NVIDIA will reportedly launch the GeForce RTX 5080 ahead of the RTX 5090 to allow for a global Blackwell launch, including China. Following US sanctions on selling the RTX 4090 (and its equivalents) in China, the chipmaker wants to include one of its largest user bases in the first RTX 50-series release. The launch window is still a mystery, but late Q3 or Q4 2024 is the most likely target.
Earlier this week, it was reported that NVIDIA will launch the RTX 5080 ahead of the 5090, a move not many anticipated. There’s little we know about the 80-class Blackwell graphics card.
According to rumors, the GeForce RTX 5080 will feature the GB203 GPU which is half as big as the GB202. It will pack around ~10,000 shaders paired with 16GB of GDDR7 graphics memory across a 256-bit bus. The performance deficit versus the 5090 should be similar to the 4080-4090 delta. It is expected to deliver higher frame rates than the RTX 4090, at least in ray-traced workloads. Much of the performance gains will come from the faster GDDR7 memory and IPC advancements.
The mobility RTX 5080 and 5090 are based on the same die, the GB203. Usually, the 80-class laptop GPU leverages the xx204 die, as with the RTX 4080 mobile, which leveraged the AD104 core, while the 4090 mobile was based on AD103. However, with Blackwell, the RTX 5080 and 5090 mobile will both be derived from the GB203, implying similar performance with a smaller compute, memory, and bandwidth deficit.
Via: Moore’s Law is Dead.
