Introduction

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5080 Gaming OC is a value custom design graphics card based on NVIDIA’s new enthusiast segment GPU that’s just a notch below last week’s flagship RTX 5090 launch. The Gaming OC brand of graphics cards tend to be priced only slightly above the baseline price, bringing you a contemporary and capable cooling solution, and a factory overclock out of the box. This card isn’t as flashy or glamorous as Gigabyte’s coveted AORUS Gaming series, and is targeted more for those who want an RTX 5080 that they’ll install to get gaming without spending too much on aesthetics. The GeForce RTX 5080 comes with much of the same gaming use case as the RTX 5090. It’s meant for gaming at 4K Ultra HD with maxed-out settings, including ray tracing. The RTX 5090 does the same thing, but with higher performance, and other use cases such as AI development thanks to its massive video memory.

The GeForce RTX 5080 starts at exactly half the price of the RTX 5090. For gaming experiences at 4K Ultra HD with related use-cases such as game streaming and content creation, the RTX 5080 comes across as a well-rounded product. It is the second GPU to implement the GeForce Blackwell graphics architecture, which introduces a new concept to consumer 3D graphics, called Neural Rendering—the ability for the GPU to rope in a generative AI to create certain elements of a 3D scene and combine it with traditional raster 3D. This isn’t all that different from RTX itself, which combines certain real time ray traced objects with raster 3D. You already know the awesome potential of generative AI to create photorealistic images and videos, so the technology has immense potential. NVIDIA even worked with Microsoft to standardize it at an API level, letting 3D applications directly access the Tensor cores of the GPU. Blackwell GPUs have the ability to run AI acceleration and graphics rendering workloads in tandem, thanks to a new hardware scheduling component called the AI Management Processor (AMP).

The new Blackwell streaming multiprocessor features concurrent FP32 and INT32 execution capability on all CUDA cores (Ada only had INT32 capability on half its cores). It also has shader execution reordering for neural shaders. The 5th generation Tensor core comes with FP4 data format capability for even more throughput. The 4th generation RT core comes with new hardware components for Mega Geometry—ray traced objects with exponentially higher polygon counts. Blackwell also introduces DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. DLSS 4 introduces a new Transformer based AI model replacing the older CNN-based one, to accelerate super resolution, ray reconstruction, and frame generation, which offers superior accuracy, and hence greater image quality. Multi Frame Generation is the ability to draw up to four AI-generated frames following a conventionally rendered one, more than quadrupling frame rates. This relies on the flip metering capability of the new Display Engine of Blackwell, which offers contemporary DisplayPort 2.1b with UHBR20, enabling high refresh rates at resolutions as high as 8K. Combine this with DLSS 4 MFG, and you’re looking at 8K 60 Hz gaming.

The GeForce RTX 5080 is based on the new GB203 silicon, NVIDIA’s second gaming GPU implementing Blackwell. The RTX 5080 maxes out the GB203, enabling all 84 SM physically present on it. It also pairs its 256-bit GDDR7 memory interface with fast 30 Gbps GDDR7 memory to yield 960 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 34% increase over that of the RTX 4080. This bandwidth comes in handy with Neural Rendering and DLSS 4 MFG. With 84 SM on tap, the RTX 5080 enjoys 10,752 CUDA cores, 336 Tensor cores, 84 RT cores, 336 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. It also maxes out all 64 MB of the chip’s on-die L2 cache.

Gigabyte debuts its new generation WindForce cooling solution with this card, giving the 360 W TGP GPU a massive aluminium fin-stack heatsink that pulls heat over a vapor chamber. Ventilating it are three 100 mm fans. The impeller blades of these fans have wingtips that help with axial airflow. The PCB underneath is two-thirds the length of the card, so all the airflow from the third fan goes through the heatsink and out a large cutout on the backplate. RGB lighting setup includes illumination along the bore of the fan intakes, and you get a factory overclock of 2730 MHz (vs. 2617 MHz reference). Gigabyte is pricing this card at $1200.