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GeForce RTX 5080: China-friendly, RTX 4090 performance

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Translate from : GeForce RTX 5080 tilpasses sanktioner
Recent rumors about upcoming GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards suggest that the cards may be tweaked and perhaps even limited in performance to comply with current sanctions against China.
By Maria
13 may. 2024 08:32 am
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With a planned release later this year, the rumors, speculations and insider leaks about the upcoming GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards have intensified. The latest rumors suggest that the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 will be released within weeks of each other, similar to the initial launch of the Ada Lovelace GeForce RTX 40 series in 2022.

Built using NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture, the upcoming GeForce RTX 5080 is said to use the new GB203 GPU, while the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 card is set to use the GB202. Based on leaked or rumored specs, there will be a significant difference between the two with the GB203 including 96 SMs compared to the GB202's 192 SMs.

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The memory bandwidth will be 256-bit on the GeForce RTX 5080 compared to 512-bit on the GeForce RTX 5090. Although the GeForce RTX 5080 is expected to be more powerful than the current GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER graphics card, the US export ban on powerful GPU hardware may be the reason why the GeForce RTX 5080 is launched in a 'cut-down' mode.

NVIDIA must ensure that the GeForce RTX 5080 meets specific performance requirements and targets for a global launch in all markets. If not, the GeForce RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 will have to skip China and the other countries on the restriction list. China is a huge market for NVIDIA graphics cards, so launching the RTX 5080 in the region would likely be a priority for Nvidia.


It's expected that the GeForce RTX 5090 won't launch in China at all, so with that in mind, NVIDIA has built the GeForce RTX 5080 to be 'sanctions compliant' (as Moore's Law is Dead YouTube channel recently mentioned). If true, then the performance is similar to the trimmed GeForce RTX 4090D, which means that the RTX 5080 will have the same performance as the current flagship GeForce RTX.

On the plus side, the metric used for the current US sanctions against GPUs is not strictly tied to gaming performance. The GeForce RTX 5080 was able to meet the restrictions and at the same time deliver a double-digit percentage (10-15%) in-game performance increase compared to the RTX 4090.

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