•Speculation is mounting that Nvidia’s next-year lineup may be left with only one genuinely gaming-focused GPU, and it could arrive at a heavily inflated price. This stems from reports that Nvidia plans to axe an unspecified card in favour of redirecting GB202 GPUs toward professional RTX Pro cards, while introducing a 24GB version of the RTX 5080 to replace its 16GB counterpart in early 2027.
The claims originate from a throwaway paragraph near the end of a post on Bilibili by commercial production. According to the Taiwanese outlet, add-in board partners (AIBs) have been told verbally that while nothing is concrete yet, “product development data” for a 24GB RTX 5080 will be released soon.
This means manufacturers such as Asus and MSI reportedly haven’t received much detail about the proposed new card. Given that 24GB was the VRAM capacity of an earlier model, partners may already possess enough information to begin production in time for a Q1 2027 launch—though actual manufacturing has not begun.
These remain mere rumours. The RTX 50-series Super/refresh has been announced and delayed repeatedly, and the author would still be unable to guarantee any new GeForce silicon in 2027—despite leaker Moore’s Law is Dead claiming their sources point to a specific card.
After what appears to be a fallow 2026, such a refresh could land around or just after CES in 2027. However, it won’t be a major gaming release: the GB203 chip inside the RTX 5080 is already fully utilised, so new cards carry no higher core counts and therefore deliver no real gaming performance gains.
Rather, what benefits from 24GB of fast VRAM are local AI models that well-funded builders want to run—those who don’t wish to spend on the high-end professional cards toward which all GB202 GPUs are being funnelled. If this becomes the norm, users would choose the 24GB RTX 5080 where they once might have taken an RTX 5090.
Benchlife appears to suggest that alongside the RTX 5090, the standard RTX 5080 will also reach end-of-life. This leaves the top two cards of the RTX Blackwell generation effectively unavailable for gamers, with only the RTX 5070 Ti—carrying a $1,500 price tag—as the top-end option for PC users.
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