As we told you here, the launch of the RTX 50s is shaping up to be a real struggle, especially for buyers. In fact, we’re expecting very few models to be available, so you’ll have to ‘fight’, at least if you’re planning to buy a card and aren’t prepared to wait.
As we saw at CES, there will be plenty of models on offer, provided stocks last, of course. But which cards come out on top? We’ll tell you what we think with the information we have, on paper at least.
RTX 50 : The Founders Edition is our preferred choice!
Once again, with the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, NVIDIA’s partners are pulling the cinderblock card trick. This was already the case with previous generations, and some models, such as the ASUS x Noctua 4080, even boasted four slots! With the new series, the situation isn’t about to change: a first unboxing shows us an MSI RTX 5080 Suprim so big it won’t fit in the latest Phanteks case, that’s saying something!
On paper at least, the RTX 50 Founders Edition cards from the Chameleon seem to us to be an excellent alternative. As we discovered in our article on the RTX 5090, NVIDIA is slimming down its cards. As a result, you can have the best of the best in terms of GPUs, while taking advantage of an ultra-small footprint. The card adopts reasonable dimensions, with a length of 304 mm and a thickness of just two slots. What’s more, it’s also the assurance of having a well-built card, because if you’re going to spend over €1,000 on a card, you might as well take advantage of a metal casing and not a silly moulded plastic shell, as is the case with some so-called ‘MSRP’ cards. What’s more, you’ll need to pay close attention to the card’s dissipation capacity and its noise levels, for which we don’t yet have any figures.
What’s more, price is also likely to be a decisive factor, since opting for a FE also means buying the card at the right price. On NVIDIA’s shop, for example, you can find its Founders Edition model at €1,179 for the RTX 5080 and €2,349 for the 5090. But custom cards are generally more expensive, or even much more expensive, depending on the model. Initial listings show wide price disparities, with differences sometimes exceeding €500! In Spain, a Zotac model was listed at €2,889, while the FE was listed at €2,369 on the Spanish branch of the NVIDIA shop. In short, it’s a phenomenon we saw with the RTX 40s, and which seems to be getting worse with the RTX 50s.
It may sound silly, but when you see that some very high-end RTX 5080 customs are coming in just below some RTX 5090s, you have to think that these models are not likely to sell very well. If you’re going to buy an ASUS Astral for over €2,000, you might as well make a little effort and buy an RTX 5090 Founders Edition, which will be more compact to boot. Or you might as well try to save money by turning to a more rational series to change another element in your PC, or invest the money in something else.
Of course, some people will tell us that these are placeholders, that we have to wait for the actual launch of the cards to get the real prices. Of course, you’re right, but don’t forget that the official prices are known and that placeholders are to be avoided like the plague when NVIDIA, AMD or Intel prices have not yet been announced. In that case, you can assume that the prices are based on the real thing.
