Creatives will benefit from this top graphics card, if they can find one
Puget Systems puts the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4080 to the test.
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With the release of theNvidia GeForce RTX 4080, content creators are wondering whether it’s worth investing in the powerfulgraphics card.
Now, Puget Systems has performed a series ofbenchmark teststo see how well the GPU performs across a range of content creation software, includingAdobe Premiere Pro,DaVinci Resolve, andAfter Effects.
And the results may surprise you.
Performance boosts
In reviewing performance, the team compared the latest offering fromNvidiaagainst the existing RTX 3000 series line-up alongside theGeForce RTX 2080 Tiand rivalAMD Radeon RX 6900XT.
Kicking off with DaVinci Resolve - our top choice forbest free video editing software- Puget Systems noted that “the four main areas the GPU is used for are processing GPU effects, debayering (and optionally decoding) RAW media, and H.264/HEVC decoding/encoding.”
Overall, it was found to offer a 10% performance boost compared to the RTX 3080 Ti, while remaining roughly the same as the RTX 3090 Ti. However, this also took into account CPU-based tasks, as well. On strictly graphics-driven tasks, like OpenFX, DaVinci Resolve performed 18% faster against the 3080 Ti, and was again found to be about on par with the 3090 Ti.
When it came to Premiere Pro, thevideo editing softwareproved just 5% faster than its predecessor overall - and around 7% faster than the RTX 3080 Ti for GPU-accelerated effects. The testing team also suggested that, by using GPU-led plugins for noise reduction and the like, users may find even more performance gains.
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In testingAdobe’sVFX software, benchmarking showed similar scores across Nvidia’s RTX 30 and RTX 40 series. Although it’s worth noting that this is down to the fact that After Effects (and manyAfter Effects alternatives) are bottlenecked by theCPU.
Game development and3D modeling and rendering softwarewas also placed under the microscope.
Running Unreal Engine, the RTX 4080 saw nearly a 70% jump in framerates against the RTX 3080 (and just over 40% compared to the RTX 3080 Ti. Increased performance against older graphics was also witnessed in V-Ray (75% faster), OctaneRender (67% faster), Maxon Redshift (60% faster), and Blender (80% faster). However, in each of these tests, the meatier RTX 4090 beat the RTX 4080 by some margin - to the surprise of precisely no-one.
So far, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 has proved as popular as it is difficult to find in-store. If you’re looking to upgrade your GPU, we’re running live stock updates in our guideWhere to buy Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080and checking out thebest Black Friday graphics card deals.
Steve is TechRadar Pro’s B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware. He began in tech journalism reviewing photo editors and video editing software at the magazine Web User, where he also covered technology news, features, and how-to guides. Today, he and his team of reviewers test out a range of creative software, hardware, and office furniture. Once upon a time, he wrote TV commercials and movie trailers. Relentless champion of the Oxford comma.
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