Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master 16G review: Ideal for speed lovers and overclockers

The Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master 16G is Gigabyte’s first RTX 50 Series card to arrive at our lab and at first glance, it looks uncannily like the Aorus GeForce RTX 4080 Master 16G that it replaces. In all shape and form it really does, but beneath the shroud hides a supercharged GPU that, alongside nice cooling accessories, make it one of the more compelling RTX 5080 graphics cards launched this week.

The new RTX 5080 Master retains the same triple-ring RGB Halo lights that encircle each of the three new “Hawk” fans, which features a unique blade design that Gigabyte says it’s inspired by the aerodynamics of an eagle’s wing. This supposedly results in “up to 53.6% increase in air pressure and a 12.5% increase in air volume” that allows the fans to reduce air resistance and noise levels. Each fan also comes with double ball bearings for better durability and noise reduction.

To further improve cooling, the card also comes bundled with a separate 120mm RGB fan that you can place on the back of the card to pull air out – a design reminiscent of the ROG Astral RTX 5080’s built-in cooling solution. It’s a practical ouch but not an elegant one, as it means having to deal with additional cables to tidy up since – oddly enough – the card itself does not come with a power connector for the extra fan.

Elsewhere, Gigabyte is using composite metal grease for the GPU while opting for server-grade thermal conductive gel, instead of traditional thermal pads, for cooling the VRAM and MOSFETs components. Together with the Hawk fans, these form the tripartite of Gigabyte’s new Windforce cooling system. It also sports one of my favourite features from previous Master RTX 40 Series cards, the LCD Edge screen on its side, which displays GPU information such as temperature and fan speed, alongside text, pictures, or GIFs of your choosing.

The PCB itself also boasts a dust-resistant coating, which protects it from everything from dust to insects, dropped screws, and abrasion. It is moisture and corrosion-resistant as well, which is supposed to prevent unwanted conduction paths and board damage and should shrug off high-humidity climates (like ours) as well.

Overall, Gigabyte has stuck with a tried and proven design. It’s not as edgy looking nor as “solid” to the hands like the ROG Astral series but far and above, but the RTX 5080 Master gets my nod as the next best-looking RTX 5080 card of this generation so far.

Gaming performance

To benchmark the RTX 5080 Master card, I used the same list of games used to test the RTX 5080 Founders Edition (FE) and previous RTX 5080 cards. I’ve also switched the card BIOS to “Performance” mode, ensuring the card’s fastest settings are used.

We are also using the updated same test rig that was used to benchmark the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 FE and comes with the following specifications:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
• ROG Maximus Z890 Hero
• Samsung 990 Pro 1TB SSD
• Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5
• Windows 11 Home 64-bit
• ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM 4K Gaming Monitor

For our benchmarks, we want to focus on the 4K performance numbers. I've said it before, that for gaming at lower resolutions, wait for the RTX 5070 Ti or 5070 instead. But just for references, I've included results from 1080p and 1440p benchmarks below anyway. I’m also only benchmarking the raw power of the Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master without DLSS switched on – since we already know the benefits with DLSS turned on, and any differences in frame rates for supported games between the same class of GPU cards is going to be extremely negligible. What I want to look out for, then, are  power draw and thermal performance.

If you're looking for the top performance, then the RTX 5080 Founders Edition is arguably the least attractive option. We have arrived in an age where unless you're doing some serious overclocking (or water-cooling), the difference in overall frame rates performance are very marginal at best, especially at 4K. You're likely going to want to go with a card that matches your PC components ecosystem best (i.e., an MSI graphics card with an MSI motherboard). That said, if you've gone full-on with Gigabyte parts, then the RTX 5080 Master's results above ought to give you more flex among your PC master race friends – thanks to a very high boosted clock speed of 2805Mhz.

It's not just gaming performance that the Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master 16G excels in, but it also runs extremely cool (for an RTX 5080 GPU) even with a supercharged GPU. Gigabyte's new Windforce cooling solution is pretty impressive, and I think there’s a lot of potential headroom if you are intending to do some serious overclocking with this card.

Final thoughts

At $2,469, the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master 16GB is an attractive card to consider thanks to its factory-overclocked speeds and great cooling systems.

Performance wise, this Aorus card is also the speediest – even if they are only extremely marginal gains – out of the cards from the "Big 3" brands of ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, and non-overclockers who wants the fastest card out of the box could consider this as their next RTX 5080 upgrade. For overclockers, the RTX 5080 Master is undoubtedly a great card for overclocking, and I believe Gigabyte fans should be happy to know they have a great card to pair with their motherboard or replace their older Aorus graphics cards. But for those who are brand agnostic, the new MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Vanguard SOC might prove to be the better value at $2,095.

That said, outside of the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 16GB OC Edition, and this is where it becomes a matter of opinion, I really do prefer the overall looks and design of the Aorus card over the MSI card. The LCD Edge display could feel gimmicky for some, but the information it displays could be useful for others. For example, an overclocker could easily see the temperature of the card at a quick glance. The RGB lightings on the card are implemented pretty well too, and even if it wasn't the fastest RTX 5080 card in our benchmarks, the Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master 16G would still make any PC systems with a glass panel look very pretty.

You can buy the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 5080 Master from Amazon, Lazada, Shopee and Techyard.

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