Should you wait for the RTX 5070 or buy the RTX 4080 Super?
If past trends are anything to go by, the RTX 5070 could be as powerful as the RTX 4080 Super. This is particularly wild to think — the 80-class is a $1,000 gaming beast with some of the beefiest specs ever. The base model 4070, on the other hand, is priced at $549 these days. If Nvidia wants to appeal to the mid-premium segment with the upcoming Blackwell lineup, the 5070 should target a price range too.
Given rumors of the Blackwell lineup, the upcoming GPUs could be a serious overhaul of the existing GPUs. The gap could be as much as or even larger than the Turing to Ampere upgrade. All of this hints the upcoming RTX 5070 could be a 4K gaming powerhouse.
However, should you wait for the 5070 or get a brand new RTX 4080 Super today? Let's try to answer that.
The RTX 5070 might be far away, and the RTX 4080 Super is a promising GPU
There's no denying that the RTX 4080 Super is one hell of a graphics card. It's filled to the brim with graphics hardware, including 16 GB of GDDR6X video memory. All of this makes it one of the best for 4K gaming. You can breeze past some of the most demanding video games with over 100 FPS as if it were Minecraft.
RTX 4080 Super specs
In terms of on-paper specs, you get the slightly cut-down AD103 graphics chip with the 4080 Super. The GPU is bundled with 10,240 CUDA and 320 RT cores. It's quite power-hungry, however, and will draw up to 320W under full load.
Another high-end GPU worth mentioning is the RTX 4070 Ti Super. Priced at $799, it is the most advanced offering from the 70-class this generation. It's quite uncanny that this GPU also utilizes the same AD103 graphics chip. You get a similar 16 GB GDDR6X graphics memory with this card.
The specs cut makes the 4070 Ti Super about 18% slower than its 80-class sibling. Still, it beats the last-gen RTX 3090 at half the price tag, which should give you an idea of how gen-on-gen gains can be.
RTX 4080 Super performance
The RTX 4080 Super is a 4K gaming powerhouse. The GPU makes light work of the most demanding games like Alan Wake 2, Starfield, and Hogwarts Legacy. Below are the framerates achieved by it. We sourced the numbers from Testing Games.
The RTX 5070 could be cheaper than the 4080 Super
Although the performance figures of the 4080 Super are quite impressive, it's worth noting that the upcoming RTX 5070 could be cheaper than this GPU. We aren't expecting it to cost more than $599, given past trends. However, the only negative point about the card is it's too far away.
The RTX 4070 was only launched in the summer of 2023 when we reviewed it. This was six months after the first wave of RTX 40 series cards rolled out. We are about another year from the RTX 5070, which could be a long wait for just gen-on-gen improvements.
If you are building a gaming rig now, it makes sense to opt for the RTX 4080 Super now for $999 and upgrade to a 5080 Super/Ti when that comes out in a couple of years. The 4080 won't disappoint you, much like the 3080 Ti — a card that keeps up pretty well to this date.
However, if you don't want to spend $1,000 on a graphics card, consider buying the Radeon RX 6800 16 GB for about $350. The GPU can game pretty well at 4K and last you another year, after which you can jump ship to the RTX 5070. Although the AMD GPU is getting rarer, you can still buy it for the discounted price at Amazon.