MSI SUPRIM RTX 5080 SOC Graphics Card Review

https://youtu.be/8QE3RAPkTwU When it comes to GPUs and the stupidly high-end, there are some choices to make. Not just with which brand to go for, but which particular model you decide to spend your hard-earned cash on. So, with lots of choices out there, where do you turn to? MSI’s Suprim lineup has been at the forefront of this segment of the market for the last few generations, and MSI believe they have the secret sauce for delivering the very best RTX 5080 experience for those not wanting to compromise on any area, including features, cooling potential and that all-important overclocking headroom. But with a price premium well above MSRP, does it offer enough to tempt you in? Well, that’s what we’re going to find out. MSI SUPRIM RTX 5080 SOC Okay, so elephant in the room time. The Nvidia RTX 5080 is meant to be a $999-based card, and while I’m sure some gamers managed to snap a few MSRP-based models up for that price, we are seeing inflated pricing, even for your run-of-the-mill basic models without all of the flashy lights, huge overclocking potential and massive chunky coolers. Which means that the models that do offer those features are going to command even more, and are priced at what’s meant to be $1250. It’s a steep increase over the MSRP pricing that never was, and you could easily be expected to pay over $1500 right now for this model, if you can get it at all, that is. Core Clocks: Extreme Performance: 2760 MHz (MSI Center) Boost: 2745 MHz (GAMING & SILENT Mode) HYPER FROZR THERMAL DESIGN: An apex evolution of advanced thermal design that delivers unparalleled cooling and quiet operation. STORMFORCE Fan: Seven fan blades, claw texturing, and a circular arc are designed for optimal airflow with minimal noise. Advanced Vapor Chamber: Built-in Vapor Chamber swiftly transfers heat from the GPU and VRAM to the core pipe for optimal dissipation. Core Pipes: Square-shaped Core Pipes maximize heat dissipation with the Vapor Chamber for superior cooling. Filled Fins: Shaped fins cover the core pipes to reduce turbulence and enhance cooling performance. Wave Curved 4.0: Precision-engineered wave edges with a high-low fin design enhance airflow and reduce turbulence. Air Antegrade Fin 2.0: The fins feature a V-shaped cutout and a high-low design at the airflow passthrough to optimize flow efficiency. Metal Backplate: A reinforcing metal backplate with airflow vents and thermal pads enhances cooling. Dual BIOS: Dual BIOS gives you the choice to prioritize for full performance in GAMING mode or low noise in SILENT mode. MSI Center: The exclusive MSI Center software lets you monitor, tweak and optimize MSI products in real-time. Afterburner: Take full control with the most recognized and widely used graphics card overclocking software in the world. Check out the official MSI product page here. Pricing to one side, let’s take a look at what we have on offer. The MSI RTX 5080 SUPRIM SOC is a pre-factory overclocked, premium SKU that highlights MSI’s latest developments and feats in cooling technology. Out of the box, the card packs a 2745MHz boost clock, which comes in just under 5% faster than the reference 2617MHz clock speed, while still packing the same 1875MHz memory clock. So, not the biggest overclock in the world, especially given that we know these Blackwell-based GPUs can clock pretty far, but we’ll look at how much more we can squeeze out shortly, especially given the large cooler that should help maintain temperatures, allowing us to push things further. https://youtu.be/J5MKWVe8itQ?list=TLGGm7Fc_MiOK8kxMDAzMjAyNQ A Closer Look What the cooler gives us is an updated, premium shroud with three StormForce axial fans with a unique serrated design that helps to pull air in and push it across the large vapour chamber-based heatsink through use of seven flattened heatpipes, thus improving surface area and heat transfer. The card uses a mix of materials across the shroud, which not only assists in the style department, but adds to the overall quality of the card and, in places, does assist in cooling, like the full metal backplate with airflow vents to help heat pass out of. The aspect that helps cooling the most is the sheer size of the heatsink, which makes the card obscenely large at 359mm long, 150mm tall and 76mm thick, making it a 3.5-slot card and coming in at 2614g. It’s not the lightest card we’ve seen, but I do like that, as it gives us an extra element of quality through its precision-crafted design and craftsmanship. Due to its weight, it does come with a support to eliminate GPU sag, but on a card of this calibre, I just expected something a little better, especially considering that it’s the same support that comes with MSI’s Ventus MSRP-based cards and competitor cards offer a more sturdy metal bracket that screws into the end of the card. It just feels like MSI skimped out a little on that front. In typical fashion with cards at this price point, you do get some extra features such as RGB, but MSI have toned this down quite dramatically from the previous generation. Now we only have the SUPRIM logo at the front edge, SUPRIM wording along the side and two pulsating areas on the front of the card, which all by default glow white, though of course, you can control this to be any and all colours of the rainbow if you want. And what’s nice about this, is that it makes the card, straight out of the box, seem more grown up and mature, without restricting your own creative flair. What you will find is that while it looks nice horizontally mounted, if you’re all about that RGB life, then mounting the card vertically will look a lot better. We also get a dual BIOS switch to take it from gaming mode, which is set as default, to silent mode, for those who want to prioritise noise levels, but this does nothing for the clock speeds, and instead, simply adjusts the fan curve to be less aggressive compared to gaming mode. Compared to the previous generation of SUPRIM cards we’ve looked at, there’s definitely something about this lineup with improved design and cooler. It just feels better, and I know that’s a given as of course, you’d expect the newer iteration to be better than the last, but there’s a definite step up in direction here, and I’m liking it. Connection-wise, as you’d expect, there are the three standard DisplayPort connectors and a single HDMI, and for supplying the 360W of power that this baby is able to pull, we have a single 12V 2x6 power connector along the top. An 850W PSU is recommended to run this card, but for users looking to buy an RTX 5080 SUPRIM SOC, you’re likely rocking pretty high-end hardware, so may need a higher wattage unit depending on the rest of your system's specs. Overclocking So, a gorgeous looking card with some impressive specs, even if the SOC or Super Overclocked naming leaves something to be desired, as for me, less than 5% isn’t what I’d class as Super Overclocked, and that’s a naming convention that was once done by Gigabyte, so not quite sure what’s going on there. That aside, obviously it makes sense to see what we’re able to do ourselves in terms of overclocks, because you’d like to think there’s quite a decent amount of headroom in this card, especially given its higher price point. It’s here where we managed to push our memory overclock by the maximum 375MHz, which is capped by NVIDIA. In terms of the core clock, we were able to increase that by 430MHz, giving us an overall boost clock of 3175MHz, so a pretty sizeable overclock from stock. And considering this card already comes pre-factory overclocked, it’s nice to see some extra headroom above that, though to see what that does for real-world performance, we booted up F1 24 for an hour-long loop to see how temperatures, fan speed, power usage and clock speed behaviour changed, if at all. GPU-Z Stock GPU-Z Silent Mode Suprim SOC Gaming Mode Software Settings Power & Temperatures It’s here where the SUPRIM SOC is clearly doing a good job with that large cooler when compared to the Founders Edition, coming in on average 7 to 8 degrees cooler on both the GPU and memory junction temperatures, and while the overclock did increase temperatures up slightly, we’re only talking a couple of degrees at max. The GPU clock was able to sustain its higher boost at stock, by around 150MHz over the FE, while the overclock saw another 90MHz improvement on average over that, along with that hefty memory clock that now sits at 18001MHz. The fans remained silent at stock, actually coming in slightly quieter than the Founders model, but even then, we’re only talking around 20 RPM or so, while the overclock did see the speed increase, it wasn’t to any levels that I’d class as audible when compared to the rest of our system and collectively still saw the SUPRIM SOC at reasonable power limits in comparison to NVIDIA’s MSRP-based card, though again, the overclock did see this increase to around 340 Watts. Founders Edition Inno3D How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test benches to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and are kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of a graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Processor Test Systems Test System (GPU) Motherboard Gigabyte B650E AORUS MASTER Buy Now Processor Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review Buy Now GPU Changes Per Review RAM 32 Corsair VENGEANCE RGB 6000MHz CL30 Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H9 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Software We use a variety of software from different developers to assist in our testing and to give us the most consistent results possible. Some applications are specifically used for testing, while others are simply used for monitoring and to aid us in making sure that our results are as accurate as possible. Software Used 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy (download) Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. Given how powerful most modern cards are getting, we've began using more demanding profiles for most games, but will otherwise state on a per game basis if we use other profiles beyond High, Ultra, Maximum or their respective equivalent at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, and all FPS caps that can be removed are. We also enable XMP and Resizable bar technology across all platforms to keep things as fair as possible. Games While we test a lot of games, it's not possible to display all of the data on the website or in our videos. Instead, we include access to all of our testing data for our Patreon members (link), where members get a ton of other benefits as well. What we do, however, is display charts for averages across all game titles to give a better picture of performance across all titles tested. A Plague Tale: Requiem Alan Wake II Baldur's Gate 3 Black Myth Wukong CS2 Cyberpunk 2077 F1 24 Fortnite Hogwarts Legacy Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Starfield War Thunder Resolutions 1080 (Full HD) 1440 4K Some tests will also include features such as NVIDIA DLSS and Ray Tracing. However, these will be clearly labelled and may only appear in reviews for graphics cards that support those features. Power Consumption Not being content with simply reading total system power draw, we now run F1 24 for an hour loop and measure power draw at the end of the loop for the most accurate measurement that represents real-world gameplay experience. Temperatures We take temperature readings after the same hour-long F1 24 loop with no other background programs running, again to simulate a real-world gaming experience. A Plague Tale: Requiem A Plague Tale: Requiem is a stealth-survival horror adventure that serves as a direct sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. Players continue the harrowing journey of Amicia and Hugo de Rune, two young siblings navigating a plague-ridden France in the 14th century. The game features stunning visuals, intense action sequences, and a gripping narrative that explores themes of family, resilience, and the darkness within. Black Myth Mukong Black Myth Wukong is an action role-playing game inspired by the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West." Developed by Game Science, it features stunning graphics, challenging combat encounters, and a captivating story based on the legendary Monkey King. Players can expect a unique blend of Chinese mythology and action-packed gameplay. In Black Myth: Wukong, the MSI SUPRIM SOC is already sitting 4% ahead of the FE model from NVIDIA, giving us 2 frames per second more in the averages, and 3 FPS more in the lows and topping our chart for 5080 results. With the overclock in place, it did have an effect to the same tune of 4%, which now puts it 7% ahead of the FE, and the 1% lows have seemingly sorted themselves out in this title. Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action role-playing game set in the dystopian metropolis of Night City. Developed by CD Projekt Red, it offers a vast and immersive world filled with diverse characters, complex storylines, and a wide range of customization options. Players can create their own unique cyberpunk character and explore the city's underbelly, completing missions, engaging in cybernetic enhancements, and making choices that shape their destiny. In Cyberpunk, the MSI SUPRIM SOC at stock commands a 5% lead over the Founders Edition results and sits inline with the performance of the RTX 4090. Overclocking sees things push further by 8% over its stock result, now at 67 FPS, and with a smaller bump of 4% in the lows. This is now enough to overtake the RTX 4090 and sits just above the stock results of the ASUS TUF Gaming 5080 that we looked at recently. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is an upcoming action-adventure game based on the iconic film franchise. Developed by Bethesda Game Studios, it promises to deliver an epic and cinematic experience with a globe-trotting adventure, thrilling action sequences, and a captivating story. Players will step into the shoes of Indiana Jones and embark on a quest to uncover the secrets of a mysterious artefact. Moving onto Indiana Jones and again, we do see higher levels of performance over the MSRP-based FE model by 3% and with much healthier 1% low figures too. Overclocking sees those lows drop slightly, though still manage to sit 15% ahead of those on the FE model, but the more important part is how the overclock manages to raise the averages by 7%, which now puts it 11% ahead of the Founders model from NVIDIA. Starfield Starfield is a highly anticipated space exploration role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios. It offers a vast and immersive galaxy to explore, with countless planets, star systems, and alien civilizations to discover. Players can create their own custom character and embark on a journey to uncover the secrets of the universe, completing missions, engaging in space combat, and making choices that shape their destiny. Then in Starfield, again we see a small, but modest boost over the FE of 2%, which puts it between the ASUS TUF Gaming and INNO3D X3 cards at 87 FPS, and yet again, the overclock does push performance further, though only by 3% in this case, but again shows that the lows take a hit, and some more fine-tuning would be needed to balance that out, though while it would raise the lows back up, it would likely take a hit in the averages. Ray Tracing - Black Myth Wukong Black Myth Wukong is an action role-playing game inspired by the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West." Developed by Game Science, it features stunning graphics, challenging combat encounters, and a captivating story based on the legendary Monkey King. Players can expect a unique blend of Chinese mythology and action-packed gameplay. In Black Myth: Wukong again, but this time with ray tracing enabled, the MSI SUPRIM SOC sits 3% ahead of the Founders Edition, though this does only equate to a single frame per second, and overclocking doesn’t do much to help either, as this pushes performance up by another 3%, but again we’re talking a single FPS. Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world action role-playing game set in the dystopian metropolis of Night City. Developed by CD Projekt Red, it offers a vast and immersive world filled with diverse characters, complex storylines, and a wide range of customization options. Players can create their own unique cyberpunk character and explore the city's underbelly, completing missions, engaging in cybernetic enhancements, and making choices that shape their destiny. Then lastly, in Cyberpunk 2077, the MSI card comes out the strongest at stock with an 8% lead over the FE, though with such low numbers, we’re only talking 2 frames per second, and the overclock doesn’t do much to further increase that as performance increases by a margin of error 4%, which translates to a single FPS uplift. How Much Does it Cost? So, the RTX 5080 SUPRIM SOC from MSI. It delivers a high-end experience with a strong factory overclock, premium cooling, and refined aesthetics. However, much like the rest of the 50 series, its biggest drawback remains pricing. While MSRP is meant to be $1250 for this card, real-world pricing pushes it significantly higher, sometimes exceeding $1500, making it difficult to justify over lower-priced alternatives that offer similar performance gains, especially when you consider that the MSRP for the Founders is $999, and that leaves the SUPRIM SOC on a pretty steep incline. That being said, MSI has done a solid job of making this one of the most polished 5080 options available and I can’t fault them for that, and I could argue that I can see where the extra cost has gone, though as always, and I’ll keep on saying it, but the FE is just so good from every aspect, and that makes it a tricky one for any AIB, though it's clear to see that the large cooler on this is pretty special. Cooling Cooling performance is one of the standout features of the SUPRIM SOC, with its large vapour chamber, enhanced airflow design, and triple StormForce axial fans that were able to keep temperatures impressively low. Compared to the Founders Edition, it runs an average of 7–8 degrees cooler, and even when overclocked, it maintained a manageable temperature profile with only a slight increase. Noise levels are also well-controlled, with the stock configuration being even quieter than the Founders Edition by a small margin. Overclocking Speaking of overclocking, while the SUPRIM SOC already comes with a factory boost, we managed to push it even further to some pretty impressive levels and while some games benefited from this overclock, others showed regression in the 1% lows, highlighting that stability and fine-tuning are still key factors when pushing performance further. Gaming Gaming performance at stock was already strong, with the SUPRIM SOC sitting ahead of the Founders Edition in every title tested and, when overclocked, we did see performance increase, but there’s definitely room for further tweaking if you’re willing to put the time in, though some games saw lower uplifts, reinforcing that while the SUPRIM SOC is a powerful card, it doesn’t always translate to major performance leaps. Added Features One thing I do like is that MSI have toned down the RGB on this model, making it more refined compared to previous SUPRIM releases, with a more minimalist aesthetic straight out of the box. The build quality is still top-notch, with a mix of materials that add to its premium positioning, though the included GPU support bracket could have been better, as reusing the same design as MSI’s lower-tier cards feels like an oversight. Beyond that, feature-wise, the dual BIOS switch is expected, though I was a little disappointed to find that it doesn’t impact clock speeds, and instead, only adjusts fan behaviour, but I guess it isn’t a deal breaker. Should I Buy One? Ultimately, the MSI SUPRIM SOC is a premium option for those who want one of the best RTX 5080s available, if it’s available, and even then there’s a but, as it comes at a high cost. While cooling, build quality, and factory overclocking are all excellent, the price premium makes it a tough sell over MSRP-based models unless you specifically want the SUPRIM’s refined cooling and aesthetic touches. If you can get it at a reasonable price, it’s a fantastic card, but if not, you may be better off looking at more cost-effective options, though sadly, in the current market, it may be a simple matter of getting what you can get your hands on.