Nvidia 5000 series graphics cards have been the talk of the tech world for some time now, and one of the most speculated cards has been the RTX 5090, the flagship of the line and arguably the best. graphics card on the market. once it is finally released.
As well as the current-gen flagship Nvidia RTX 4090 has been reviewed (we cited it as one of the best graphics cards ever released), there are high expectations for the next-gen cards, with the RTX 5090 in particular taking the brunt. . The Nvidia Lovelace generation as a whole has been a mixed bag in terms of performance and price, so it adds even more pressure on the 5090 to succeed on both counts.
However, at this point it's still too early to say whether it will be able to live up to these expectations, with much more to learn until Nvidia officially reveals it. For now, let's review what we do know thanks to all the rumors and leaks.
Nvidia RTX 5090: get to the point
- What is it? Nvidia's rumored flagship for its next generation of RTX graphics cards
- How much does it cost? Unknown at this time, but will likely be priced similarly to Nvidia Lovelace GPUs.
- When can I get it? The earliest we expect to see the Nvidia RTX 5090 would be late 2024 or early 2025.
Nvidia RTX 5090: Latest news
Nvidia RTX 5090: release date
Although there is no official release date for the Nvidia RTX 5090, thanks to tech rumors, we have an idea of when the card could come out. And since the global chip shortage has eased, there are no delays expected for the next-generation chip either.
All signs seem to point to late 2024 or early 2025 at the earliest, which ties into the normal 18-24 month release cycle that Nvidia typically adheres to.
Nvidia RTX 5090: specifications
Some information has emerged regarding the specifications of the Nvidia RTX 5090, the most important being that it is likely based on the Nvidia Blackwell architecture, the rumored initial codename for the Nvidia Lovelace successor. Nvidia also called it Lovelace-Next in the official presentation materials.
We also learned that the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector could be a standard for 5090 and other 5000 series cards, meaning even third-party board partners would need to use it. It is also rumored to feature a 512-bit memory bus that is 33% wider than Nvidia's RTX 4090, memory bandwidth will feature a 77% increase compared to the 4090, and 28Gbps GDDR7 memory modules which would be 33% faster than the 21Gbps memory modules in the RTX 4090.
We recently heard rumors that Nvidia would finally switch some of its Blackwell GPUs to a multi-chiplet module (MCM) design, following in the footsteps of AMD and Intel. However, it is unclear if this will include the Nvidia 5000 series GPUs, as the rumors only specified the GB100 GPU, which is a commercial-grade chip for servers, data centers, and industrial use.
Still, an MCM Nvidia GPU could provide a big boost in performance if done right, and since archrival AMD is already using MCM in its GPUs, Nvidia can't afford to be left behind here.
We've also seen some alleged specs for an RTX 5090 from forum user Chiphell Panzerlied, a fairly reliable hardware leaker. According to a now-deleted post, the RTX 5090 will feature some impressive spec upgrades over the RTX 4090:
| Specifications | RTX 4090 | RTX 5090 |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming multiprocessors | 128 | 192 |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 24,576 |
| Ray tracing cores | 128 | 192 |
| Tensor cores | 512 | 768 |
| impulse clock | 2.52GHz | 2.9GHz |
| L2 cache | 72MB | 128MB |
| memory bandwidth | 1,008 GB/s | 1,532GB/s |
If these specs pan out, this should give the RTX 5090 a massive boost across generations, with the same post detailing the specs claiming that the RTX 5090's performance was 1.7x faster than the RTX 4090, which is downright wild.
Beyond this, we don't know much else about these GPUs, such as what process node they will be manufactured on, who will make the fab (although it will almost certainly be TSMC, as was the case with Nvidia Lovelace). ), and what kind of core counts and clock speeds we should expect.
Nvidia RTX 5090: what to expect
What we can expect first is that, if the rumors about the 5090 are true, there will be a lot more information before its eventual launch. Of course, more could also be published about current-gen Lovelace cards, such as a budget RTX 4050.
As we learn more, we can begin to build proper anticipation around the launch, although there is still a long way to go, all of this should be taken with a large grain of salt for the time being.
