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Nvidia’s RTX 5080 might not get the generational improvement we’re used to seeing

The competition is going to be tough for the RTX 5080
Last Updated on October 10, 2024
RTX 5080 and 4090 performance
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News about the RTX 5000 series GPUs has started to ramp up as we’re approaching the end of the year, as that is generally when Nvidia drops its next generation of cards. The RTX 4090 was launched in October 2022, and each generation of Nvidia GPUs has a two-year gap, so the timing is right if we take that into consideration.

Many are wondering about the RTX 5090’s release date. Well, early 2025 is looking most likely as of late, and we’ve also gotten a look at the specifications of the RTX 5090 and 5080. The whole lineup boasts new GDDR7 memory, and the RTX 5090 has the most amount of VRAM in a commercial card we’ve ever seen.


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Will the RTX 5080 be able to compete with the RTX 4090? 

According to Benchlife, the specifications of the RTX 5000 series lineup are as follows:

PCBSKUFE/AICModelGPUDRAMBus widthTGP
PG14430FEGeForce RTX 5090GB202-30032GB GDDR7512 bit600W
PG14530AICGeForce RTX 5090GB202-30032GB GDDR7512 bit600W
PG14445FEGeForce RTX 5080GB203-40016GB GDDR7256 bit400W
PG14745AICGeForce RTX 5080GB203-40016GB GDDR7256 bit400W
PG14770AICGeForce RTX 5070GB205-xxx12GB GDDR7192 bit250W

At first glance, we can see how much more buffed up the RTX 5090 is than the RTX 4090, so it should clearly outperform it. However, when we look at the RTX 5080, it almost feels like the VRAM from this card was given to the RTX 5090, why is it still only 16GB? At least give us 20GB like AMD’s 7900 XTX.

Anyway, Benchlife also claims that the RTX 5080 won’t be able to compete with the RTX 4090. Looking at the previous releases, we can see that the RTX xx80 card generally outperformed the previous generation’s flagship GPU.

A quick look at how last gen improved

We’ve tested the RTX 4080 and the RTX 3090 in-house for their reviews, and the performance difference is clear. In Cyberpunk 2077, at 4K resolution and Ray Tracing enabled, the RTX 3090 delivered 22 FPS, while with the same settings, the RTX 4080 managed 28.

Game RTX 4080
(avg FPS @ 4K highest settings, RT off)
RTX 3090
(avg FPS @ 4K highest settings, RT off)
Cyberpunk 20775144
AC Mirage9570
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora9660
Counter-Strike 2173146
Doom Eternal234168
Rasterization gaming benchmarks for RTX 4080 vs RTX 3090

So, if the RTX 5080 has lower performance than the 4090, it’ll most likely be a hot topic as that isn’t what the consumer base is generally used to or expects. The 40-series also got access to DLSS 3 Frame Generation, a huge selling point, and we don’t yet know whether the 50-series will benefit from such a beneficial series-locked feature.

However, the RTX 5080 does at least use GDDR7 memory compared to GDDR6X, which should give it a nice boost in performance. It is also expected to feature higher memory bandwidth and memory clock speed.


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RTX 50 series

Which Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPU are you interested in the most?

Ussamah works as a content writer and editor at BGFG. He is experienced in tech, hardware, gaming, and marketing.