Don’t typically like to play in the leaks and rumor space here at PGM, but there’s something about this worth exploring.
It’s inevitable every high end PC or laptop purchased will soon see something faster, more efficient, better. In gaming, the focus tends to focus on graphics cards. The NVidia 40-series cards as of this writing are their highest end offering, and there’s already talk brewing about their 50-series.
Nvidia will reportedly be making a “big deal” about the GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs and their efficiency, rocking along on TSMC’s updated 3nm process node. We should expect some big power savings, higher clock speeds, and a huge performance upgrade over the current-gen RTX 40 series GPUs.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 ‘Blackwell’ GPUs ready to launch in Q4 2024 (tweaktown.com)
The never-ending hamster wheel of tech replacing tech is why I gave up regularly covering tech almost 15 years ago but am being lured back into the gaming side of tech, due to the desire to play games at max settings, framerate, highest resolution (4k here, someday 8K) and more. Somehow, tech always seems to pull us back in.
In 2023, I bought two high end gaming PCs: both sporting 40-series cards. My Twitch streaming laptop has a 4090 and my desktop has a 4080. My goal was for these computers to be able to run games at highest settings for 7-10 years. I knew there would be newer, better, faster tech within a couple years and probably by the time a replacement would be purchased (2030-2033+), Nvidia would be on their 60- or 70- series cards, assuming they keep the version iteration.
That all said, am a bit surprised on the window of the 40-series if the rumored leaks turn out to be accurate and 50-series cards are available by end of Q4-2024. It seems more realistic to say CES 2025 that Nvidia will be pushing these, but even that seems like right around the corner. A year in technology, however, is like 20-40 human years. It’s worse than the 7 years from dog to human in technology. The 40-series cards were released in October 2022, so if the 50-series are ready by end of 2024, that’s roughly two years.
Note the emphasis in the first sentence above, the big “if”, really. There’s no way the high end gaming PCs I purchased are obsoleted, yet, but when these 50-series cards hit, they will slip a bit in the ranking. And when the 60-series hits, because they’re probably coming in another 2-4 years beyond the 50-series, these will fall even further.
Recently, PGM member MCAP and I were chatting about the new 4070TI GPU compared to the 4080. I picked out some of my discord response below that speaks more to the 50-series coming and maybe just waiting, if possible, for the 50-series.
If Nvidia does come out with 50-series at some point in late 2024 (not likely) or 2025 (personally, I think they should wait until 2026, give more time to get closer to 8K gaming being a thing) … they have a real challenge on their hand: where is the 8K gaming? Because that’s what the 50-series appears to be targeting … because how much more power does any gamer need over the 4090?
Maybe they don’t get much more power with the 50-series, but significantly less power consumption and a little better performance. These 40-series are beasts for power consumption … my 1350 watt power supply is no joke. That’s ridiculous and the power draw for some of these 40-series cards is like literally melting the plugs (got to make sure they are firmly plugged in).
So, it stands to reason that Nvidia might be focusing on similar performance of the 4090 but doing it with less juice required. I think there’s a good chance that’s what the 50-series will target.
I could be wrong, but my guess is the 50-series aren’t going to add a significant performance boost over the 4090. Instead, they will focus on energy and costs involved in running them … which brings down the yearly cost of running a PC with these beastly specs.
Great Article! I’m glad we talk about this as well, and planning to wait until the 5000 series comes out if my laptop makes it. *fingers crossed*.