10 hours Ago By Anthony Garreffa
NVIDIA will reportedly launch its new GeForce RTX 5080 16GB graphics card first, with the ultra-enthusiast GeForce RTX 5090 32GB launches after. In a new post from Wccftech, we're learning that after the CES 2025 reveal of NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" desktop gaming GPUs, the second-fastest card -- the RTX 5080 16GB -- will launch first. NVIDIA is expected to announce the GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 at CES 2025, alongside the RTX 5070 series (RTX 5070 Ti + RTX 5070) and then the RTX 5060 comes later.
The first Blackwell gaming GPU to launch will be the GeForce RTX 5080 which will feature 16GB of new GDDR7 memory clocked at up to 32Gbps (30Gbps is expected) on a 256-bit memory bus, which will result in up to 960GB/sec of memory bandwidth, which means the RTX 5080 has virtually as much memory bandwidth as the current-gen flagship RTX 4090 24GB. NVIDIA launched its GeForce RTX 4090 into retail before the RTX 4080 and sold like hotcakes, because it offered a huge performance lead over every piece of GPU silicon on the planet, but was also a hefty amount faster than the RTX 4080. NVIDIA would be escaping this issue if the RTX 5080 16GB launches first -- and it'll beat the RTX 4080, RTX 4080 SUPER, and equal or beat the RTX 4090 depending on the game -- leaving the monster ultra-enthusiast RTX 5090 32GB for the weeks later (and it'll still sell like hotcakes).
20,000+ CUDA cores : With a rumored 21,760 CUDA cores, we're looking at a big upgrade over the 16,384 inside of the RTX 4090. Not just more CUDA cores, but upgraded Blackwell GPU architecture cores over the current Ada Lovelace GPU cores inside of the RTX 4090. 32GB of next-gen GDDR7 memory : NVIDIA is the first to use the ultra-fast GDDR7 memory standard, with the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 pegged to have an incredible 32GB of GDDR7 memory.
This is another big upgrade over the RTX 4090 which has 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Up to 2.0TB/sec memory bandwidth : We're hearing that the RTX 5090 will have a monster 512-bit memory bus, which enables an insane ceiling of up to 2.
0TB/sec of memory bandwidth if the RTX 5090 uses 32Gbps GDDR7 memory modules. Another giant upgrade over the RTX 4090 which has 1.0TB/sec of memory bandwidth in comparison.
600W of power : Another big upgrade for the RTX 5090 is the 600W of power, which is another 150W of power on top of the 450W TDP of the RTX 4090. We did see custom models and overclocked RTX 4090 cards pushing up to 600W+ of power, but the RTX 5090 is going to be another level again on top of that. Hopefully we see 600W+++ custom AIB models of the RTX 5090.
4K performance : NVIDIA's next-generation ultimate gaming GPU in the GeForce RTX 5090 should have 50-70% more performance across the board compared to the RTX 4090, especially at the higher-end 4K resolution. 4K 120FPS gaming should be an even easier achievement for the RTX 5090 than it is for the RTX 4090. We've got 4K 240FPS coming this year and in 2025, so the RTX 5090 will be the GPU of choice for 4K 240FPS gaming in the future.
RT performance : This is where the biggest performance improvements of the next-gen Blackwell-based GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs will come: ray tracing. Expect some rather large 2-3x performance gains using RT, probably 4x or more in some cases with the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 against their RTX 40 series counterparts. Throw new DLSS 4 on top, and you've got some wowzers RT performance.
DLSS 4 : This is probably my personal favorite part of the excitement of next-gen GPUs from NVIDIA, AI-powered upscaling with a next-gen DLSS 4 that works only on the new Blackwell-based RTX 50 series GPUs. We should expect even higher image quality than offered by DLSS 3.x and new levels of performance with DLSS 4 enabled on a new RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 graphics card.
Power efficiency : NVIDIA's current-gen GeForce RTX 4090 can use anywhere between 450W and 600W of power depending on the model and overclocking, but the new GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs will offer far more performance-per-watt of the leading RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 SUPER graphics cards. Another exciting part to see unravel in the near future..
