This new RTX 5080 leak is starting to make me worry

By Monica J. White Published January 6, 2025

The packaging for Nvidia’s RTX 5080 was just leaked mere hours ahead of the official announcement of the RTX 50-series during CES 2025. The packaging confirms a couple of previous leaks, which is great — but it’s the early retail listing, spotted by VideoCardz, that’s making me worry. The pricing implies that, unsurprisingly, one of Nvidia’s best graphics cards might indeed be really expensive.

The initial leak comes from wxnod on X (Twitter). It shows us several boxes of the RTX 5080 stacked on top of each other. These aren’t Nvidia’s own Founders Edition designs, but custom designs made by one of Nvidia’s partners, Gainward. Unfortunately, all the juicy specs are usually tucked away at the back of the box, which we don’t get to see in this image. Still, the box does confirm 16GB of GDDR7 memory for the RTX 5080.

The fact that it’s GDDR7 is no surprise, nor is the memory capacity, as both have been speculated about for quite some time. What still remains to be seen is the memory speed. Some leakers claim that the GPU might get 30Gbps memory modules, which would give it a huge increase in bandwidth over its predecessor. With a 256-bit memory bus, this would add up to 960GB/s of bandwidth, whereas the RTX 4080 sits at 716GB/s.

Already on sale 🤔 https://t.co/4ZB3pMlZwx pic.twitter.com/9IdrXiUGLA

— VideoCardz.com (@VideoCardz) January 6, 2025

The initial leak made it appear as if the boxes were sitting in a warehouse, perhaps preparing to be shipped. This checks out — if Nvidia announces the RTX 5080 later today during its keynote, the GPU should be ready to ship later this month.

However, VideoCardz then spotted a listing from an unknown retailer that made it seem like the cards were already on sale. I haven’t been able to verify this myself, so take it with some skepticism, but if the pricing is true, we really are looking at an expensive RTX 5080. The card is priced at 11,999 Chinese yuan, which converts to around $1,640.

Of course, this won’t be the official recommended listing price (MSRP) for Nvidia’s RTX 5080. Coming from Gainward, the card is bound to be pricier than the Founders Edition version. However, it’s the fact that it’s not even the most expensive RTX 5080 we’ve already seen that’s a little worrying. The card was first spotted at an Australian retailer, and it was ready to be listed for 2,799 Australian dollars — that’s around $1,740. We’ve also seen it appear in expensive prebuilts.

It won’t be long before we know for sure. Nvidia is expected to announce the RTX 5080 tonight, most likely alongside the RTX 5090, during its CES 2025 keynote.