Rumors are again flying about Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell graphics cards and purported power usage, as well as a nugget on the performance of the RTX 5080 – which is going to be seriously speedy (if this pans out).
The speculation again comes from Kopite7kimi on X, a regular for GPU leaks, who as we reported yesterday indicated the power usage for the RTX 5090 would exceed 550W.
When later asked by another well-known leaker, Raichu, on X, whether that means: “600W for 5090 and 400W for 5080 is right?” Kopite7kimi responded to say yes (cover your power supply’s ears now).
VideoCardz, which picked up on this further questioning, also tells us that Kopite7kimi privately confirmed to them that the RTX 5080 has a performance projection of being 10% faster than the RTX 4090, Nvidia’s current flagship graphics card.
Analysis: Performance and power worries – but let’s not forget pricing
What we don’t have confirmed, as VideoCardz observed, is what that 10% performance boost over the RTX 4090 relates to – is it rasterization (not ray-traced), or frame rates with ray tracing on, or an overall measure of both? We’re guessing it’s rasterization, as normally that’s what performance figures relate to – that’s what most gamers are still interested in – but it is just that, a guess.
The RTX 5080 being 1.1x more powerful than an RTX 4090 (in rasterization, we assume) is a good boost for the next-gen xx80-class GPU from Nvidia, and one that’d please gamers looking to buy the second-best Blackwell graphics card. However, knowing the potential performance increase – and it is just a ‘prediction’ at this point, the leaker says – doesn’t mean a great deal when you don’t know the pricing. It will all hinge on that really.
Will Nvidia pitch such an RTX 5080 at a thousand bucks, perhaps? At the theorized performance level, it’s probably more likely to sit at more towards $1,200 in the US (and equivalent in other regions), possibly, but you get the point – whether there’s a rush to buy the RTX 5080 will depend entirely on its value proposition at the high-end, not raw performance as such.
As for power usage, the RTX 5080 tipping in at 400W would be somewhat painful, though, given that the RTX 4080 is at 320W – that’d be a substantial increase of 25%. It’s not that far off the RTX 4090 at this level, which is 450W, as you may recall.
On the Blackwell flagship’s rumored power usage of 600W, cast your mind back to before the RTX 4090 came out and you might recall exactly the same rumor about that graphics card hitting a 600W power consumption. In the end, it pitched in at 450W, so we must add a great deal of seasoning here.
Rumors are unreliable by their very nature, which is why we’re careful to pepper (ahem) these reports with references to seasoning, and particularly when it comes to power usage, these figures can be up in the air. Is the leak referring to TDP or TGP, the Thermal Design Power (actual heat generated by the graphics card, that the cooling system must cope with) or Total Graphics Power (actual power cap limit for the GPU, as Nvidia defines it – bearing in mind also that it often runs a good deal below that, even when gaming)?
We’re assuming the leaks are talking about TGP (as was the case with the RTX 4090 rumor), but suffice it to say there are nuances here, and when considering GPUs still in development – where these values can be constantly adjusted and tuned – and given the noise and unreliability of the rumor mill in general, let’s just say we’ll stay very skeptical here.
The better news on these current power rumors is that the theory is only the higher-end RTX 5000 GPUs will get bigger bumps for power use, with the mid-range and below seeing some increase, but on a smaller scale. And, of course, these are the next-gen graphics cards most people will buy – when they eventually arrive. We might see the RTX 5090 and 5080 turn up early in 2025, with other models debuting later in the year, if the grapevine is right on the release timeframe for Blackwell gaming cards.
