NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition Video Card Review

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is NVIDIA’s next-generation graphics card featuring the new Blackwell architecture with an MSRP of $999. The GeForce RTX 5080 is the second GPU in NVIDIA’s new RTX 50 Series lineup, a tier-down from the flagship enthusiast GeForce RTX 5090, aimed at providing improved gaming performance with new technologies like DLSS 4, Neural Shaders, and Mega Geometry and Multi-Framegen.

Today we are going to review the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition with a focus on the gameplay experience, with some 4K raster performance, 1440p Ray Tracing performance, as well as DLSS Upscaling performance. The GeForce RTX 5080 will be available on shelves on January 30th, alongside the new GeForce RTX 5090.

While the GeForce RTX 5090 is the flagship and sits at the top at $1,999 the GeForce RTX 5080 actually slots in at half that price, at $999, and quite a cut-down specification as well. In fact, the chasm that exists between the GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090 in specifications is the largest that has existed yet, pretty much cut in half from the RTX 5090 in almost every way. If you want to see how the GeForce RTX 5090 Overclocks, make sure to check out our review as well.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 utilizes the GB203 GPU based on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture and is the successor to the GeForce RTX 4080/SUPER based on the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture. The GB203 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is based on the TSMC 4nm 4N NVIDIA custom process, which is the same as the previous generation Ada Lovelace. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 supports a PCI-Express 5.0 (Gen5) interface.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 consists of 7 GPCs, 42 TPCs, and 84 SMs with 128 CUDA Cores per SM. When you add all this up, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 has 10,752 CUDA Cores, 336 5th Gen Tensor Cores, 84 4th Gen RT Cores, 112 ROPs and 336 Texture Units. The L1 Data Cache/Shared memory size is 10752KB, and the L2 cache size is 65536KB. The GPU Boost Clock is set at 2617MHz. Memory consists of 16GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit memory bus at 30Gbps giving it 960GB/s of memory bandwidth. The TGP (Total Graphics Power) is 360W.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition design matches the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition design using NVIDIA’s new dual-blow-through design. The GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition is a true 2-slot design and measures exactly 304mm (12 inches), in length, 137mm (5.4 inches) in width, and 48mm (1.9 inches) in height, or slot depth. This means it measures exactly the same dimensions as the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, which means both of them measure the same dimensions as the GeForce RTX 4090 FE and RTX 4080/SUPER except in slot-depth, which these are slimmer. The GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition also feels lighter than the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

Everything that is true about the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition design is true about the GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition design. With the dual-flow-through design, both fans blow through the heatsink and fins, which extend out from the center where the small PCB and GPU sit. The GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition also uses the 12VHPWR 2×6 (16-pin) connector and comes with a flexible adapter for 3x 8-pin connectors. NVIDIA recommends an 850W PSU, and the video card’s TDP is 360W. This means you can use power supplies with a 450W 16-pin power cable, you don’t need the higher 600W rated one, though it certainly won’t hurt.

Similar to the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, there is some LED lighting on the GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition. The GeForce RTX logo lights up on the top, and it has the familiar “X” design on the front.

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