MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Vanguard SOC
January 2025Type
Graphics CardPrice
$1249.99 USConclusion - Cool, Quiet & OC Ready
MSI's Vanguard series is a brand-new addition to its GPU family and these new designs not only look amazing by catering to premium gaming PCs but also offer fantastic cooling and overclocking capabilities.
We will focus more on the performance side of things, especially the overclocking figures. The RTX 5080 cards seem to be great overclockers and the Vanguard features a high-end PCB, very similar to the SUPRIM variant and with the same upper power limit of 400W. With this, you can easily push the GPU to 3200 MHz and memory to a rocking 36 Gbps. That's a big boost over the standard clock speed of 30 Gbps.
With this extra overclocking headroom, you can extract around 5-10% extra performance which is going to get the card close to the RTX 4090 in many titles. At the same time, the RTX 5080 Vanguard SOC runs very coolly with under 60C temps using the Performance profile and around 62C with the OC applied. These are solid results, especially when considering the super quiet noise output.
Things we liked about the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Vanguard SOC:
- Lots of gaming performance for 4K
- Efficient and only 15W difference vs 4080
- Great Overclocking Capabilities
- Built For 4K 240Hz gaming monitors
- Designed With Next-Gen Neural Rendering
- Good Raster & RT Improvement
- Next-Gen Blackwell Architecture With Several AI Additions
- 30 Gbps GDDR7 Memory
- DLSS4 Offers Better Image Quality
- DLSS4 MFG Offers 4x FPS Boost
- Vanguard SOC Design Looks Amazing, Adds Carbon Fiber Touch
- Overclocked out of the box
- Cooling Performance is Superb
- Very low noise output with 0db operation
- Next-Gen Video Encode/Decode Engines
- DP2.1b (UHBR20) support
- PCIe Express 5.0 technology
The big gun is the neural shaders support along with several new Neural rendering approaches that the company has highlighted and discussed. While the company hasn't yet announced any major game partnerships that will make use of these technologies, we are anxiously waiting for NVIDIA's update in this regard as that would further unlock the architectural potential of NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture.
Things we would have liked about the MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Vanguard SOC:
- Performance not being a huge uplift versus 4080/4080 SUPER
- Lower Price Point
- Huge Graphics Card (4-slot design)
- GDDR7 Memory runs hot
- A bigger memory capacity (still 16 GB)
- A few games with Neural Shaders at launch
The MSI Vanguard SOC series is a fantastic new addition to the manufacturer's GPU lineup. The cards are solid and perform better in terms of cooling against other higher-priced options. MSI is really nailing the looks of the card by adding the carbon fiber finish and the RGB points on the Vanguard are stunning for those who love the extra bling within their setups. Overall, the MSI RTX 5080 SOC Vanguard is one of the best custom RTX 5080 models that we have tested so far.
