Santa could have a new graphics card in his sack this holiday season, as rumours claim Nvidia could have the RTX 5080 24GB ready for December. This would be a month ahead of the expected launch, based on prior leaks, but there’s apparently still every chance the refresh won’t hit until 2027.
This earlier potential release window comes from a source on ChannelGate, a tech insider platform affiliated with Board Channels that concerns graphics card distribution in China. In a recent post, a source claims Nvidia is “accelerating the pace of listing” (machine translated) for the RTX 5080 24GB.
The post maintains that the RTX 5080 24GB will be available in January at the latest, but if Nvidia moves fast enough then cards will be available in December. While these targets primarily concern the Chinese market, the global launch of this graphics card should either mirror or not fall far behind.
Apparently Nvidia has cleared its RTX 5080 16GB inventory, with enough stock in the wild to last around two months, or until the end of the year. The firm allegedly plans to discontinue this graphics card in China, alongside the region exclusive RTX 5090D V2.
These changes would make the RTX 5080 24GB the de facto flagship in the region. Other rumours have claimed this will also be the case in other countries, following claims of GeForce RTX 5090 discontinuation, which Nvidia categorically denies. However, reports are emerging of board partners unable to make RTX 5090 cards as Nvidia’s GB202 GPU and corresponding 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM are no longer available to order.
Nvidia is yet to officially confirm the existence or plans for an RTX 5080 refresh, but we’ll soon learn whether these whispers hold weight or not. In any case, don’t expect this graphics card to be cheap, with initial RTX 5080 24GB price estimates falling around $2,000, the same price as the RTX 5090 at launch.
For more on the latest graphics cards, check out our picks of the best GPUs on the market.
