MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC Review: A Cut Above
Homeworld 3 Benchmarks
Homeworld 3
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered Benchmarks
Next up, we’ve got some benchmarks from Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. The original Horizon Zero Dawn was initially released as an exclusive on the PlayStation 4, but was ported to the PC a couple of years back. A few months ago, however, a remastered version of the game was released, with upgraded visuals and support for more advanced graphics technologies. For those unfamiliar with the game, it follows a character named Aloy, who is on a quest to unravel mysteries of a future Earth ruled by machines. She is outcast from her tribe and fights to uncover her past and stop an impending threat.
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
With DLSS or FSR enabled, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC continues to perform well, but this game is a showcase for FSR 4 and the Radeon RX 9070 XTs are able to pull ahead, with and without frame generation.
The Talos Principle II Testing
Croteam’s The Talos Principle II is a sequel to the original first-person, puzzle-based adventure game that features philosophical themes and expansive environments with increasingly more difficult challenges as the game progresses. It was originally released for multiple platforms, but has been continually updated on the PC.
The Talos Principle II
The Talos Principle II had the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC and Founders Edition card performing right on top of each other. The MSI card had the better 1% low framerates at 1440p, but the averages slightly favored the NVIDIA card -- at least with native rendering.
Turn on DLSS or FRS (in balanced mode), and the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC slips in just ahead of the Founders Edition card.
Assassin's Creed Mirage Benchmarks
Ubisoft’s Assassin's Creed Mirage is an action-adventure game set in 9th century Baghdad, Iraq. It is the thirteenth major installment in the storied Assassin's Creed franchise and the successor to 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
Assassin's Creed Mirage
The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC performed well in Assassin's Creed Mirage and returned to its familiar position, just ahead of the Founders Edition RTX 5080, but behind the powerful RTX 5090.
Enabling DLSS or FSR in Assassin's Creed Mirage significantly boosts framerates at 4K, but doesn't change the rankings. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC remains the second fastest card of the bunch.
Black Myth: Wukong Benchmarks
Black Myth: Wukong is a title with a storied history. It began development way back in 2018, and was first showed to the public with an incredible trailer in 2020, but the pandemic and other internal struggles delayed the game's development and it wasn't released until last year. Black Myth: Wukong supports a variety of upscalers, including NVIDIA's DLSS, AMD's FSR3, Intel's XeSS, and Epic's own TSR. Using DLSS, FSR3, or TSR gives you the option of enabling frame generation too, which you'll need if you want to crank up the visuals in this stunning title to maintain smooth animation.
Black Myth: Wukong's Cinematic image quality preset with full ray tracing enabled (at medium quality) is a GPU crusher. Still, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC remains the second fastest card we tested, trailing only the RTX 5090.
If you want to play Black Myth: Wukong with the highest image quality settings, at high resolutions like 4K, resolution scaling with DLSS or FSR are a must. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC musters up over 90FPS with frame generation enabled, putting it in the familiar number 2 position.
Black Myth: Wukong
If you want to play Black Myth: Wukong with the highest image quality settings, at high resolutions like 4K, resolution scaling with DLSS or FSR are a must. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC musters up over 90FPS with frame generation enabled, putting it in the familiar number 2 position.
F1 24 Racing Sim Benchmarks
F1 24 is Codemaster’s latest Formula One racing simulation, and like previous version of the game, it sports impressive visuals. This latest addition to the franchise supports DirectX 12 with ray tracing, and it incorporates support for a number of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) features and NVIDIA technologies, like DLSS with frame generation. We tested the games with its Ultra High graphics preset, with ray tracing and TAA enabled at a couple of resolutions to see what these graphics cards could do.
F1 24
F1 24 doesn't tell us much we didn't already know. The MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC is a fast GPU, that can effectively outrun anything but the might GeForce RTX 5090.
With DLSS or FSR 2 (Balanced) enabled in F1 24 at a 4K resolution, all of framerates jump up significantly. Strictly with resolution scaling enabled, the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC continues to be the second fastest of the bunch. Factor in frame generation, however, and the Radeons jump ahead.
Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks
Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game franchise. The tabletop game was published for the first time all the way back in 1988, and the intervening 30-odd years has not changed the game world all that much. As a result, Cyberpunk 2077 looks somewhat retro-futuristic, as this is how people in the '80s imagined what the future would look like.The PC game make use of virtually every advanced DirectX graphics technology and features support for DLSS, FSR and XeSS, and after a somewhat rocky release, it has been significantly updated and optimized for a multitude of hardware configurations. Although it is no longer considered a new title, Cyberpunk 2077 remains a showcase for many advanced graphics technologies.
We tested a pre-release version of Cyberpunk 2077 that's been updated with support for DLSS 4's transformer model and multi-frame generation. This is an important note because Cyberpunk foreshadows how future games, that are optimized for the Blackwell GPU architecture and the RTX 50 series, may perform relative to previous-gen GPUs.
Cyberpunk 2077
Flip on frame generation and the same rings true -- the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Expert OC remains a notch ahead of the GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition. Note, we omitted the GeForce RTX 5090 here to shrink down the chart by 4 entries and to not skew the results so far as to completely squish the results from the more mid-level GPUs.
