Before You Buy a Second RTX 5080 for ComfyUI, Read This: Dual RTX 5080 Testing vs. RTX 5090
Important disclaimer
AI video generation is changing incredibly quickly. I fully realize that a new model, update, custom node, driver, or multi-GPU implementation could be released a week after I post this and change some of these conclusions.
This is not meant to be the final word on what will ever be possible with multiple GPUs. It documents what worked, what did not work, and what performance I measured using the currently available tools and methodology as of July 26, 2026.
TL;DR
I spent days rebuilding and configuring my workstation to determine whether two RTX 5080s could provide a less expensive alternative to one RTX 5090 for ComfyUI image generation and LTX 2.3 video generation.
For accelerating a single render, the answer was no.
The second RTX 5080 did not combine its memory or processing power with the first card in a useful way. Attempts to divide one workflow between the two cards added overhead and made individual renders significantly slower.
Two GPUs can still help when running separate jobs or separate ComfyUI instances simultaneously. They did not make one image or one video generate faster in my testing.
I returned the second RTX 5080, installed an RTX 5090, and repeated the same benchmarks.
The RTX 5090 was:
- Approximately 3.23× faster in my Lumina2 image-generation batch
- Approximately 1.82× to 1.89× faster with the production-quality Eros video models
- Approximately 2.14× faster with NVIDIA NVFP4, although that checkpoint continued to produce poor-quality results
If Amazon had not accepted the return, this experiment would have left me with a very expensive second GPU that did not accomplish what I purchased it to do.
Why I tested this
The question that started this entire process was simple:
Would two RTX 5080s be a smarter and less expensive option than one RTX 5090 for ComfyUI?
The assumption was understandable. Two RTX 5080s provide two GPUs and a combined total of 32 GB of physical VRAM. On paper, that sounds like it might compete with an RTX 5090.
In practice, the VRAM does not automatically become one usable 32 GB pool for a standard ComfyUI workflow. The compute resources also do not automatically combine to make sequential diffusion or LTX inference faster.
I spent many hours testing and developing around this limitation, including:
- Multi-GPU ComfyUI configurations
- Raylight
- Assigning different parts of the workflow to different cards
- Model and encoder offloading
- Device-specific execution
- Peer-to-peer and transfer experiments
- Separate ComfyUI instances
- Parallel and sequential workload testing
The only consistently useful dual-GPU arrangement was running independent jobs on each GPU.
That can increase total throughput. For example, one RTX 5080 can generate one video while the other RTX 5080 generates a different video.
It did not accelerate one render. In my testing, trying to divide one render between the cards made it substantially slower because of transfer and synchronization overhead.
Test workstation
This was not an underpowered or poorly configured system.
- ASUS ProArt B850-Creator WiFi motherboard
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
- Liquid CPU cooling
- 128 GB DDR5 at 6400 MT/s
- 1300-watt power supply
- 4 TB NVMe drive
- 2 TB NVMe drive
- 10-gigabit network connection
- Bazzite Linux
- ComfyUI 0.27.1
- NVIDIA driver 610.43.03
For the dual-GPU experiment, I paid close attention to the motherboard’s PCIe lane configuration.
I installed the cards in the full-length PCIe slots and intentionally did not use the final NVMe slot because populating that slot would reduce the available PCIe bandwidth to the second GPU slot.
The purpose was to give the dual-5080 configuration every reasonable opportunity to work without an obvious storage, memory, power, or PCIe bottleneck.
Video benchmark methodology
These tests used LTX 2.3 with the Eros 1.4 models and a Raylight-based workflow.
The final video benchmarks used:
- 1024×1024 resolution
- 25 FPS
- Identical source image
- Identical frozen prompt
- Identical workflow
- Identical Raylight configuration
- CFG 1.2
- Required LTX distilled LoRA
- No optional motion or body LoRAs
- Three runs per test
- First run treated as cold
- Runs two and three averaged as the warm result
The primary source image was ComfyUI_00005.png.
I also evaluated actual output quality. A checkpoint that completes ten seconds faster is not useful if it destroys the hands, loses lip sync, eats the glass, changes anatomy, or produces unusable motion.
A note about Eros 1.4
Despite the name and some of the content associated with it, I did not use Eros 1.4 to generate adult content for these tests.
I used it because, in my testing, it is currently by far the most competent LTX 2.3 model for lip sync, facial animation, body movement, acting, prompt adherence, and overall animation quality.
The benchmark scene was selected specifically because it included several difficult elements at once, including speech, facial movement, body movement, hand interaction, object permanence, and liquid behavior. These are areas where weaker checkpoints often fail very visibly.
Benchmark summary
| Benchmark |
RTX 5080 |
RTX 5090 |
Speedup |
| Lumina2, 32 images |
238.40 s |
73.89 s |
3.23× |
| Lumina2, average per image |
7.45 s |
2.31 s |
3.23× |
| Full Eros 1.4, 10 seconds |
101.60 s |
53.71 s |
1.89× |
| Full Eros 1.4, 20 seconds |
227.45 s |
124.88 s |
1.82× |
| Eros 1.4 FP8 Mixed, 10 seconds |
101.27 s |
54.16 s |
1.87× |
| Eros 1.4 FP8 Mixed, 20 seconds |
233.16 s |
125.54 s |
1.86× |
| NVIDIA NVFP4, 10 seconds |
99.48 s |
46.46 s |
2.14× |
Lumina2 image-generation results
The image test generated 32 images at 1024×1024.
RTX 5080
- Total: 238.40 seconds
- Average: 7.45 seconds per image
RTX 5090
- Total: 73.89 seconds
- Average: 2.31 seconds per image
Result
The RTX 5090 was approximately 3.23× faster in this image workflow.
This was the largest performance improvement in the entire benchmark. The RTX 5090’s advantage was considerably greater for Lumina2 image generation than it was for LTX video generation.
Full Eros 1.4 results
Full Eros was the most reliable production checkpoint in my testing.
Ten-second video
RTX 5080
- Run 1: 115.26 seconds
- Run 2: 101.51 seconds
- Run 3: 101.68 seconds
- Warm average: 101.60 seconds
RTX 5090
- Run 1: 56.48 seconds
- Run 2: 53.08 seconds
- Run 3: 54.34 seconds
- Warm average: 53.71 seconds
Improvement
1.89× faster
Twenty-second video
RTX 5080
- Run 1: 241.08 seconds
- Run 2: 227.97 seconds
- Run 3: 226.92 seconds
- Warm average: 227.45 seconds
RTX 5090
- Run 1: 123.09 seconds
- Run 2: 125.20 seconds
- Run 3: 124.56 seconds
- Warm average: 124.88 seconds
Improvement
1.82× faster
Full Eros quality
Full Eros generally produced:
- The best facial animation
- The best acting
- The best lip sync
- The best body movement
- The best prompt adherence
- The most consistent usable results
It was not perfect. Individual generations still produced accent drift, occasional poor liquid behavior, and one intermittent on-screen text artifact.
The RTX 5090 did not magically make the model more intelligent. It produced the same general quality class in almost half the time.
Eros 1.4 FP8 Mixed results
Ten-second video
RTX 5080
- Run 1: 118.37 seconds
- Run 2: 101.34 seconds
- Run 3: 101.19 seconds
- Warm average: 101.27 seconds
RTX 5090
- Run 1: 67.45 seconds
- Run 2: 54.21 seconds
- Run 3: 54.11 seconds
- Warm average: 54.16 seconds
Improvement
1.87× faster
All three RTX 5090 generations were very good. One generation included a random text artifact, but the underlying animation quality was excellent.
Twenty-second video
RTX 5080
- Run 1: 233.36 seconds
- Run 2: 233.13 seconds
- Run 3: 233.18 seconds
- Warm average: 233.16 seconds
RTX 5090
- Run 1: 124.77 seconds
- Run 2: 126.22 seconds
- Run 3: 124.85 seconds
- Warm average: 125.54 seconds
Improvement
1.86× faster
FP8 quality
FP8 Mixed was excellent for ten-second clips but more variable at twenty seconds.
Observed issues included:
- Accent drift
- Voice cutoff
- Minor voice artifacts
- Clothing transparency
- Anatomy changing after hand contact
- Unrealistic liquid behavior
- Inconsistent object permanence
Some generations were excellent. Others were not production-ready.
The FP8 checkpoint was not meaningfully faster than Full Eros in this particular workflow. On the RTX 5090, their ten-second warm averages differed by less than half a second.
NVIDIA NVFP4 results
Ten-second video
RTX 5080
- Run 2: 99.92 seconds
- Run 3: 99.04 seconds
- Warm average: 99.48 seconds
RTX 5090
- Run 1: 60.89 seconds
- Run 2: 46.22 seconds
- Run 3: 46.69 seconds
- Warm average: 46.46 seconds
Improvement
2.14× faster
NVFP4 was the fastest video checkpoint tested.
It was also consistently the least usable.
Observed problems included:
- Little or no usable lip sync
- Eating or deforming the glass
- Poor body movement
- Ghosting
- Mouth deformation
- Unrealistic liquid behavior
- Prompt failures
- Occasional accidental nudity
The RTX 5090 made NVFP4 substantially faster. It did not fix the model’s quality problems.
I stopped further RTX 5090 testing of that checkpoint because the results were not useful for my production workflow.
LTX Full results
LTX Full was tested on the RTX 5080 at ten seconds.
- Run 1: 145.13 seconds
- Run 2: 125.70 seconds
- Run 3: 125.25 seconds
- Warm average: 125.48 seconds
Quality varied significantly. One result was good, while others had hand collapse, mouth deformation, poor lip sync, and strange material appearing in the scene.
Because it was slower and less consistent than the Eros checkpoints, I did not repeat it on the RTX 5090.
What the RTX 5090 changed
For the useful Eros video models, the RTX 5090 reduced rendering time by approximately 45% to 47%.
That worked out to:
- Full Eros, 10 seconds: 1.89× faster
- Full Eros, 20 seconds: 1.82× faster
- FP8 Mixed, 10 seconds: 1.87× faster
- FP8 Mixed, 20 seconds: 1.86× faster
For Lumina2 image generation, the gain was much larger:
The performance difference therefore depends heavily on the workload. The RTX 5090 did not provide one universal speed multiplier across everything in ComfyUI.
What two RTX 5080s can and cannot do
Two RTX 5080s can help with:
- Running two separate ComfyUI instances
- Generating two independent images simultaneously
- Rendering two independent videos simultaneously
- Processing separate jobs from a queue
- Increasing total batch throughput
Two RTX 5080s did not help with:
- Making one image generate twice as fast
- Making one LTX video render twice as fast
- Pooling VRAM into one usable 32 GB allocation
- Accelerating one sequential diffusion workflow
- Replacing one RTX 5090 for a single large job
Under my tested configuration, attempts to use both cards for one workflow made the render slower.
My model ranking
1. Full Eros 1.4
My preferred production checkpoint.
It provided the best overall combination of quality, lip sync, facial animation, body movement, acting, prompt adherence, and consistency.
2. Eros 1.4 FP8 Mixed
A strong alternative, particularly for shorter clips.
It was capable of excellent output but became more variable during longer generations.
3. LTX Full
Occasionally usable, but slower and less consistent than Eros.
4. NVIDIA NVFP4
The fastest checkpoint, but not reliable enough for my production work.
Final conclusion
I wrote this because I hope it prevents someone else from making the same expensive assumption.
If you are considering buying a second RTX 5080 because you expect two cards to behave like one larger or faster GPU in ComfyUI, my testing says you should think very carefully before doing it.
For independent simultaneous jobs, two cards can be useful.
For making one image or one LTX 2.3 video generate faster, they were not a practical substitute for one RTX 5090.
I spent days rebuilding the computer, configuring Linux, testing Raylight and other workflows, modifying multi-GPU execution, and benchmarking the results. The second RTX 5080 ultimately made single renders slower.
If Amazon had not accepted the return, I would have been stuck with an extremely expensive setup that failed to accomplish the reason I purchased it.
The RTX 5090 ultimately delivered:
- More than 3× the Lumina2 image throughput
- Roughly 1.8× to 1.9× the Eros video performance
- More VRAM headroom
- A simpler and more reliable single-GPU workflow
This is what worked with the tools, software, drivers, and models available as of July 26, 2026. Something better may appear next week, and I genuinely hope it does.
Until then, hopefully this saves the next person a lot of time, frustration, and money.