NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 5080 rumored to now launch BEFORE the RTX 5090

NVIDIA will release its next-gen Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 later this year, with rumors flying that the RTX 5090 will launch first... and now we're hearing the RTX 5080 will launch first.

In a post on X, leaker "kopite7kimi" said that rumors of the GeForce RTX 5090 launching first are "not true" and that the GeForce RTX 5080 "should be released first". There is absolutely nothing official from NVIDIA regarding the GeForce RTX 50 series, with recent confirmations from the supply chain that the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 would be launched this year, while the rest of the RTX 50 series GPUs will launch in 2025.

RTX 5080 launching first: I can't see this happening, with the RTX 4090 still on the market and kicking ass, the RTX 5080 should deliver better overall rasterization performance than the RTX 4090, with new GDDR7 and a new GPU architecture, power improvements, and more. The RTX 5090 will trounce the RTX 4080, but launching the RTX 5080 first feels a bit weird.

• Read more: NVIDIA's next-gen RTX 5090, RTX 5080 Laptop GPUs rumored with 16GB VRAM
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• Read more: NVIDIA to unveil top-end GeForce RTX 5090, and high-end RTX 5080 at first later this year

RTX 5090 launching first: This makes the most sense, as it will be the defacto best gaming graphics card on the planet. The GB202-based GeForce RTX 5090 should offer 50-70% more performance in high-end 4K gaming scenarios, far improved ray tracing performance, and hopefully next-gen DLSS 4 upscaling. The RTX 5090 will offer absolutely new levels of performance that the RTX 4090 couldn't do, the BIG card to have at launch is the RTX 5090.

It's expected that NVIDIA will use the GB203 GPU for its RTX 5080, the successor to the AD103 inside of the RTX 4080 (with 96 SMs and 12288 CUDA cores). We should expect a similar CUDA core count but new Blackwell GPU architecture, and next-generation GDDR7 memory on both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 graphics cards.