Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 appears to leak ahead of possible CES 2025 announcement

• Images purporting to be of the MSI Gaming Trio RTX 5080 appear online – but are quickly deleted
• The images, if legitimate, support rumors that the RTX 5080 graphics card will be the first to launch after CES 2025
• The pictures also appear to confirm some of the specs for the upcoming GPU

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 appears to have leaked online, thanks to a couple of photos of the retail packaging for what appears to be an overclocked (OC) version of the card from one of Nvidia’s third-party partners.

Appearing on a now-deleted ChipHell forum post (according to VideoCardz, which says it managed to grab the photos posted to the forum before the post was deleted), the retail packaging for what may be the MSI Gaming Trio RTX 5080 is shown from the front and the back, appearing to confirm some key details about the new card.

While it has to be said that ChipHell’s forums have sometimes produced genuine photos and detail leaks of graphics cards and PC processors in the past, it’s also an internet forum, so you’ll want to take anything posted there with a grain of salt. After all, you can do amazing things with PhotoShop these days and if there’s one thing to know about forum posters, it’s that they are notorious clout-chasers, so they’ve been known to make stuff up for clicks, as well as be very susceptible for falling for fake photos and ‘leaks’ in the past.

That said, the photos do look pretty genuine at first glance, and the inclusion of the back of the retail box appears to confirm a few rumored spec details, and the fact that the photos purport to be of the RTX 5080 and not the flagship RTX 5090, does line up with rumors that the RTX 5080 will be the first Nvidia Blackwell GPU to hit the shelves, possibly as soon as January 21, 2025.

Confirmation of new specs?

Other than their mere existence, the two photos also reveal some new details about the new GPU, assuming they are legit.

First, the new card will apparently include 16GB GDDR7 memory, as has long been speculated. It may also feature a 256-bit memory bus, much like its predecessor. These two specs alone mean it will likely be a monster of a GPU for 4K gaming.

VideoCardz goes on to claim that the card is expected to be the first consumer card to use the PCIe 5.0 interface standard and that the RTX 5080 will use Nvidia’s GB203-400 Blackwell GPU, which is expected to have 10,752 CUDA cores.

If Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture keeps the same SM structure as Lovelace (which is likely), that means the RTX 5080 will also have 84 SMs, so 84 ray-tracing cores and 84 tensor cores, altogether a 5% increase in core counts over the RTX 4080 Super.

None of this appears on the packaging, however, so at this point, this is all speculation, but with CES 2025 right around the corner, we can expect to know for sure by this time next week.

You may also like…

• Nvidia RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs again rumored for CES – but suggestion the RTX 5080 could be positioned as a ‘professional’ GPU might worry PC gamers
• Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU rumored to be 10% faster than RTX 4090 – but it might guzzle nearly as much power as the Lovelace flagship
• Nvidia RTX 5080 might get speedier video RAM than we expected – but doubts remain around this GPU

John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY.

Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.

You can find him online on Bluesky @johnloeffler.bsky.social