10 specifications

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

On paper, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 carries more memory (24 GB against 16 GB), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 has more shading units, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 has a wider memory bus. Shading-unit counts are not directly comparable across different architectures, so read that row as context rather than a verdict. Specifications describe what each card is designed to do; how much of that either one holds under continuous load is a separate question.

10 specifications · 5 with a higher side

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

NVIDIA · GeForce RTX 40 · Desktop

Full specifications

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

NVIDIA · GeForce RTX 50 · Desktop

Full specifications

Compute

Architecture

Ada Lovelace (AD102-300)

Blackwell (GB203)

Shading units

16,384

10,752

Base clock

2230 MHz

2300 MHz

Boost clock

2520 MHz

2620 MHz

Memory

24 GB

16 GB

Memory type

GDDR6X

GDDR7

Memory bus

384-bit

256-bit

Power and platform

TDP

450 W

360 W

Process

5 nm

Launched

2022-10-12

2025-01-30

A check marks the higher figure only on rows where higher is unambiguously better. Rows without one are not ties; they are specifications where “better” has no meaning.

More comparisons

Every figure on this table is a design target. None of it is a measurement.

Nothing above describes how a graphics card behaves twenty minutes into a sustained workload, which is where two chips with nearly identical specifications routinely diverge. A boost clock is a ceiling the vendor permits, not a rate the chip sustains, and whether it holds depends on the cooling, the case, the power profile and the room. None of those appear on a specification sheet.

We deliberately do not reduce these figures to a single score. A composite invented from specifications would look authoritative and measure nothing, and choosing the weights would be choosing the winner.

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