MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC Review: A Cut Above

Speed Way is the most recent addition to the UL 3DMark graphics test suite. Speed Way uses the DirectX 12 Ultimate API and leverages advanced features like DirectX Ray Tracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and ray traced reflections, Mesh Shaders, and high resolution textures and artwork. All of the graphics cards here were testing using the default benchmark options should you want to compare the performance of your system to our test rig...

UL 3DMark Speedway DX12 Ultimate Benchmarks

In 3DMark's most-taxing DX12 benchmark, which features extensive ray tracing, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC lands in its familair position, just ahead of NVIDIA's slightly lower-clocked Founders Edition card. That GeForce RTX 5090, though -- wow.

UL 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 Benchmarks

3DMark Steel Nomad is one of the newer cross-platform GPU benchmarks developed by UL Solutions as part of the 3DMark suite. This test is designed to evaluate the performance of modern gaming hardware in non-ray-traced scenarios, but using otherwise advanced rendering techniques with DX12.

With ray tracing removed from the equation, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC continues to comport itself well. No surprise -- it's a few percentage points faster than NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5080, but the 5090 remains well out in front.

VR Benchmarks: Unigine Superposition And VRMark

Superposition is an aging benchmark from Unigine, powered by the UNIGINE 2 Engine. It offers an array of benchmark modes, targeting gaming workloads as well as VR, with both DirectX and OpenGL code paths. There is an extreme hardware stability test built-in too. Unigine Superposition uses the developer’s unique SSRTGI (Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination) dynamic lighting technology, along with high quality textures and models, to produce some excellent visuals. We ran Superposition's VR Future benchmark to compare the performance of all of the graphics cards featured here.

Unigine Superposition VR Future Test

Unigine's VR Future benchmark has the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC landing right where you'd expect it; the card slots in right between the GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080.

UL VR Mark Blue Room Benchmarks

UL's VRMark was designed to test a PC’s readiness for HMDs like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. The benchmark does not, however, require that one of the headsets is attached to the PC to run and it uses an in-house graphics engine and content to ensure comparable results between different platforms. We ran the "Blue Room" VRMark test at defaults settings here, which is the most taxing test offered by the tool.


Our results with VRMark don't make much sense, but they were repeatable nonetheless. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC just barely misses the mark set by the Founders Edition card, but the delta is quite small. How about that GeForce RTX 5090, though?