Gaming cards, like this one.

The GPU packaging comes with a 16-pin 12V-2×6 (12VHPWR) to PCIe 8-pin adapter, along with a GPU holder that also doubles as a screwdriver, and a velcro strap for cable management; note that our unit in particular doesn’t have the quick start guide, a Thank You card, and a collection card that are available in retail units.

Walkaround

The ProArt GPU’s design is mechanically similar to its gaming-focused counterpart, both adopting the same 11-blade ring fan in a triple counter-rotating configuration. However, unlike the TUF card, the ProArt GPU is a lot smaller and slimmer at just 300 x 120 x 50mm, especially for a top-tier GPU in the form of RTX 4080 SUPER that can consume up to 320W of heat. In fact, it is one of the smallest air-cooled variants currently available on the market.

Looking inside the GPU, the silicon’s heat is directed out to heatsinks through 10 separate heatpipes, though the heatsink fins are not packed too tightly together to allow for low pressure fans to cool them more effectively (this benefits noise performance). One noteworthy feature is the connector detection LED, which lights up if the 16-pin connector is loose. Useful, as it really takes quite a lot of effort to seat the connector properly.

Given its relatively compact form factor at just 2.5 slots, ASUS did not include another HDMI port for this GPU. Instead, you get a traditional I/O layout with one HDMI port accompanied by three DisplayPort connectors.

For demonstration, ASUS also provided us the full ProArt PC setup with the aforementioned ProArt RTX 4080 SUPER, along with the ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI motherboard, and the ProArt LC 420 AIO cooler, installed inside the ProArt PA602 chassis. Looks clean, that’s for certain.

Specifications

ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER

Full specifications available on product page.

GPU Core & VRAM: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
GPU Core Variant	AD103-400-A1
Microarchitecture	Ada Lovelace
Process Node	TSMC N4
Transistors	45.9 billion
Die size	379mm²
Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs)	80
CUDA Cores	10240
Tensor Cores	320
RT Cores	80
Cache	64MB L2
VRAM Configuration	16GB GDDR6X 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	23Gbps, 736GB/s peak
Add-in board: ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
Base/Boost Clocks	2295 / 2550MHz 2580MHz (OC mode)
TDP (TGP)	320W
Factory Recommended PSU	850W
Dual BIOS Mode	No
Display Outputs	3x DisplayPort 2.1 1x HDMI 2.1 *Max output resolution: 7680×4320 (8K)
Power Connector	1x 12V-2×6 (12VHPWR) connector
Bus Interface	PCIe 4.0 x16
Dimensions	2.5-slot, 300 x 120 x 50 mm

Test System

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Cooler Master MasterGel Maker
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
GPU	ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
Memory	Kingston FURY RENEGADE DDR5 RGB (DDR5-6400 CL32, 2x16GB)
Storage	ADATA LEGEND 960 MAX 1TB
Power Supply	GameMax GX-1050 PRO BK (ATX 3.1) 1050W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 23H2

Performance

All benchmarks are done in out-of-the-box settings unless otherwise specified. For gaming benchmarks, upscaling features such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS are turned off unless otherwise specified in the chart.

Synthetic Benchmarks

As the second-fastest silicon currently available in NVIDIA’s current lineup, the RTX 4080 SUPER is roughly 15% faster than the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER BTF OC White Edition (what a name), but productivity-focused benchmarks like Cinebench 2024 has see the ProArt GPU having a surprisingly small lead over the TUF GPU. That being said, it’s magnitudes faster than its predecessor, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, particularly in Cinebench.

Gaming

For gaming benchmarks, we took a select of games (some with two settings) to see what kind of performance the GPU can produce, both in realistic settings and some purely scientific ones. Newer games like Black Myth: Wukong can be especially punishing on the GPUs without any upscaling, and even on 1080p the game just couldn’t reach 60FPS if you put all settings to the max.

Thermals

Looking at the thermals, the Furmark test shows that the GPU is definitely on the hotter side due to ProArt’s compact design. Most GPUs can take care of the heat at around 1500RPM (some even lower), but the smaller surface area offered by this GPU meant the fans will have to work harder to keep the thermals in check. As a result, noise levels goes up – though it’s unlikely to bother anyone when it’s installed inside a case.

In a more gaming-focused scenario, the VRAM temperatures does get a fair bit higher, but it’s overall still very manageable at 78°C peak. GPU core temperature never reached 70°C after the fans kick in – and this is a pattern different from most other gaming GPUs where the fans picks up instantly the moment heavy workload is detected. In both cases, the fans only kicked in several seconds later, which explains the brief thermal spike in the left side of the graph.

Verdict

As one of the high-end GPUs, the ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER does come at a premium, costing RM6,599 at this writing (for the OC Edition, as the standard non-overclocked variant is not sold here in Malaysia). It’s far from the cheapest variant of the RTX 4080 SUPER card on the market, but one unique advantage it has is its compact size.

If you have a relatively large SFF chassis but don’t want to sacrifice on performance, this ProArt card is the one to look for. You’ll have to sacrifice a bit of noise performance to get there, but generally I wouldn’t worry too much about fan noises on this card, even if its on the slightly louder side (keep in mind, most GPUs these days have coolers so overbuilt that the fans are rarely stressed to their limits). Even then, thermals are fairly manageable, so a space-constrained setup is unlikely to hold it back.

Gaming-wise, this card should be able to handle 4K60 easily – the only condition is that you most likely have to turn on upscaling as newer games are basically built to have the feature turned on permanently with how compute-intensive the render process gets, whether you like it or not. All things considered, it’s still a lot of firepower packed inside a card that is considered an SFF card going by NVIDIA’s standards.

Special thanks to ASUS Malaysia for providing the ASUS ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER for this review.