Specs, Release Date and Price

After months of agonizing anticipation, Nvidia has lastly introduced the RTX 5080, together with the remainder of the Blackwell lineup, together with the RTX 5090, RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 at CES 2025. We’ll lastly have the ability to get our arms on the next-generation graphics card on January 30. Until then, Nvidia has revealed the total specs of the cardboard so we will get a tough thought of what to anticipate when it makes its means right into a gaming PC close to you.

Nvidia RTX 5080 launch date

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 launches January 30, 2025, together with its larger sibling, the RTX 5090. Nvidia has additionally introduced the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti, although these do not have a particular launch date – although we will count on them by March.

As for the laptop computer model of the RTX 5080, Nvidia claims availability will ‘begin in March’, although that’s going to largely rely on the laptop computer producers. it may very well be April earlier than we see the likes of Alienware, MSI and Asus work the RTX 5080 into their next-generation laptops.

Nvidia RTX 5080 value

When Nvidia unveiled the RTX 5080, it revealed a beginning value of $999 for the RTX 5080, with third occasion playing cards possible being way more costly, relying on how fancy their coolers and options are.

While I do not understand how possible it’s going to be to get an RTX 5080 for $999 when it hits the road, it’s a considerably decrease launch value than the RTX 4080, which launched for $1,199 again in 2022. That’s stunning, when you think about the RTX 5090 noticed a value soar from $1,599 to $1,99 – additionally a beginning value.

As for the lower-tier playing cards, the RTX 5070 Ti will begin at $749, with the RTX 5070 beginning at $549.

Getting a gaming laptop computer with an RTX 5080 goes to be fairly a bit dearer, in fact, as you are shopping for a complete system as a substitute of a single element. During the keynote at CES, Nvidia claims programs will begin at $2,199, with extra premium programs possible getting a considerable value bump. With these gaming laptops, although, remember that they’re going to be a lot much less performant than the equal desktop GPU. My normal rule of thumb, with out seeing testing, is that the laptop computer GPU is the equal of two tiers down. So, for example, the RTX 5090 cellular will possible carry out on the degree of the desktop RTX 5070, with the RTX 5080 possible matching a desktop RTX 5060 – even when that hasn’t even been introduced but.

Nvidia RTX 5080 specs

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 is constructed on the Blackwell structure that Nvidia’s been utilizing to energy Supercomputers for the previous 12 months or so. While I’m not fortunate sufficient to to check a knowledge heart GPU in Cyberpunk, Nvidia is making some lofty claims concerning the efficiency of this structure, particularly in relation to AI efficiency, which is necessary for upscaling in fashionable PC video games.

This graphics card sports activities 10,752 CUDA cores throughout 84 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs). That’s truly a uncooked enhance over the RTX 4080, which solely sported 9,728 shaders. Assuming every Blackwell-based CUDA core has a big IPC enchancment over their last-gen counterparts, this enhance in cores may imply considerably higher efficiency.

Of course, every SM has extra than simply CUDA cores. Nvidia hasn’t launched the chip format, however assuming Blackwell has the same format to Ada Lovelace, every SM ought to have 4 Tensor Cores, which might make for a complete of 336 Tensor Cores. Each SM additionally encompasses a RT Core, which powers Ray Tracing. Nvidia is claiming a theoretical 1,801 TOPS of AI efficiency via the Tensor Cores and 171 Teraflops of ray tracing efficiency via the RT cores.

Finally, the RTX 5080 sports activities 16GB of GDDR7 reminiscence on a 256-bit bus. Because the RTX 5000 sequence are the primary graphics playing cards to ever use GDDR7, I don’t know what impression this may have on efficiency, however it needs to be a lot sooner than the GDDR6X on the RTX 4080 – although solely time will inform.

Nvidia RTX 5080 efficiency

When Jensen Huang took the stage at CES 2025 along with his flashy new jacket, he made some lofty claims about RTX 5090 efficiency, and even claimed that the RTX 5070 would match the RTX 4090. he supported these claims with benchmarks utilizing the brand new DLSS 4, which coincidentally will not run on RTX 4000 playing cards, so it’s best to take them with a grain of salt.

The fact of the matter is that I don’t know how briskly these graphics playing cards are, and I will not have a transparent image till I get them within the lab to truly check them in a managed setting. Nvidia additionally made actually lofty claims of gen-on-gen efficiency when it launched the RTX 4080, and that did not prove so effectively for Team Green. Luckily, with the RTX 5080 launching on January 30, we can’t have to attend lengthy to see what they’ve in retailer.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC parts queen. You can observe her @Jackiecobra