Introduction

Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phantom GS is a premium custom-design take on the swanky new GeForce RTX 4080 “Ada” which NVIDIA is launching today to present gamers with more choice in the high-end segment. This new SKU targets pretty much the same class of gamers as the RTX 4090—you get to play any of today’s AAA titles at 4K Ultra HD native resolution, with maxed out settings and ray tracing enabled. The new DLSS 3 frame-generation feature will nearly double frame rates for any of the truly GPU-heavy titles in development. The “GS” in Gainward’s branding means “Golden Sample,” not that this card is any different from the cards that will be in retail, but it’s a nice callback to the early 2000s when Gainward was among the most popular board partners with its Golden Sample high-end cards.

NVIDIA based the GeForce RTX 4080 “Ada” on the new AD103 silicon, which is physically smaller than the top AD102, but bigger than the AD104, on which the company probably plans to base its future 70-series SKUs. Today was actually supposed to be a double-launch of this SKU, which was originally supposed to be called the RTX 4080 16 GB, and its 12 GB sibling, which NVIDIA cancelled due to some branding problems (and which was supposed to be based on the AD104). The RTX 4080 has generationally higher amount of memory at 16 GB (compared to 10 GB to 12 GB on the RTX 3080); but over a narrower 256-bit wide memory bus. NVIDIA compensated for this with higher memory speeds of 22.4 Gbps, and larger on-die caches. It does end up bringing down manufacturing costs, as there are just eight memory chips to deploy now.

The RTX 4080 is endowed with 9,728 CUDA cores across 76 SM, 304 Tensor cores, 76 RT cores, 304 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. It nearly maxes out the AD103 silicon, which ensures that this isn’t a heavily cut-down AD102-based card that would’ve escalated manufacturing costs for NVIDIA. The GPU ticks at 2.50 GHz boost, and the memory at 22.4 Gbps. Gainward has overclocked this to 2.65 GHz boost, which makes it among the faster custom-design cards we’re reviewing today.

The Gainward GeForce RTX 4080 Phantom GS retains the design characteristics of both its brand extensions. It’s “Phantom” in that it features a subdued aesthetic with matte-black surfaces all around; while it’s a “GS” with its well overclocked GPU and premium features that include dual-BIOS. We have no pricing details from Gainward, but we expect their card will sell for around $1300, and used this number throughout the review.