Worried Nvidia’s going to cheap out on the VRAM for the RTX 5080 GPU? New rumor suggests superior 24GB version is also inbound

You might have to be patient, though – and the potential price tag is another concern

News By Rosario Blue published 30 September 2024

Nvidia’s RTX 5080 was recently rumored to be getting 16GB of VRAM – speculation that did not go down well with PC gamers, as it’s an amount no better than the RTX 4080 – but fresh word from the grapevine is the next-gen graphics card could also arrive in a 24GB flavor.

This is according to Polymorph, a member of the Chiphell forum (as spotted by Wccftech), who claims that Nvidia plans to release a 24GB VRAM version of the RTX 5080 later on, following in the footsteps of the initial 16GB model.

If this is true, a 24GB VRAM option would make Nvidia’s graphics card far more appealing and future-proofed.

As it stands, 16GB of VRAM with a 256-bit bus doesn’t feel like a convincing upgrade on the memory front. And while it’s true that switching to GDDR7 memory, as rumored elsewhere, would be an improvement over the RTX 4080 (with GDDR6X) – delivering better bandwidth and improved power efficiency, amongst other benefits – we don’t feel this is enough.

Neither do many PC gamers out there, going by the reaction to the 16GB of video RAM rumor when it emerged recently.

A waiting game

So, why (theoretically) go for a 16GB and 24GB split for the VRAM with the RTX 5080 – and why wait to deliver the latter, beefier version?

Wccftech reminds us that initially GDDR7 will come in 2GB memory modules, with 8 and 16 of those modules for the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 respectively, giving us that 16GB (and 32GB) loadout.

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