If you can’t get your hands on a Founders Edition, Asus’ MSRP TUF boi is an excellent alternative.
Asus latest big boi GPU is the TUF Gaming RTX 4080 Super, a reference priced, modestly overclocked card from the classic Nvidia board partner. That makes it a $999 GPU, $200 less than the original RTX 4080, but with essentially the same performance. Job done. And if you can’t get your hands on an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition version of the latest GeForce card, then I’d suggest the Asus is as good as any MSRP GPU you’ll find.
Since Nvidia introduced its Founders Editions as the GeForce-built reference option for its latest graphics cards—and not the pricier premium option it was in the RTX 20-series—the FE cards have been the ones we recommend. Nvidia’s own cards are over-engineered to the point of excellence. They’re pretty, in a pretty understated kind of way, and with this Super series have only gotten better looking.
They’re also cooler and sometimes even quieter than the third-party coolers the likes of Asus, MSI, and Zotac will jam on top of their GPUs. But they’re also the ones guaranteed to be stuck at the MSRP, and therefore the ones that will sell out the fastest.
So, if you’re out of luck when it comes to picking up a Founders card then what do you do? I would always argue, especially with this RTX 40-series sporting the efficient Ada architecture, that you should only consider another card at Nvidia’s MSRP. Every add-in board partner will create a host of different versions of a new graphics card, and often a bunch of ‘premium’ options with over-the-top coolers, extreme lighting elements, and some sort of factory overclock to try and justify the extra expense.
And they’re just not worth the extra money. Chris has recently reviewed the Zotac RTX 4080 Super Amp Extreme Airo, a $1,100 version of Nvidia’s new card, and while it does deliver a higher clock speed than the Founders Edition card, it’s only giving you another 5% higher clock speed on average. Which is but a handful of frames per second at best.
In other words, the extra factory overclock performance is negligible and, I would argue, invisible to the end user.
Nvidia’s RTX 40-series is also seriously expensive. Even with the RTX 4080 Super seeing $200 lopped off its forebear’s original $1,200 price tag, it’s still a hell of a lot of money to spend on a graphics card. And when that price cut is the main thing the RTX 4080 Super has to offer over the original RTX 4080, then you don’t want to eat into that by buying an expensive premium option with zero tangible benefits.
