GeForce RTX 5080 Retail Packaging Leak Reveals Key Spec Right Before Launch
At this point, we're not months, weeks, or even days away from NVIDIA unveiling its next-generation graphics card series, the GeForce RTX 50 series, but mere hours! Ending months of speculation, NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang is expected to introduced both desktop and mobile models during a keynote this evening (it starts at 6:30 p.m. PT / 9:30 p.m. ET). During the final moments of semi-mystery, a photo of a stack of GeForce RTX 5080 retail boxes has found its way to the web.
We say "semi-mystery" because the GeForce RTX 50 series has been the subject of a mountain of leaks and rumors, including early retail listings. These things tend to become more reliable the closer we get to an actual unveiling. And in this case, though it's possible that the picture is a fake, it looks real and is likely legitimate.
The retail boxes depict a GeForce RTX 5080 model from Gainward, a popular NVIDIA partner based in Taiwan. Gainward may not carry the same cachet to US buyers as brands like ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI, but it's been around for decades—since 1984. Gainward was acquired by Palit Microsystems in 2005, but still makes its own-brand hardware.
Shared on X/Twitter by @wxnod, the leaked photo seemingly depicts several Gainward GeForce RTX 5080 models in a warehouse. Three retail boxes are clearly visible, behind which sit a bunch of cardboard shipping boxes. Assuming the photo shoot is real, it confirms the GeForce RTX 5080 will debut with 16GB of GDDR7 memory.
No other interesting details can be gleaned from the image, though past leaks and rumors suggest that the GeForce RTX 5080 will use the faster GDDR7 memory than any other GeForce RTX 50 series graphics card, including the flagship GeForce RTX 5090. Supposedly, it will employ 30Gbps GDDR7 memory chips, versus 28Gbps on all of the other RTX 50 models.
That may or may not be true, of course. Other rumored specs include a 256-bit bus for 1,024GB/s of memory bandwidth, along with 10,725 CUDA cores and a 360W TBP rating. And as for the GeForce RTX 50 series as a whole, there's also been chatter of enhanced ray tracing, neural rendering tech, and DLSS 4. We'll know soon enough how true or untrue all of that is.
