Rumors about Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs are coming thick and fast as we approach the CES 2025 trade show, when Nvidia is expected to unveil its latest graphics cards. According to this latest rumor, the first Nvidia GPU of the new RTX 5000-series to reach the general public won’t be the top-spec RTX 5090, but will instead be the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, with the flagship 5090 card launching later.
If past performance is a reliable yardstick, these hotly anticipated new Nvidia GPUs will be used on some of the best graphics cards that you can buy when they launch. The RTX 5090 is expected to replace the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 at the top of the food chain, with the RTX 5080 sitting just below it. These new RTX 5000-series GPUs are expected to be unveiled at the CES 2025 trade show in early January.
That timescale isn’t expected to change right now, but new information reported by Wccftech suggests that the RTX 5080 will reach retailer shelves first. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this timescale mentioned, however, with notorious hardware leaker kopite7kimi commenting several months ago that the RTX 5080 launch date would end up coming first.
The report by Wccftech suggests the RTX 5080 will be available “in the middle of January,” with the RTX 5090 launching “just a few weeks apart” from the RTX 5080. That would mean both cards are expected to become available by February 2025. Further cards, including the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5070, and RTX 5060, would then launch later.
Unfortunately, we don’t expect to see any official confirmation until Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech on Monday, January 6, 2025, when he’s expected to unveil at least a part of this new GPU lineup. Further information from Videocardz, meanwhile, suggests that CES 2025 will be “primarily focused” on the RTX 5080 launch, although Nvidia is still expected to showcase the RTX 5090 as well.
If Nvidia plans to launch the RTX 5080 first, then it wouldn’t be entirely unexpected. Earlier GPU launches, such as the Nvidia RTX 3000-series, saw the RTX 3080 launch before the flagship RTX 3090, as did the RTX 2080 before the 2080 Ti during the RTX 2000-series launch.
That doesn’t mean that the RTX 5080 isn’t going to be powerful, even if it isn’t expected as mighty as the 5090. Rumors point to the RTX 5080 having 10,752 CUDA cores, spread across 84 Nvidia Streaming Multiprocessor units – a big increase over the 9,728 CUDA cores in the RTX 4080 that it’s set to replace.
Meanwhile, earlier RTX 5080 memory bandwidth rumors suggest that it will ship with 32Gbps GDDR7 VRAM, which is expected to be 52% faster than the 21Gbps GDDR6X VRAM used in both the RTX 4090 and 4080. However, the amount of VRAM supplied in the RTX 5080 isn’t completely clear at the moment, with a 16GB option, as well as a potential 24GB RTX 5080, reported as potential options so far.
We’ve got just two weeks to go until Huang’s CES 2025 speech when we’ll learn for sure what Nvidia has in store for us in this brand-new graphics card lineup. Neither the RTX 5080 or 5090 is likely to be cheap. For example, rumored RTX 5090 pricing suggests the flagship card will start at $1,999, with third-party cards typically priced higher.
While you wait for the launch, check out our RTX 5000 guide for all of the latest rumors and information about Nvidia’s next GPU launch. You can also check out our RTX 5090 guide for everything we’ve heard so far about the next-gen flagship.