RTX 5080 vs RTX 5070 Ti: Specs, Price, and Which to Buy

The RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti are the two closest-priced, closest-specced cards in Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 series — both built on the same 256-bit, 16GB GDDR7 memory configuration, both shipped at launch with 5th-generation Tensor Cores and 4th-generation RT Cores, and both still sold today. The short answer: the RTX 5080 has roughly 20% more CUDA cores, a higher boost clock, and higher official AI TOPS and ray-tracing TFLOPS figures, for a launch price that was $250 higher than the RTX 5070 Ti. If your budget tops out near $750, the RTX 5070 Ti remains the more efficient buy; if you want the fuller Blackwell die with headroom for 4K, the RTX 5080 is the step up. Neither card has changed its core specification since launch, but street pricing on both has moved around with supply, so the gap you'll actually pay at a retailer today may not match the $250 difference Nvidia quoted at launch. Here's every official spec, side by side, pulled directly from Nvidia's own product pages and launch materials.

RTX 5080 vs RTX 5070 Ti at a Glance

Nvidia positions these two cards one tier apart in the GeForce RTX 50 series lineup, but unlike the gap between, say, the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti share identical memory capacity and bus width. The real separation comes from the GPU core counts, clock speeds, and power envelope — and, at launch, a $250 price difference. Both cards use GDDR7 memory and support the same core feature set, including DLSS 4, Nvidia Reflex 2, PCI Express Gen 5, and AV1 encode/decode.

That shared feature set is worth emphasizing, because it's not always the case within a GPU generation. Nvidia has, in past generations, held back certain encoder blocks or display outputs on lower-tier cards. With the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti, the software and connectivity stack is identical; the entire gap between them is expressed through silicon — core count, clock speed, and the power budget Nvidia allows each card to draw.

Official Specs Compared

The table below is built from Nvidia's own published specification sheets for the RTX 5080 and the RTX 5070 Ti (listed under the RTX 5070 family page), covering the reference/Founders Edition configuration. Add-in-card partner models can vary slightly in clock speed and power limits.

Nvidia's Founders Edition RTX 5080 measures 304mm by 137mm, occupies two slots, and outputs through 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI, supporting up to four monitors and a maximum digital resolution of 4K at 480Hz or 8K at 165Hz with DSC enabled. Nvidia's own spec sheet lists card length, width, and slot count for the RTX 5070 Ti as "varies by manufacturer," confirming there's no Founders Edition reference design for that card — Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and other partners each ship their own cooler, length, and slot width, so check the specific card listing rather than assuming it matches the RTX 5080's reference dimensions. Display connectivity, however, is identical across the RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 per Nvidia's spec sheets: 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI, supporting up to four monitors and the same 4K at 480Hz or 8K at 165Hz with DSC maximum resolution.

CUDA Cores and Clock Speeds

The clearest gap between the two cards is in raw core count. The RTX 5080 ships with 10,752 CUDA cores against 8,960 on the RTX 5070 Ti — a difference of 1,792 cores, or about 20% more compute on the RTX 5080. Base clocks are effectively identical at 2.30GHz, but the RTX 5080's boost clock of 2.62GHz runs about 7% higher than the RTX 5070 Ti's 2.45GHz boost. Combined, that gives the RTX 5080 a meaningfully larger shader and clock-speed advantage than the memory specs alone would suggest, since both cards otherwise share the same 16GB GDDR7 pool.

Memory: Size, Type, and Bus Width

This is where the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti are identical on paper: both carry 16GB of GDDR7 memory across a 256-bit bus. Nvidia's consumer-facing spec sheets for either card don't publish a memory bandwidth figure in GB/s, so that number isn't repeated here — but the matching capacity and bus width mean neither card should bottleneck the other on VRAM headroom at the resolutions each is aimed at. For anyone running texture-heavy modern titles or high-resolution creative workloads, 16GB on both cards should hold up similarly; the performance gap between them comes from the GPU core count and clock speed, not memory.

Power, TGP, and System Requirements

The RTX 5080's Total Graphics Power rating of 360W sits 60W above the RTX 5070 Ti's 300W, and Nvidia's recommended system power scales accordingly: 850W for the RTX 5080 versus 750W for the RTX 5070 Ti. Both cards share an identical 88°C maximum GPU temperature rating. If you're building around an existing power supply rather than buying a new one, the 100W gap in recommended system power is worth checking against your PSU's headroom, especially in a system that also has a power-hungry CPU.

AI TOPS and Ray-Tracing TFLOPS

Nvidia publishes two additional figures on each product page that quantify the dedicated AI and ray-tracing hardware: Tensor Core AI TOPS and RT Core TFLOPS. The RTX 5080 is rated at 1,801 AI TOPS and 171 TFLOPS of ray-tracing throughput; the RTX 5070 Ti is rated at 1,406 AI TOPS and 133 TFLOPS. That's roughly a 28% advantage for the RTX 5080 on both figures — a larger gap than the CUDA core count alone suggests, and it tracks with how DLSS 4's Multi Frame Generation and ray-traced lighting workloads lean on Tensor and RT cores specifically. These are Nvidia's own published figures, not independent benchmark results, so treat them as a measure of fixed-function hardware throughput rather than a guaranteed in-game frame-rate multiplier.

DLSS 4, Reflex 2, and Shared Features

Feature-wise, Nvidia doesn't segment its software stack by tier within the RTX 50 series: both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti support the full DLSS 4 suite, including Multi Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, Super Resolution, and DLAA, as well as Nvidia Reflex 2 for reduced system latency. Both also support PCI Express Gen 5, Resizable BAR, AV1 encode and decode, DirectX 12 Ultimate, and Nvidia's Blackwell-generation NVENC/NVDEC blocks. In other words, the feature list that typically drives a generational upgrade decision is the same on both cards — the differentiator here is purely the underlying silicon: core count, clock speed, and power budget.

Official Pricing and Launch Availability

According to Nvidia's own launch press release, the RTX 5080 became available on January 30, 2025 at $999, while the RTX 5070 Ti followed starting in February 2025 at $749 — both figures quoted by Nvidia as launch pricing rather than an explicit "MSRP" label. That's a $250 gap at launch, or about 33% more for the RTX 5080. Those same figures still hold as of this writing: Nvidia's own structured product data on its live RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti pages currently lists both cards as "in stock" at $999 and $749 respectively, even though the visible marketing copy on those pages shows a generic "starting at" placeholder in some regions rather than a rendered number. Always confirm current street pricing with a retailer before buying, since partner-card pricing on either model can run above or below Nvidia's own listed price depending on the specific board, cooler, and factory overclock.

Which Offers Better Value?

Dividing each card's launch price by its CUDA core count gives a rough proxy for value: the RTX 5080 works out to about $0.093 per CUDA core at its $999 launch price, while the RTX 5070 Ti comes in at about $0.084 per CUDA core at $749 — a slightly better core-for-dollar ratio for the RTX 5070 Ti. The RTX 5080 does come with a larger jump in AI TOPS and RT TFLOPS per dollar than CUDA cores alone would suggest, since its 28% hardware advantage in those categories outpaces its 33% price premium. In practice, that means the RTX 5080 is the better value if your workload leans heavily on ray tracing or DLSS 4 frame generation, while the RTX 5070 Ti is the more efficient buy for anyone prioritizing raw cost-per-core at a lower total outlay. Neither calculation accounts for independent, real-world frame-rate testing — Nvidia doesn't publish head-to-head game benchmarks between its own tiers on these product pages, so treat the core-count and TOPS/TFLOPS math here as a hardware-spec comparison, not a substitute for performance reviews from outlets that have actually run both cards.

Who Should Buy the RTX 5080

The RTX 5080 makes the most sense if you're building around a high-refresh 4K monitor or an ultrawide display, want the extra thermal and power headroom the 360W TGP and 850W system recommendation imply, or plan to lean heavily on ray tracing and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation in recent titles. It's also the stronger pick if you're weighing the jump against AMD's competing tier — see our breakdown of the RTX 5080 against the RX 9070 XT for how Nvidia's card compares outside its own lineup. Nvidia does sell a Founders Edition RTX 5080 at the reference 304mm by 137mm, two-slot dimensions, so buyers who want Nvidia's own cooler design (rather than a board partner's) have that option at $999, alongside third-party cards from Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and others that may run at higher factory clocks for a premium. If you're curious whether it's worth stepping up even further, the gap between the RTX 5080 and Nvidia's higher tiers is covered in our RTX 5080 Super vs RTX 5090 comparison.

Who Should Buy the RTX 5070 Ti

The RTX 5070 Ti is the pick if your budget caps out closer to $750, you're gaming primarily at 1440p or entry-level 4K, or you simply want the best cost-per-CUDA-core ratio in Nvidia's current lineup without sacrificing the 16GB GDDR7 memory pool that the RTX 5080 also carries. It draws noticeably less power (300W TGP versus 360W), which matters if you're reusing an older power supply rated below 850W, and Nvidia's recommended 750W system power is a more common PSU tier already sitting in a lot of existing builds. Since there's no Founders Edition reference card, shopping for an RTX 5070 Ti also means comparing cooler size, length, and noise across partner models rather than defaulting to one Nvidia-made design — worth a few extra minutes checking the specific listing before you buy. For a direct look at how it holds up against AMD's nearest competitor, see our RTX 5070 Ti vs RX 9070 XT comparison.

Bottom Line: Which Should You Buy?

Both cards share the same 16GB GDDR7 memory configuration and the same Blackwell-generation feature set — DLSS 4, Reflex 2, PCIe Gen 5 — so the decision comes down to how much you value the RTX 5080's roughly 20% CUDA core advantage, higher boost clock, and roughly 28% higher official AI TOPS and RT TFLOPS figures against its $250 higher launch price and 60W higher power draw. Buy the RTX 5080 if you're targeting 4K or high-refresh gaming and want the fuller die with more headroom for ray tracing and frame generation. Buy the RTX 5070 Ti if you want nearly the same memory configuration and feature set at a lower price and power budget.

Written byMara Lindqvist

Mara Lindqvist edits the hardware desk. She covers graphics cards, processors, memory and storage, the foundries and chip designers behind them, and what the numbers on a spec sheet mean for people choosing a PC. Specifications in her stories come from manufacturer spec pages and datasheets.

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