Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics cards has two significant differences compared to its non-Super predecessor: higher performance and a $200 lower recommended price. That's almost an unexpected combination in the current market for standalone desktops graphics, though it's also a tacit admission that the 4080 was originally priced too high. Apparently, there is a third difference as well: a simplified design of Nvidia's own GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition board.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Founders Edition graphics card has a voltage regulating module featuring 13 power phases for its AD103 graphics processing unit, with three power phases for its 16GB of GDDR6X memory. By contrast, the new GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition board has an 11-phase VRM for the GPU and a 2-phase power supply circuitry for the memory, as noticed by reviewer Geekerwan (via @9550pro ).
The slightly simplified printed circuit board (PCB) design does not really come as a surprise. On the one hand, by now Nvidia and TSMC have probably reduced performance variability of the AD103 graphics processor to a minimum and so Nvidia doesn't need to ensure the best possible power supply for the GPU — at least with 10,240 CUDA cores operating at up to 2,550 MHz — as virtually all chips will perform as advertised even with an 11+2 phase VRM.
Meanwhile, simplifying the GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition makes the product slightly cheaper to produce, so Nvidia can sell one of the best graphics cards on the market for $999 instead of $1,199 and retain its profit margin. The slight design optimization should not tangibly affect reliability of the product.
What remains to be seen is how well Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 Super Founders Edition graphics cards overclock. Advanced power supply circuitry tends to have a larger effect on overclockability, so the reduction in the number of phases may somewhat lower ability of the card to work at clocks beyond its official specifications — not that we noticed any issues in our review, where the average core clocks on the 4080 Super were quite high.
Nvidia also has plenty of partners offering custom GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics cards that not only come factory overclocked, but also feature enhanced PCB designs and massive cooling systems to ensure additional overclocking potential. We'll be looking at some of these in the coming days.
