The Gigabyte Aorus Master RTX 5080 OC is, in keeping with the tradition of its Aorus lineup, a card that bigs-it-up by sporting a massive heatsink, a triple-fan cooling solution, and, since the launch of the RTX 40 Series, lots of RGB LED sprinkled into any spots Gigabyte could find.
Now, with another half-the-price-of-an-RTX-5090 GPU in my hand, here’s how it performed in my lab.
Specifications
Design
As I mentioned, the Master RTX 5080 is a chonker. As with all Gigabyte – and other brands, for that matter – cards since the advent of the RTX 30 Series, the heatsink extends beyond the length of the GPU’s PCB. Its design, for the most part, takes a page out of NVIDIA’s Dual Axis Flowthrough of its Founders Edition, allowing the air from the bottom of the card goes right through it, while the air from the other two simply gets redirected out through the back.
There are plenty of aesthetic features on the Master RTX 5080 too. For a start, the edges of the Hawk Fans (yes, that’s the name Gigabyte went with) are fitted with LED strips that pulse the brand’s colour choice of blue and purple the minute the card starts to ramp up in productivity and heat. Still on the subject, the card also comes with an additional fan that you’re supposed to put on top of the card, and that fan increases and improves the airflow at the end of the card.
At the edge of its spine, the card features a small LCD panel that either shows cartoon characters by default or, if you take the time, can be programmed to display details such as the GPU’s temperatures and its power consumption.
Lastly, the 12VHPWR port on the card has been installed deeper into the card than usual. This is a good thing because it eliminates any chance of a casing’s side panel applying unnecessary pressure to the head of the connector plugged into the GPU.
Testbench
I’ll be comparing the Master RTX 5080 to the RTX 5080 FE, as well as the RTX 4080 FE. With regards to the latter card, the performance was retested with the 9950X to keep things fair across the board. In addition, the motherboard is an ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, while the drivers used to test the cards at the time were 572.83.
Benchmarks, Temperature, And Power Consumption
In spite of the excessive amount of cooling and features slapped onto the Master RTX 5080, the card’s performance is a tale of two faces. By that, the card tells one story with synthetic benchmarks, and a slightly different tale with the real-world benchmarks.
Specifically, the synthetic benchmarks of the Master RTX 5080 aren’t consistent in pulling ahead of the RTX 5080 FE but for the most part, it’s only a handful of tests that it doesn’t seem to pull ahead of.
Expectedly, the power draw of the Master RTX 5080 is slightly higher than its FE counterpart. However, its peak operating temperature is somehow higher, despite having one extra fan attached to it. Guess that proves the efficacy of the Founders Edition’s dual flowthrough design.
As for gaming, the Master RTX 5080 effortlessly decimates the titles attached to it, with the card maintaining average frames well above 100 fps across all three resolutions.
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While the Aorus Master RTX 5080, and every other RTX 5080 for that matter, only comes with half the graphics memory of the RTX 5090, it is still significantly cheaper than the top-tier GPU. At RM6,799, it still offers heaps of performance and more importantly, you’re given access to the digital features and benefits afforded by NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture.
Of course, you will need to ensure that your casing has ample space for a GPU, as this is still a massive chunk of metal that you’re sticking into it. Beyond that, if you’re looking for bragging rights of owning one of the more powerful variants of the RTX 5080s, then this is one of those said GPUs.
Photography by John Law.
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