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 be capable to get our fingers on the next-generation graphics card on January 30. Till then, Nvidia has revealed the complete specs of the cardboard so we will get a tough concept of what to anticipate when it makes its manner 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 haven’t got 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 depend upon 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 worth
When Nvidia unveiled the RTX 5080, it revealed a beginning worth of $999 for the RTX 5080, with third social gathering playing cards probably being rather more costly, relying on how fancy their coolers and options are.
Whereas I do not understand how probably it’s going to be to get an RTX 5080 for $999 when it hits the road, it’s a considerably decrease launch worth than the RTX 4080, which launched for $1,199 again in 2022. That is shocking, when you think about the RTX 5090 noticed a worth leap from $1,599 to $1,99 – additionally a beginning worth.
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, after all, as you are shopping for a complete system as an alternative of a single element. Throughout the keynote at CES, Nvidia claims programs will begin at $2,199, with extra premium programs probably getting a considerable worth bump. With these gaming laptops, although, remember the fact 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, as an illustration, the RTX 5090 cell will probably carry out on the degree of the desktop RTX 5070, with the RTX 5080 probably 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 yr or so. Whereas I am not fortunate sufficient to to check an information middle GPU in Cyberpunk, Nvidia is making some lofty claims concerning the efficiency of this structure, particularly with regards to AI efficiency, which is vital for upscaling in trendy PC video games.
This graphics card sports activities 10,752 CUDA cores throughout 84 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs). That is 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.
In fact, every SM has extra than simply CUDA cores. Nvidia hasn’t launched the chip format, however assuming Blackwell has an analogous format to Ada Lovelace, every SM ought to have 4 Tensor Cores, which might make for a complete of 336 Tensor Cores. Every SM additionally incorporates a RT Core, which powers Ray Tracing. Nvidia is claiming a theoretical 1,801 TOPS of AI efficiency by the Tensor Cores and 171 Teraflops of ray tracing efficiency by the RT cores.
Lastly, the RTX 5080 sports activities 16GB of GDDR7 reminiscence on a 256-bit bus. As a result of the RTX 5000 sequence are the primary graphics playing cards to ever use GDDR7, I do not know what influence it will have on efficiency, nevertheless it needs to be a lot quicker 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 you need to take them with a grain of salt.
The reality of the matter is that I do not 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 nicely for Staff Inexperienced. Fortunately, with the RTX 5080 launching on January 30, we cannot have to attend lengthy to see what they’ve in retailer.
Jackie Thomas is the {Hardware} and Shopping for Guides Editor at IGN and the PC parts queen. You may observe her @Jackiecobra
