Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is exceptionally powerful but forbiddingly expensive. (You could build a complete RTX 5080-based gaming PC for the money.) But this top-tier GPU lives on a whole other planet of performance.

The RTX 5080 is the best $999 GPU on the market, offering high-end performance at a fraction of the cost of the 5090.

It’s disappointing to see Nvidia has stuck with 16GB of VRAM on the RTX 5080. AMD’s RX 7900 XTX offers 24GB, and while the RTX 5080 delivers better performance for now, it may well hit video memory limits in 4K gaming in the future.

But then, neither is it a blood-boiler like the RTX 4080, nor a largely aspirational show-off piece like the RTX 5090. By maintaining the 4080 Super’s course correction on price while tooling up on compelling DLSS 4 improvements,

The GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition being two-slots thick is an incredible engineering feat. It's also one of the most stunning GPUs we've ever seen.

Positioned as a 4K card at an MSRP of $999, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition aims to be a viable 4K upgrade for those who can't necessarily plunk down the $2K it costs for the more expensive 90-class card.

GeForce RTX 5080.The price level of $999 certainly sites better. Armed with 84 streaming multiprocessors and a total of 10,752 CUDA cores (roughly half the core count of the RTX 5090) it features a sleek two-slot design.

GPU maker NVIDIA has warned consumers that the stock of its forthcoming RTX 5090 and 5080 cards will be limited. Some gamers are even camping out to get one.