- Nvidia’s rumored RTX 5080 Super has been cancelled we’re told
- This GPU refresh was supposedly due to launch at the start of 2027
- It was canned due to the cost of the 24GB of video RAM, which makes sense – but PC gamers are getting increasingly frustrated with Nvidia at this point
Nvidia’s RTX 5080 Super – an expected spin on the GPU with 24GB of VRAM – has been ditched according to the grapevine.
VideoCardz highlighted a post on the Board Channels (a common source of leaks over in China) which claims that the RTX 5080 Super was due for a launch in January 2027 (as previous rumors indicated), but it’s now cancelled.
Seemingly Nvidia has informed graphics card manufacturers over in China that the launch is not happening, without providing any “clear subsequent launch schedule” (bear in mind that’s a translation from Chinese), meaning that in theory this isn’t just a delay – the Super GPU is apparently canned.
This is a different sentiment to a rumor from a week ago that the RTX 5080 Super was delayed by Nvidia, which didn’t go as far as to suggest that the GPU refresh has been abandoned. Clearly, though, something’s amiss with the heavily rumored RTX 5080 Super, and it makes sense that, as all this speculation points out, it’s to do with the video RAM.
In reaching to hit 24GB of VRAM, the RTX 5080 Super would be using 3GB modules of GDDR7 – as opposed to the 2GB modules on the vanilla RTX 5080 – and those beefier memory chips are now so much more expensive that it’s a big stumbling block.
Meanwhile, we’re told that the plain RTX 5080 (16GB) will remain the flagship in China – the RTX 5090 isn’t sold in the country, of course, and arguably, it effectively isn’t sold anywhere else either, not at a sensible price anyway. Stock of the Blackwell flagship has become very thin on the ground everywhere, meaning you’re looking at paying triple to quadruple the MSRP in many regions, or maybe even more than that (the GPU has tipped up towards 10 grand in the US).
It’s got to the point where rather than buying a standalone graphics card, the best way to bag yourself an RTX 5090 is in a high-end PC with a deal.
Analysis: it’s getting nasty out there
At this point, there have been so many rumors about the RTX 5080 Super (and other potential RTX 5000 Super GPUs in the past), that it seems likely Nvidia was intending on doing something with such a refresh – at some point, anyway. It’s an expected part of every graphics card generation anyway, let’s face it, but it isn’t a surprise to hear that any such plans have been put on hold (possibly permanently).
Indeed, it always seemed a stretch to me that Nvidia was even considering an RTX 5080 Super at this stage in the game, with GPU price hikes hitting new levels of pain, and the broader RAM crisis predicted to get worse at the tail end of this year, and bleaker still in 2027.
The GPU market is just too difficult right now for Nvidia to entertain introducing a new consumer graphics card with 24GB of VRAM, especially given that it would have to use the much pricier 3GB modules. With Nvidia’s priorities obviously lying with the data center and AI, letting the GeForce consumer GPU range stagnate in this way is only to be expected, really.
Meanwhile, tempers are flaring and gamers are getting even angrier about the way Nvidia is treating consumers. As one Redditor put it: “They don’t want to sell you powerful cards, [it’s] that simple. They are gatekeeping AI compute power for the big boys so you are forced to spend money on Altman [OpenAI].”
Another Redditor observed: “Nvidia aren’t innocent bystanders here. They’re the primary source of the demand that has shifted memory production from GDDR to HBM [for AI data center cards].”
There’s a lot of bad feeling out there currently, and as one gamer complained of Nvidia: “I wish they’d just do something.” Quite what, well, that isn’t clear, but even though the RTX 5080 Super wouldn’t have been a remotely affordable GPU, it’d still have provided another high-end option. And perhaps that might have taken some of the pressure off the rising price of the RTX 5080 (although probably not in all honesty – and indeed one rumor suggested that this card would be dropped in favor of the RTX 5080 Super).
In a way, this canning of a possible (but only rumored) graphics card, no matter how unobtainable this Super may have been, is just another signal that Nvidia doesn’t care about the plight of consumers. With frustration continuing to boil over in the PC gaming community, and no let-up in the RAM crisis in sight, it’s difficult to see matters going anywhere but further downhill from here.
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Darren Allan
