Jensen Huang has now proudly shown off its new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 gaming GPU at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas, where we were in attendance. It’s thankfully significantly cheaper than the RTX 4080, and it has a similar core spec, with 16GB of VRAM. We’re confident that there isn’t going to be any “launching” this time around. In this guide, we’ll take you through the RTX 5090 release date, as well as the price and specs of this new graphics card.
While the RTX 5090 takes pride of place as the Nvidia flagship in its new Blackwell gaming GPU lineup, where it’s likely to take the best graphics card medal, the RTX 5080 is half the price. Plus, while Nvidia misjudged the pricing of the original RTX 4080, it (just about) returned to form when it launched the cheaper and faster RTX 4080 Super for $999 at the start of 2024.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 release date
The RTX 5080 release date is Thursday, January 30, 2025, coming just a few weeks after Nvidia unveiled the new GPU at the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas on January 6.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 price
The RTX 5080 price is $999 for the MSRP, which refers to the Nvidia Founders Edition at stock speed. This matches the price of the RTX 4080 Super when it came out, and is also a good $200 cheaper than the original RTX 4080’s price of $1,199.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 specs
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 specifications show it has a similar amount of power to the RTX 4080, with 16GB of VRAM and a 256-bit memory interface, although it also has the benefit of using GDDR7 memory.
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 | |
| CUDA cores | 10,752 |
| Base clock | 2.3GHz |
| Boost clock | 2.62GHz |
| RT cores | 4th-gen, 171 TFLOPS |
| Tensor cores | 5th-gen, 1,801 AI TOPS |
| Interface | 16x PCIe 5.0 |
| VRAM | 16GB 32Gbps GDDR7 |
| Memory interface | 256-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 960GB/s |
| Power draw | 360W |
| Power connector | 1 x 16-pin |
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 will be built on a new architecture, using one of the company’s new Blackwell RTX 50 GPU designs. While the RTX 5090 is rumored to use a large new chip, codenamed GB202, the latest RTX 5080 leaks say that this new graphics card will use a smaller chip, codenamed GB203.
It’s likely that this chip will also be used in other GPUs further down the Nvidia stack, such as the RTX 5070 Ti, with some parts of the GPU disabled, but the RTX 5080 is rumored to use a variant codenamed GB203-400-A1.
Nvidia says that the RTX 5080 will have 10,752 CUDA cores, which is less than half the number of the RTX 5090 although, to be fair, it is half the price. That’s a similar number to the 10,240 CUDA cores found in the current RTX 4080 Super, but they’re dramatically lower than the rumored figures for the RTX 5090. The flagship GPU is rumored to have 21,760 CUDA cores, which is more than double the 10,750 rumored for the RTX 5080.
Similarly, the RTX 5080 has 16GB of GDDR7 memory at launch, and while this will be faster than the GDDR6X VRAM used in the RTX 4080, the amount stays the same. However, a recent leak claims that a 24GB RTX 5080 could be launched later, giving the card a bit more headroom for running games at high resolutions with lots of detail.
What’s more, it’s rumored that this 24GB card would have the same core GPU spec as the 16GB card, a feat that’s now technically possible thanks to the new Samsung 24Gb GDDR7 chip that’s just been announced. This chip has a 3GB capacity in the same package size as a 2GB chip, meaning it could be a drop-in replacement for 16GB cards.
Sadly, though, the memory interface has the same 256-bit width as the RTX 4080, which is disappointing at this price. Given that the RTX 5090 has a 512-bit interface, the RTX 5080 should arguably at least have a 320-bit bus and more VRAM.
On the plus side, the use of GDDR7 VRAM should provide a bit more bandwidth. In fact, Nvidia states that the memory bandwidth is 960GB/s, which isn’t far off the RTX 4090, showing the benefits of the step up to GDDR7.
Finally, the RTX 5080 power draw is 360W, and it requires a 16-pin power connector and at least an 850W PSU.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 benchmarks estimates
Our Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 benchmarks estimate puts the card as slightly faster than the RTX 4080 Super in rasterization, but substantially quicker in ray tracing.
There haven’t been many leaks about RTX 5080 performance yet, but Nvidia claims to have made strides with ray tracing with Blackwell, and one leak has claimed the RTX 5080 ray tracing speed will be even quicker than that of the RTX 4090. This comes from regular tech leaker XpeaGPU, who claimed that the performance of the GB203 GPU rumored to be used in the RTX 5080 is “close to AD102 in raster and faster in RT.”
Over the last few generations, Nvidia’s new GPU architectures have made big strides in ray tracing performance over previous generations, but non-ray traced game performance (rasterization) has improved by a smaller degree. It looks as though this will also be the case with the RTX 5080.
Nvidia is also introducing its new neural rendering techniques with this GPU lineup, as well as DLSS 4, which supports multi-frame frame generation to improve performance further, as long as games support it.
Even with its purportedly low specs, this leak suggests the RTX 5080 will still be faster than the RTX 4090, thanks to the improvements made to the Blackwell architecture. We’ll only know for sure when we’ve had the cards in our hands to test for ourselves, however.
In the meantime, while we wait for the RTX 5080 launch, you can read our full guide to Nvidia DLSS, where we explore what makes Nvidia’s upscaling and frame-generation tech tick.