NVIDIA Unveils GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell, Up To 3X Quicker Than RTX 4090

It was again in September of 2022 that NVIDIA first revealed the GeForce RTX 4000 sequence. The GeForce RTX 4090 has been the reigning GPU efficiency champ, basically unchallenged, ever since then. It simply abdicated the throne to its successor, although: the GeForce RTX 5090 is right here, bringing with it the patron model of the Blackwell GPU structure.

Introduced tonight at NVIDIA’s keynote in a surprisingly windy Las Vegas, the GeForce RTX 50 sequence represents NVIDIA’s newest efforts at bringing its usually datacenter-focused chip improvement efforts again house to avid gamers demanding the newest rendering know-how and the best GPU efficiency. So with out additional ado, let’s truly speak concerning the GPUs.

Clearly, first up is the GeForce RTX 5090, and crucial specification for lots of you is the worth: $1999 USD. That is a rise over even the $1599 of the GeForce RTX 4090, nevertheless it’s not simply inflation responsible, as the brand new GPU is a whopping 92 billion transistors. You may simply get your cash’s value, although, because the specs are staggering: 170 Streaming Multiprocessors (up from 128 in RTX 4090), and a full 32GB of GDDR7 reminiscence operating at 28 Gbps. That delivers a complete reminiscence bandwidth only a hair below 1.8 TB/second, roughly an 80% enhance from the earlier era.

Thanks virtually totally to the big dimension of the GPU and architectural modifications, the GeForce RTX 5090 apparently provides 3400 AI TOPS—totally 2.5 instances that of the GeForce RTX 4090, going by NVIDIA’s personal numbers. In fact, AI TOPS aren’t that related to gaming workloads, which is what nearly all of you expensive readers are in all probability most fascinated with. NVIDIA did not produce any

Along with the top-end GeForce RTX 5090, NVIDIA additionally introduced the GeForce RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070. The GeForce RTX 5080 is basically one-half of a GeForce RTX 5090, with 16GB of RAM on a 256-bit bus, and it comes with an identical price ticket of $999. It does function barely greater clock charges on its reminiscence—a dizzying 30 Gbps—so the efficiency might be a bit greater than half of the flagship.

The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is an additional step down at $749; it additionally comes with 16GB of RAM, after which the GeForce RTX 5070 with 12GB of GDDR7 reminiscence is attractively priced at $549. NVIDIA claims that even the GeForce RTX 5070 is quicker than the GeForce RTX 4090, though we expect that is more likely to be each in a path-traced workload and taking DLSS 4 into consideration.

Certainly, DLSS 4 is actual and NVIDIA says that it has moved away from convolutional neural networks towards a brand new new transformer mannequin to extend each picture high quality and efficiency. Nevertheless, the large function this time round is multi-frame era. DLSS 4 is able to rising body charges significantly by producing as much as three frames between the precise classically-rendered frames. Jensen Huang says that out of 4 full-resolution 4K output frames—roughly 33 megapixels of picture information—solely 2 megapixels should be computed historically.

That is not the one AI function NVIDIA premiered tonight. RTX Neural Shaders are small AI networks embedded inside shader code. NVIDIA says that they will enhance each picture high quality and efficiency with a smaller reminiscence footprint in comparison with typical shader code, like with NVIDIA’s Neural Texture Compression. Additionally, NVIDIA RTX Neural Face seems to be a brand new middleware library that makes use of AI to enhance the realism of life-like, interactive faces rendered in real-time.

Arguably probably the most thrilling new function of ‘Blackwell’ is definitely the introduction of one thing referred to as RTX Mega Geometry. NVIDIA claims that this function permits the GeForce RTX 50 sequence to ray-trace one-hundred instances the triangles of Ada Lovelace GPUs. We’re looking forward to extra particulars on Mega Geometry, however Huang did not truly point out it in his temporary GeForce RTX 50 presentation.

Lastly, NVIDIA introduced the second era of its Reflex enter lag discount know-how. Meant to be used along side DLSS 4, that is supposedly the key sauce that permits the multi-frame era know-how to work with out making each recreation really feel like a whole lag-fest. The unique model of Reflex provides tangible advantages by way of enter lag discount, so we’re keen to check NVIDIA’s claims right here.

Unusually, NVIDIA additionally revealed the cell GeForce RTX 50 lineup tonight. These vary from the top-end GeForce RTX 5090, geared up with 24GB of reminiscence and delivering 1824 TOPS, right down to the GeForce RTX 5070 with 8GB of RAM and producing 798 TOPS. As with the earlier era, it seems like NVIDIA is basically utilizing GPUs one tier down for the cell components, though the GeForce RTX 5090 (cell) does not map on to any of the desktop components, so it will likely be attention-grabbing to see for positive.

So far as the desktop GPUs go, all of those components are on the best way to retailer cabinets this month. In the meantime, laptops geared up with the brand new GeForce RTX 50 cell GPUs will probably be coming round towards the top of this quarter, or in March.