Packaging

The Card

NVIDIA's RTX 5080 comes with a refreshed Founders Edition design theme that matches the RTX 5090 exactly. It's instantly recognizable that this is a FE card, but there have been small aesthetics tweaks, like more smooth corners etc. Also note that both sides of the back now have cutouts for air to flow though.


Dimensions of the card are 30.0 x 13.5 cm, and it weighs 1635 g.


Here's the RTX 5080 compared to the RTX 5090, RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4090 (from left to right). Same footprint, but just two slots.


Installation requires two slots in your system. We measured the card's width to be 40 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.


Inside the Founders Edition box you'll find an 8-pin to 16-pin adapter. This is a new model that feels MUCH better, thanks to softer cables and a better plug that's more massive, so it can withstand more abuse.


The card uses a single 16-pin connector, which allows a maximum power draw of 600 W. NVIDIA has improved the location of the adapter, and it's recessed now and comes out at an angle.


NVIDIA's Founders Edition features white lighting on the GeForce RTX logo and around the air inlets on both sides. The lighting effect is static, it can't be adjusted in color or brightness. There's also no way to turn it off.

Teardown

NVIDIA's FE cooler uses five double-length heatpipes. The heatsink provides cooling not only for the GPU, but also for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.

This is a much simpler cooling design than on the RTX 5090, which used liquid metal and a vapor-chamber.