The recently released RTX 5080 graphics accelerator has caused quite a stir due to its modest performance increase over similar cards of previous generations. At times, the new product even shows itself to be less productive than the RTX 4080 Super version.
Comparison with Previous Models
Comparisons with previous models make the situation even more depressing. The RTX 5080 may be the worst GPU in the 80-series from Nvidia in the last ten years, offering only a slight price advantage over the previous model.
Historical Performance Gains
As blogger Daniel Owens noted, Nvidia has typically delivered performance gains of between 24% and 49% for 80-series cards over their predecessors dating back to 2013.
A Significant Change
The RTX 5080 marks a significant change for the worse in the GPU world, with the model only showing a 15% performance boost over the RTX 4080. It’s worth noting that results may vary depending on the source, but the new 80-series GPU clearly doesn’t show a huge jump in performance.
Inferior Performance
Additionally, Daniel Owens points out that the RTX 5080 is the only GPU in the series that is inferior to the previous-gen flagship. Data from 3DCenter backs this up, showing that the performance difference between the RTX 5080 and RTX 4090 is nearly 20%.
User Perception and Criticism
Many users, based on performance, consider the RTX 5080 to be just a rebranded version of the RTX 5070. Nvidia previously tried to introduce the RTX 4070 Ti as an RTX 4080 with 12 GB of memory. It seems that the company may repeat a similar strategy in the current generation.
Snowden’s Critique
Even former NSA agent Edward Snowden joined in the criticism of Nvidia, saying Huang was “offering consumers ‘F-tier (lowest) value at S-tier (highest) prices.’”
“A $1,000 product has only 16GB of video memory on board. This is nothing short of a monopolistic crime against consumers.” In his opinion, the RTX 5080 must have at least 24 GB of video memory.
