NVIDIA RTX 5080 rumor sparks fears that this GPU could be disappointing - but don't panic yet

NVIDIA's next-gen Blackwell gaming GPUs are keenly anticipated, of course, and while Computex 2024 didn't give us any of the details on RTX 5000 that we wanted, a leaker has stepped into the breach with some fresh nuggets of rumors.

This comes from well-known leaker Kopite7kimi on X (formerly Twitter) who fired off a couple of posts, one of which called NVIDIA's Computex keynote boring, while imparting something more interesting - the mentioned purported details on GB202 and GB203 - in a further tweet (can we still call them tweets?).

Kopite7kimi tells us that we will only see GB202 and GB203, the GPUs for the RTX 5090 and 5080 respectively, this year - and all the other Blackwell graphics cards are coming next year. (At least that's what we expect the leaker means by outside the short term).

The leaker then notes that "GB203 is not 6*8, but 7*6" referring to the GPC count and the RTX 5080 having fewer cores than expected, an eighth fewer in fact - the upshot being that instead of the previously rumored 96 SMs, we will get 84 SMs.

Not the full story

Before we get carried away, though, we should remember this is just a rumor (mind you, so is the original assertion). Also, the core count ending up a bit lighter than expected isn't the full story either, as architectural gains and clocks are not taken into account - NVIDIA could still have an impressive GPU in the works for the xx80 space with Blackwell.

Furthermore, even if performance is relatively toned down compared to Lovelace, again, that's not the full story - NVIDIA's plan could be to bring the pricing down on the RTX 5080 to something much more realistic.

Too much of a stretch? Well, yes, we find it difficult to believe that, too, but you never know we guess, stranger things have happened (like announcing an RTX 4080 12GB and then immediately canceling it, ahem).

Although the price drop theory doesn't hold up quite so well when you consider that AMD won't have a rival for the RTX 5080 with its next-gen RDNA 4 offerings, which top out at the mid-range, as has long been rumored (and we doubt that's wrong at this point).

Still, the value proposition of the RTX 5080 must make some kind of sense if NVIDIA is pulling in the reins more with its tier-two GPU, so we're not going to worry overly about Kopite7kimi's somewhat negative hints dropped here.

According to recent rumors, we might see the RTX 5080 arriving first from NVIDIA (though perhaps only a nose ahead of the RTX 5090), and the GPU might only be a few months away...