The Nvidia RTX 5090 is the most power Blackwell GPU among the 50-series launch cards. The card supports DLSS 4 with a massive 21,760 CUDA cores and 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, but draws up to 575W of power.

Nvidia followed up the most powerful GPU it’s ever made, the RTX 5090, with this — the RTX 5080. It’s half the price, and it offers around 70% of the performance. That should be a good thing, but the RTX 5080 falls short when compared to Nvidia’s last-gen offerings that still rank among the best graphics cards.

It’s disappointing to see Nvidia has stuck with 16GB of VRAM on the RTX 5080. AMD’s RX 7900 XTX offers 24GB, and while the RTX 5080 delivers better performance for now, it may well hit video memory limits in 4K gaming in the future.

The best argument for grabbing a 5080 right now, if you can find one at $999 in the first place, is that the only cards that come close to its performance are either way more expensive than they're supposed to be (the 4080 Super) or not cheap enough to justify the Nvidia-specific features you give up (AMD's Radeon 7900 XTX).

GPU maker NVIDIA has warned consumers that the stock of its forthcoming RTX 5090 and 5080 cards will be limited. Some gamers are even camping out to get one.

Some gamers are already camping out during one of the coldest times in the year to get their hands on a $2,000 graphics card.