The KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG is in every way an extremely fast graphics card and is suitable for running demanding games without compromise. Compared with the GeForce RTX 3080, the card is able to deliver substantially more performance at the same power consumption. The advantages of the new GPU generation is particularly apparent when ray tracing is enabled. Together with DLSS 3.0 (including Frame Generation), even new games can run smoothly at 2160p with ray tracing effects turned on. Unfortunately, though, you’ll need either a GeForce RTX 4080 or RTX 4090 to reach this level of performance. Users of older Nvidia GPUs are left out of the action.
The KFA2 model in this review features a specially developed design and a massive cooler that performed stupendously well during our review. It is even able too cool the card silently in 2D applications thanks to its fan stop mode. The GPU requires a lot of power and is rated at 320 watts, but this power usage still falls within a reasonable range. In our opinion, constantly increasing power consumption is not the right way forward.
The KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG is a great graphics card and utterly impressed us with its high gaming performance. The wide array of RGB lighting draws attention to the massive cooler.
The graphics card is powered via a 12VHPWR connector. Opinions may be divided about this connector, but we still haven’t encountered any problems with it yet. The only issue is that we think the 12VHPWR connector is placed in a less-than-optimal spot. Due to how much the graphics card sticks out above the PCIe slot, enough space must be allocated to the large adapter cable so it doesn’t get kinked right beside the GPU. This could cause space issues in many computer cases.
The KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG is competing with AMD’s latest Radeon RX 7900 graphics cards when we are talking about pure gaming performance without ray tracing. Our review unit often falls exactly between the performance of a Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT. But as always, it depends on whether a specific game performs better on AMD or Nvidia cards. When ray tracing features are turned on, the KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG clearly outperforms the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. This means you’ll have to settle for an Nvidia card if you don’t want to forego these features.
The KFA2 GeForce RTX 4080 SG is currently going for €1,379 (US$1,473), making the model actually much less expensive than a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (approx. €1,600, or US$1,068), which offers worse performance. AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX costs around €1,350 (US$1,442), but the slightly slower model (Radeon RX 7900 XT) will set you back €1,020 (US$1,090). With some luck, you might be able to grab the top-end model on AMD Shop for €1,120 (US$1,196). Right now, we are very critical of these prices because many users are unwilling to cough up such amounts of money for a graphics card.
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