Nvidia’s RTX 5080 repeats the mistakes of the previous generation
Although we know the MSRP of the Nvidia RTX 5080, the cards made by Nvidia's partners are going to cost a whole lot more.
FrankLin
Nvidia
Nvidia’s RTX 5080 is almost here, and some retailers started sharing the first listings ahead of time, which is why we now know how much the GPU will really cost. Arriving with a $999 recommended list price (MSRP), the card is surely set to rival some of the best graphics cards, but unfortunately, it will also repeat the mistake that made the RTX 4080 fairly unpopular when it was first launched.
Both the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 are hitting the shelves this Thursday, January 30. While the 5090 sits at an outrageous $2,000, the RTX 5080 seemed more reasonable at just $999. Unfortunately, that price will only be real if you snag one of Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards — at least if these Best Buy listings are anything to go by. Although they appear to have been taken down, VideoCardz spotted them first, which is why we now know what Gigabyte is plotting for the RTX 5080.
The prices for the RTX 5080 range from $999 for Gigabyte’s Windforce OC small form factor model, all the way up to $1,400 for the Xtreme Waterforce model, which features built-in liquid cooling. Out of a total of eight different listings, one of which was the Founders Edition GPU, only two were priced at MSRP. From there, it’s a big jump — the next variant bumps the price up to $1,200, which is the price that the RTX 4080 initially launched with.
Best Buy / VideoCardzThese margins are bound to affect the card’s value. If the RTX 5080 will be next to impossible to pick up at MSRP, it’ll create a similar situation to the RTX 4080, where the price and the performance just didn’t add up. The market course-corrected over time and the RTX 4080 was often found under MSRP; later on, Nvidia itself fixed its previous mistake by pricing the RTX 4080 Super at $999.
Still, the MSRP means very little if Nvidia’s partners add up to $400 to the initial price tag. Rumor has it that they didn’t have much of a choice, as Nvidia is said to be selling the cards to its add-in board (AIB) partners at nearly the same price as the MSRP, so to turn a profit, they needed to mark them up. However, we have no way to confirm this, so take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. Many people are also saying that the cards will have limited supply, so scalpers may buy them out before anyone else gets to.
The RTX 5080 will have one dubious advantage over the previous generation — gamers will have nowhere else to turn to in that performance bracket. The RTX 5090 will be wildly more expensive, and the RTX 4090 can’t be found under $2,700 right now. AMD also won’t have an answer to the RTX 5080 in RDNA 4, so it’s basically the RTX 5080 or nothing, unless you want to scale down to the RTX 5070 Ti, starting at $750.
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
Nvidia says the RTX 5080 is ‘about’ 15% faster than the RTX 4080 without DLSS
Nvidia made some bold claims about its RTX 50-series GPUs when they were announced earlier this month, saying that the new range can outclass their previous-gen counterparts with twice the performance. Although Nvidia's new lineup might be among the best graphics cards when they launch, the vast majority of the extra performance comes on the back of the new DLSS Multi-Frame Generation feature that's exclusive to RTX 50-series GPUs.
During Nvidia's Editor's Day for Blackwell GPUs at CES 2025, GeForce desktop product manager Justin Walker said that the RTX 5080 was about 15% faster than the RTX 4080 without DLSS 4, and that the RTX 5070 would be about 20% faster than the RTX 4070 without the feature. Nvidia didn't provide hard performance numbers for any of the new GPUs it's releasing, so pay careful attention to the "about" at the start of that statement. Walker provided a general impression of the generational uplift you can expect, but it's important to wait for reviews before drawing any conclusions about the new cards.
The RTX 5060 will be Nvidia’s most important GPU, and I’m worried about it
Nvidia just finished revealing its range of new RTX 50-series GPUs, the first of which will arrive in just a couple of weeks. They're some of the best graphics cards ever made, according to Nvidia, and for the flagship RTX 5090 that clocks in at $2,000, I believe the company. Lower down the stack, however, I'm concerned.
For the past couple of years, there's been a growing issue surrounding graphics cards with 8GB of VRAM, which is something we've seen on full display with games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Despite backlash in the previous generation concerning releases like the RTX 4060 Ti, I'm worried that Nvidia will repeat the mistakes of the past when the RTX 5060 inevitably rolls around.
It'll be popular
Nvidia won CES 2025, and the RTX 5090 has nothing to do with it
Great, here's the entitled journalist telling me that the $2,000 graphics card won CES 2025. I've seen plenty of strong opinions about Nvidia's CES announcements online, but even ignoring the bloated price of the new RTX 5090, Nvidia won this year's show. And it kind of won by default. Between Intel's barebones announcements and an overstuffed AMD presentation that ignored what might be AMD's most important GPU launch ever, it's not surprising that Team Green came out ahead.
But that's despite the insane price of the RTX 5090, not because of it.
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