Packaging

The Card

Vanguard is MSI's new GPU lineup and the cards are looking good. The color theme is still metal, with highlights in various shades of gray, but the color theme is a bit darker than Suprim—I like. On the back you get a metal backplate with a large cutout.


Dimensions of the card are 36.0 x 15.0 cm, and it weighs 1954 g.


Installation requires three slots in your system. We measured the card's width to be 67 mm.


Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 2.1b and one HDMI 2.1b.

Standard for all GeForce RTX 50-series Blackwell cards is a new display engine that supports three DisplayPort 2.1b outputs, each capable of UHBR20; and one HDMI 2.1a. Both interfaces support DSC (display stream compression). With DSC enabled, a single DisplayPort on this card can drive 4K 12-bit HDR at 480 Hz; or 8K 12-bit HDR at up to 165 Hz. The RTX 5080 features an updated media acceleration engine with support for 4:2:2 video formats, AV1 UHQ, and MV-HEVC. There are two independent NVENC and NVDEC units.


The card uses a single 16-pin connector, which allows a maximum power draw of 600 W.


MSI has added an RGB illumination zone on the MSI logo and a lighting strip near the fans.


The dual BIOS switch lets you switch from the default "Performance" BIOS to a "Quiet" BIOS that runs a more relaxed fan curve.

Teardown

MSI's thermal solution uses eight heatpipes and a vapor-chamber baseplate. It provides cooling not only for the GPU, but also for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate protects the card against damage during installation and handling.