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Rumor mill: Leaks surrounding Nvidia's next-generation graphics cards are rapidly escalating. Recent social media posts containing rumored specs have sparked responses that not only corroborate the information but also introduce new details. It's likely that even more information will emerge before the end of the year.
More details about Nvidia's upcoming graphics cards, likely to be the GeForce RTX 5080 and 5090, have emerged following a trusted leaker's disclosure of their supposed specs. It seems Team Green may finally catch up with the competition's display technology, while concerns about the 5080's memory configuration appear to be unfounded.
Prominent tipster @kopite7kimi recently claimed that the 5080 will feature only 16 GB of VRAM, the same as its predecessor, the 4080, which quickly led to disappointment among potential buyers. Given Nvidia's history of releasing GPUs with relatively modest VRAM amounts, this decision would not be surprising.
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Another well-known leaker, @harukaze5719, responded to Kopite's post with a shipping manifest that listed several test models bearing the same SKU numbers as the RTX 5080 and 5090. This suggests Nvidia may be preparing multiple variants of one or both cards, making a 24 GB version of the 5080 a strong possibility.
Given Nvidia's recent track record, it would be unusual for the company to launch a new GPU generation without offering a 24 GB model. The upcoming Blackwell graphics card lineup isn't expected to start shipping until January 2025, so it's likely that Nvidia hasn't finalized all the variants yet.
This strategy might mirror the RTX 4000 launch, which included both 12 GB and 16 GB versions of the 4080. If Nvidia takes a similar approach, let's hope the 16 GB model won't turn out to be an overpriced 5070 Ti in disguise.
Meanwhile, Benchlife has corroborated Kopite's post and provided additional details about the RTX 5090's connectivity options, confirming that it will feature Ultra-High Bit Rate (UHBR20) DisplayPort 2.1a. Previous reports indicated that Blackwell would support both PCIe 5.0 and DisplayPort 2.1. While AMD's Radeon RX 7000 GPUs already include DP 2.1, the RTX 4000 series stuck with 1.4a.
Additionally, the standard version of Nvidia's upcoming flagship will use a single 16-pin 12V-2x6 connector, debunking recent speculation that it might require two. However, board partners may still release overclocked editions that utilize two connectors.
Notably, Blackwell notebook GPUs might also debut at CES, offering significant power efficiency improvements over the RTX 4000 series and featuring GDDR7 VRAM. On the desktop side, only the 5090, 5080, and 5070 are expected to support GDDR7.