The latest Nvidia RTX 5090 specs rumour makes the ol' RTX 4090 look like a goddam clown card

HardwareGraphics CardsThe latest Nvidia RTX 5090 specs rumour makes the ol' RTX 4090 look like a goddam clown cardWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition

If the recently rumoured specs for the new Nvidia RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards are indeed true we’re looking at a flagship GPU with a terrifying amount of processing power and a second-tier chip that’s already pissing off a lot of gaming folk.

GeForce RTX 5090PG144/145-SKU30GB202-300-A121760FP32512-bit GDDR7 32G600WSeptember 26, 2024

GeForce RTX 5080PG144/147-SKU45GB203-400-A110752FP32256-bit GDDR7 16G400WSeptember 26, 2024

The latest spec ‘leak’ has come from more or less reliable X leaker,kopite7kimi, and tells a story of one almighty RTX 5090, with a specs bump that gives it a mouth-watering amount of TSMC-built tech in a single graphics card. And reportedly still a two-slot reference card at that.

It’s going to make theRTX 4090look like a clown card in more ways than one. That Founders Edition is a mammoth graphics card that still makes me laugh every single time I slot it into the test rig in the office, such is its vast, novelty-GPU size. That’s going to be going against what is reportedly going to be a dual-slot card will make it look even more outsized. And that’s before you get to talk about the conversely mammoth spec of the reported new GPU. With 21,760 CUDA cores (effective FP32 units)—that’s still not utilising the full GB202 complement of cores—it’s a hefty 33% increase in core count over the RTX 4090, which itself had over 50% more cores than theRTX 3090.

Then the new Nvidia Blackwell flagship GeForce card is reportedly going to be flexing with a 512-bit aggregated memory bus and a full 32 GB of GDDR7 memory. And, guess what, that makes for a 33% increase in both memory and memory bus, too. The increased power numbers (presumably the TGP of the card) suggests a 600 W peak, which, if you’ve been following the maths, also hits that seemingly magic 33% mark.

I wonder what sort of performance improvement Nvidia is going to be touting with its new card? Surely it’s got to do better than 33%? In our testing, the RTX 4090 was, on average, 72% faster than the RTX 3090 in our 4K gaming tests. So, I’m kinda hoping it’s more in line with the memory bandwidth uplift instead.

Because one of the few numbers which doesn’t follow the plus-one-third trend is memory bandwidth the RTX 5090 is supposedly going to have at its disposal. With both that 512-bit bus and the use of 28 Gbps GDDR7, we are looking at 1,792 GB/s in terms of raw memory bandwidth, that’s a pretty incroyable 78% increase over the RTX 4090.

Quite how Nvidia is going to squeeze all that extra power into a dual-slot GPU design, I really don’t know. The rumours are that we’re only looking at a modest change in process node—N4P versus N4 for the Ada generation—so that’s not going to get you running much cooler. So, we could be looking at a very special Founders Edition indeed, potentially some kind of liquid-cooled beastie.

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Doubtless the third-party GPU vendors are still likely to be tacking monstrous coolers to their own versions, and I doubt subsequent RTX 50-series Founders Edition cards would get a similar treatment. Though, who knows.

Given that it’s twice the GPU of the rumoured RTX 5080, which is likely to ship at the same $1,000 mark as theRTX 4080 Super, that all kinda follows.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyHeader Cell - Column 0Nvidia RTX 5090Nvidia RTX 5080Nvidia RTX 4090Nvidia RTX 4080 SuperGPUGB202-300GB203-400AD102-300AD103-400CUDA Cores21,760107521638410240SMs1708412880Memory32 GB GDDR716 GB GDDR724 GB GDDR6X16 GB GDDR6XMemory bus512-bit256-bit384-BIT256-bitMemory bandwidth1792 GB/s896 GB/s1008 GB/s736 GB/sTGP600 W400 W450 W320 WRow 7 - Cell 0* rumoured specsRow 7 - Cell 2Row 7 - Cell 3Row 7 - Cell 4

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Header Cell - Column 0Nvidia RTX 5090Nvidia RTX 5080Nvidia RTX 4090Nvidia RTX 4080 SuperGPUGB202-300GB203-400AD102-300AD103-400CUDA Cores21,760107521638410240SMs1708412880Memory32 GB GDDR716 GB GDDR724 GB GDDR6X16 GB GDDR6XMemory bus512-bit256-bit384-BIT256-bitMemory bandwidth1792 GB/s896 GB/s1008 GB/s736 GB/sTGP600 W400 W450 W320 WRow 7 - Cell 0* rumoured specsRow 7 - Cell 2Row 7 - Cell 3Row 7 - Cell 4

So yes, that RTX 5080. The rumours are not kind, and neither has been the reaction to its own specs. With a reported miserly 5% increase in CUDA core count over the RTX 4080 Super this new card isn’t looking particularly exciting. With the same 256-bit bus and 16 GB of GDDR7 VRAM there’s very little that’s getting my techie heart pounding about that make up.

(Image credit: X)

Reactions to RTX 5080 rumoured specs

As ever, we’ve got to take these specs with a dose of the salty stuff until we get official confirmation from Nvidia itself on its new cards, and it plays them classically close to its chest right up to launch. But theyfeelright. In a way that, y’know, feels kinda wrong. No-one wants the RTX 5080 to look so gimped, with the possible exception of AMD who might be tempted out of high-end GPU retirement if the target is potentially achievable.

Though we still don’t know when the cards themselves will launch. From the people I’ve spoken too, I’ve long had a feeling it would be this year in some form, but then Nvidia has no reason to have to release the RTX 50-series in 2024. It has no competition, and the RTX 40-series are still doing the goods right now. But even if the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are to launch in the next three months there’s a chance that these numbers aren’t final, especially those power figures. We saw a whole host of TGP speculation ahead of the final 450 W reveal of the RTX 4090, so there could still be some movement even if these leaked specs are correct as of right now.

TOPICSHardwareNvidia

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PRODUCTSNvidia BlackwellNvidia GeForce RTX 5090Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080

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