The packaging for Nvidia’s RTX 5080 was just leaked mere hours ahead of the official announcement of the RTX 50-series during CES 2025. The packaging confirms a couple of previous leaks, which is great — but it’s the early retail listing, spotted by VideoCardz, that’s making me worry. The pricing implies that, unsurprisingly, one of Nvidia’s best graphics cards might indeed be really expensive.
The initial leak comes from wxnod on X (Twitter). It shows us several boxes of the RTX 5080 stacked on top of each other. These aren’t Nvidia’s own Founders Edition designs, but custom designs made by one of Nvidia’s partners, Gainward. Unfortunately, all the juicy specs are usually tucked away at the back of the box, which we don’t get to see in this image. Still, the box does confirm 16GB of GDDR7 memory for the RTX 5080. The fact that it’s GDDR7 is no surprise, nor is the memory capacity, as both have been speculated about for quite some time. What still remains to be seen is the memory speed. Some leakers claim that the GPU might get 30Gbps memory modules, which would give it a huge increase in bandwidth over its predecessor. With a 256-bit memory bus, this would add up to 960GB/s of bandwidth, whereas the RTX 4080 sits at 716GB/s.
The initial leak made it appear as if the boxes were sitting in a warehouse, perhaps preparing to be shipped. This checks out — if Nvidia announces the RTX 5080 later today during its keynote, the GPU should be ready to ship later this month. However, VideoCardz then spotted a listing from an unknown retailer that made it seem like the cards were already on sale. I haven’t been able to verify this myself, so take it with some skepticism, but if the pricing is true, we really are looking at an expensive RTX 5080. The card is priced at 11,999 Chinese yuan, which converts to around $1,640. Of course, this won’t be the official recommended listing price (MSRP) for Nvidia’s RTX 5080. Coming from Gainward, the card is bound to be pricier than the Founders Edition version. However, it’s the fact that it’s not even the most expensive RTX 5080 we’ve already seen that’s a little worrying. The card was first spotted at an Australian retailer, and it was ready to be listed for 2,799 Australian dollars — that’s around $1,740. We’ve also seen it appear in expensive prebuilts.
It won’t be long before we know for sure. Nvidia is expected to announce the RTX 5080 tonight, most likely alongside the RTX 5090, during its CES 2025 keynote.
What’s happened? Asus just launched a new limited edition GPU, and it’ll most likely top every ranking of the best graphics cards. The GPU in question is the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090 – 30th Anniversary Limited Edition. This GPU is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It sports a whole new take on cooling and ups the power headroom by a whole lot compared to the (already beastly) RTX 5090.
What’s happened? AMD’s quietly launched RX 9060 just appeared in a benchmark, and it’s set to rival one of the best GPUs for budget builds. A new report says the Radeon RX 9060 (non-XT) outpaces GeForce RTX 5050 by ~19% and lands “almost on par” with RTX 5060 in early testing.
While I already own one of the best graphics cards, it’s hard to deny that I’m always looking for upgrades. Or rather, always telling myself I don’t quite need to upgrade just yet, and then still staring at all sorts of new benchmarks, and then doing a quick GPU price check just in case … What can I say, I love a new GPU release. It’s no wonder that the idea of the rumored RTX 50-series refresh excites me, then. Leakers claim we’re looking at huge VRAM upgrades — something that many gamers need right now. However, there are a few things that worry me, making me reconsider whether the RTX 50 Super will be worth waiting for.
