Nvidia’s RTX 5080 might be outrageously expensive

By Monica J. White Published December 27, 2024

We’re mere days away from Nvidia officially announcing the RTX 50-series. Many leakers have already shared information about the specs of Nvidia’s upcoming best graphics cards, but the pricing has remained a mystery — until now. Vex, a YouTuber, just shared a claim about the pricing of Nvidia’s RTX 5080, and it looks like we might have a repeat of the previous generation on our hands, and then some.

Before we dive in, here’s the obligatory disclaimer: We have no way of verifying the credibility of this leak. Vex was reportedly contacted by someone who works for an Australian retailer, and that person provided a screenshot listing many Asus RTX 5080 graphics cards, along with some basic specs and pricing. It could be true, and it could be fake — we just don’t know right now. One thing is certain, though: If this is real, it’s not good news for gamers.

The RTX 5080 is listed with 16GB of memory in the screenshot, which aligns with previous leaks, although it’s unclear if it’ll use faster VRAM modules as some have said. The full listing is for the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5080 16GB OC, meaning an overclocked card.

Then, there are the prices. The first row lists the purchase price — meaning how much this Australian retailer had to pay to buy the card from Asus. The second row is the actual list price, meaning how much you’d be paying to buy one of these GPUs. The purchase price is at 2,544 Australian dollars, and the list price sits at a staggering 2,799 Australian dollars.

Fortunately, exchange rates make that pricing sound a lot scarier than it actually is. Converting from Australian dollars to U.S. dollars reveals that the purchase price is around $1,581 at the time of writing, and the sale price is around $1,740. It’s also important to note that these prices include sales tax, which wouldn’t be included in the U.S.

No matter how you spin it, $1,740 for an RTX 5080 sounds like a lot. Some rumors pin the performance of the 5080 at around the same level as the 4090, but it might fall short of that expectation, which would make that pricing even harder to swallow.

We’ve already seen signs of the RTX 5080 potentially being a pricey affair. Take this leaked Acer Predator Orion listing, for example — the version with the RTX 5080 was priced at around $3,640. However, not all hope is lost.

Even if we assume all of the above is true and this unnamed Australian retailer will soon be selling the RTX 5080 for the equivalent of $1,740, we have to account for the fact that this is a card made by Asus, and an overclocked one at that. Nvidia’s recommended list price (MSRP) is likely to be set at a more conservative level; its board partners tend to push the prices up by an extra couple of hundred dollars. The Founders Edition, as well as non-OC versions, are bound to be cheaper.

Nvidia’s RTX 4080 launched with a $1,200 price tag, and many thought that to be too much. The Super variant fixed that problem, pushing the price down to $1,000. Could Nvidia then turn around and bring it back up to $1,200 to $1,500 for the RTX 5080? I hope not. We’ll find out more on January 6 when Nvidia officially announces the graphics card.