This πŸ‘ Graphics πŸ‘Card πŸ‘is πŸ‘ HUGE! - PNY GeForce RTX 5080 OC Review

Here's a gallery of images from unboxing the Graphics Card. You can't quite get the scale of this card from the pictures, but for reference, my computer chassis / case is the be quiet! Pure Base 500DX.
PNY GeForce RTX 5080 OC


Rating
★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)

Pros
  • Price
    • It does not feel "right" celebrating the fact that I was able to purchase this version of an RTX 5080 for the "MSRP" price of $999.99, especially considering the product launched in January of (2025), but here we are.
  • Performance
    • From a rendering perspective, this is an RTX 5080 that comes with a factory OC pre-applied so it performs exactly how you would expect a factory OC RTX 5080 to perform. 
    • With 100% GPU usage using Ray Traced graphics at ~350W of power draw, temps hover ~65-68C with ~40-45% PWM for the fans under full load while staying relatively quiet!
  • Design
    • Neutral color scheme. Black and white color scheme, 4 visible logos printed in white (GeForce RTX 5080 and PNY on both the backplate and the top edge of the card)
    • No-frills! One, centrally mounted power connector, no RGB or bright SMD LEDs, and a relatively "tame" design for the metal and plastic housing.
Cons
  • Price
    • $999.99 (pre-tax) is A LOT of money for a Graphics Card, but as of when I bought it, the RTX 5080 is the 2nd best performing consumer graphics card available unless you decide to spend 2x as much (or more) for an RTX 5090.
  • Size
    • Absolutely massive! Triple slot thickness, taller than the PCI-E case slot height and very lengthy!
  • Fans
    • The fans produce a "resonant frequency sound" around 45%-47% fan speed but this can be rectified by using 3rd party fan control software or PNY's own VelocityX software

Other Thoughts
TL;DR
I can happily say that I am more than satisfied with the performance of the graphics card coming from an RTX 3070 Ti I bought about 5 years ago. Honestly, the largest complaint I have with the GPU is just the pricing and all of the rest of Nvidia's "shenanigans" when it comes to the GeForce RTX line of GPUs. Aside from that, I have faith that this GPU will treat me well for a long time and deliver plenty of performance for the games I play and plan to play.

Full Review
I bought the RTX 5080 because my RTX 3070 Ti was showing its age when playing newer games at 3440x1440 resolution with 180 Hz refresh rate. I noticed it the most in the notoriously poorly optimized game that is Borderlands 4. I had to run the game at 2560x1080 with the lowest quality settings to even barely get close to achieving 60 FPS. When deliberating on which GPU to purchase, I decided that the RTX 5080 was the best option given that my target was high frame rates on a greater than 1440p resolution. So that meant I needed quite a bit of horsepower and a decent amount of VRAM to run things at the native resolution and refresh rate of my display. I didn't want to go the route of the RTX 5090 because although the RTX 5090 offers a 66% increase in VRAM (24GB vs 16GB) and can offer a 30%-70% increase in performance depending on the game / application, you have to pay at minimum a 100% increase in cost to receive those gains, so the price to performance is not worth it unless money is of no object or you absolutely require 24GB of VRAM for other purposes.

I haven't owned a PNY product since I had bought a GTX 470 back around 2011-2012 to run a pair of GTX 470s in SLI. There's no reason why I had not purchased any PNY products over the years, I had just happened to mostly end up buying Gigabyte, EVGA, or MSI products for my Graphics Card purchases. What drew me to this RTX 5080 was the fact that it was listed for MSRP, came with a factory OC, and included a beefy triple slot cooler design to help keep things cool and quiet. I also appreciated that the design of the card was very neutral and without frills.

When it comes to GPUs there is little to no performance difference between an MSRP priced card and purchasing a PREMIUM SUPER MEGA ULTRA FACTORY OC QUINTUPLE FAN RGB WITH OLED SCREEN card. The only reason you should pay more is if you truly value some of the extra "features" a more expensive card comes with. For me, I value the performance more than anything else and speaking of the performance, boy does this card perform!

I haven't played a ton of games using this card yet, but the ones I have played are listed below with their respective graphics settings and observed framerate. All games are running at 3440x1440 resolution with a maximum monitor refresh rate of 180Hz. The rest of my PC build specs can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Beamur14/saved/#view=99qRgs
  • Borderlands 4
    • Very High Preset
    • DLSS - Quality
    • Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) - x3
    • 180-220 FPS Average*
      • *70-90 FPS Average without MFG
  • Doom Eternal
    • Ray Tracing Enabled
    • No Upscaling
    • Ultra Nightmare Preset
    • Pegged at 180 FPS Average*
  • Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 Turbocharged
    • Ultra Preset
    • No Upscaling
    • Pegged at 180 FPS Average
  • Minecraft (Bedrock) RTX
    • Ray Traced
    • 8 Chunks
    • No Upscaling
    • Vanilla RTX Resource Pack
    • 90-120 FPS Average*
      • *Heavily dependent on the amount of ray tracing occurring
I can happily say that I am more than satisfied with the performance of the graphics card coming from an RTX 3070 Ti I bought about 5 years ago. Honestly, the largest complaint I have with the GPU is just the pricing and all of the rest of Nvidia's "shenanigans" when it comes to the GeForce RTX line of GPUs. Aside from that, I have faith that this GPU will treat me well for a long time and deliver plenty of performance for the games I play and plan to play.

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