Buyer stunned to receive Nvidia RTX 5080 labeled as an RTX 5090

Locating a scarce Nvidia RTX 50 series GPU is often frustrating. Redditor EssDee3D thought his efforts had an unexpected bonus after purchasing an RTX 5080 Founders Edition. While the packaging indicated that the correct graphics card was inside, Nvidia stamped RTX 5090 on its housing. Unfortunately, later tests confirmed that the GPU inside the casing was, in fact, an RTX 5080.

When EssDee3D first posted a pic of the mislabeled GPU in the LinusTechTips Reddit community, it was met with some skepticism. His account was new, and some posters thought he was an attention seeker. The more optimistic responders believed Nvidia had actually shipped an RTX 5090 in the wrong packaging. After promising further investigation, EssDee3D finally posted a video of the GPU installed in a PC. Sadly for him, the card tested as an RTX 5080 FE, which is half the price of the RTX 5090 FE.

So far, Nvidia's latest GPUs have avoided the melted power connector issues that plagued the RTX 4090. On the other hand, some owners have been dealing with games crashing with isolated reports of bricked RTX 5090s. That raises quality control concerns, but the EssDee3D Reddit post was the first documented incident of a mislabeled graphics card.

Despite having significantly more CUDA cores and memory, the exterior of the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 are virtually identical. The Nvidia Founders Edition GPUs are both dual-slot cards with the same width, length, and thickness. As a result, it's not inconceivable that there could be a mishap on the assembly line.

Even though EssDee3D can expect the performance he paid for, he still mentioned possibly returning the card in the video. If he ends up selling the RTX 5080 or his PC years from now, any listing will require a lengthy explanation.