Nvidia RTX 5080 is reportedly available in Vietnam — RTX 5080 build on hold without driver support

Nvidia’s retail partners worldwide are set to officially start sales of GeForce RTX 5080 and GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards on January 30. However, in Vietnam, some retailers are already selling GeForce RTX 5080 add-in-boards openly, albeit at a price significantly higher than that recommended by Nvidia. There is a catch, though: drivers for Blackwell-based graphics cards are not available to end-users. According to a Reddit post, at least one retailer in Vietnam is selling Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards a week before their official release.

The GeForce RTX 5080 model in question is the Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 5080 Ultra W OC 16GB-V, which will not be available globally but will hit the market in Asia and North America. Like in China, Nvidia and its partners are not planning to release their GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards in Vietnam, so the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090D will be the best options these countries will have this year.

Either because of the U.S. export rules and lack of the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 in Vietnam or because the retailer intentionally started sales of the board ahead of the official launch and therefore outpace rivals, but the GeForce RTX 5080 board costs $1,267 ($1,393 with taxes), almost $270 more than Nvidia’s MSRP for the U.S. market.

While gamers in Vietnam can acquire one of the best graphics cards on paper, they cannot enjoy its performance for another week, as NVIDIA has yet to publish drivers for its GeForce RTX 50-series ‘Blackwell’ graphics cards. Nvidia’s app reportedly does not detect GeForce RTX 5080 boards.

The early availability of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards could be a good sign, given claims that a major U.K. retailer has less than 10 GeForce RTX 5090 boards and reports of scarce availability of both cards elsewhere.

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card is based on the AD203-400 GPU with 10,752 CUDA cores and a 256-bit interface to connect to 16 GB of GDDR7 memory. The GPU consumes up to 360W of power (using a 12V-2×6 connector) and promises a peak compute performance of 56.3 FP32 TFLOPS. The unit will be available on January 30 with a recommended price of $999 for Nvidia’s Founders Edition version.