The best argument for grabbing a 5080 right now, if you can find one at $999 in the first place, is that the only cards that come close to its performance are either way more expensive than they're supposed to be (the 4080 Super) or not cheap enough to justify the Nvidia-specific features you give up (AMD's Radeon 7900 XTX).

That extra processing power naturally translates to better performance, making the RTX 5090 the new king of 4K gaming. It’s a $1,999 GPU for anyone who wants the best 4K gaming experience, developers interested in AI performance, and creators who want to accelerate video editing.

I spent a week extensively testing the RTX 5080, and overall it's the best premium graphics card for most people you can get right now.