Rumor mill: Rumors have long pointed to a late 2024 or early 2025 launch for Nvidia’s next generation of consumer graphics cards – likely named RTX 5000 – but precisely which products in that series would make the starting lineup has remained unclear. According to a recent report, board partners expect the top two RTX 5000 GPUs to ship before the end of this year.
In agreement with prior rumors, United Daily News (UDN) reports that Nvidia’s hardware partners anticipate a fourth quarter 2024 unveiling for the company’s upcoming GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards, codenamed “Blackwell.” The initial launch is expected to include the high-end RTX 5090 and 5080 graphics cards.
Although little information had previously emerged regarding which products would lead the Blackwell rollout, aside from the flagship, the plan described in the UDN story resembles the Ada Lovelace series’ 2022 launch.
Nvidia began shipping the RTX 4090 and 4080 near the end of that year, while the RTX 4070 Ti appeared the following January and the RTX 4070 launched in April. Most of the RTX 5000 products will likely emerge in 2025.
This prediction is a primary factor behind upbeat market forecasts for 2024 from Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. While Asus expects demand in the first half of this year to be similar to late 2023, MSI believes the RTX 5000 launch will help increase shipment prices for 2024 overall.
Gigabyte also believes the storm has passed, likely referring to the downturn the entire tech industry suffered in 2022 and 2023. Most companies expect sales of PCs and other products to recover from 2024 into the middle of the decade.
Earlier reports regarding Blackwell suggest that the RTX 5090 will be around 70 percent faster than the 4090. Meanwhile, the 5080 could be similar to the 4090 in rasterization but superior in ray tracing.
The GB202, GB203, and GB205 GPUs – likely to power the 5090, 5080, and 5070, respectively – are expected to upgrade to GDDR7 VRAM. However, the 5090 will receive an additional exclusive speed boost from a 512-bit memory bus. Reports also indicate significant upgrades in cache with support for PCIe 5.0 and DisplayPort 2.1. Blackwell is based on TSMC’s 5nm 4N node.
AMD is expected to launch a new generation of GPUs this year under the RDNA 4 label, but it will only encompass mid-range and mainstream products. Intel is also attempting to release its sophomore lineup this year – Battlemage – which will include an enthusiast graphics card. However, the company’s first series, Alchemist, faced significant delays, and it remains to be seen if Intel has improved its supply chain.
