NVIDIA today unveiled its latest line of consumer GPUs, the GeForce RTX 50 Series, available for both desktop and laptop platforms. Built on the new NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, these GPUs incorporate fifth-generation Tensor Cores and fourth-generation RT Cores, promising significant advancements in AI-driven rendering, including neural shaders, digital human technologies, and enhanced geometry and lighting.
Flagship Performance: GeForce RTX 5090
The GeForce RTX 5090, the most powerful of the series, features 92 billion transistors and delivers over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second (TOPS). NVIDIA states that innovations within the Blackwell architecture and the introduction of DLSS 4 enable the RTX 5090 to outperform the previous generation RTX 4090 by up to a factor of two.
Blackwell Comes to Laptops
The Blackwell architecture extends to laptops with the RTX 50 Series Laptop GPUs, offering the same features as their desktop counterparts. NVIDIA’s latest generation of Max-Q technology promises up to a 40% improvement in battery life, maintaining sleek laptop designs without compromising on power or performance.
DLSS 4: Enhanced Performance and Visual Fidelity
The new DLSS 4 introduces Multi Frame Generation, which leverages AI to generate up to three additional frames for each rendered frame. In conjunction with other DLSS technologies, this results in a performance increase of up to eight times compared to traditional rendering, while maintaining responsiveness through NVIDIA Reflex technology.
DLSS 4 also incorporates a transformer model architecture for its Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution models. This model uses double the parameters and four times the compute power of previous models, reportedly resulting in increased stability, reduced ghosting, greater detail, and improved anti-aliasing. Over 75 games and applications are expected to support DLSS 4 at launch
NVIDIA Reflex 2: Reduced Latency
NVIDIA Reflex 2 introduces Frame Warp, a technique designed to lower latency by updating rendered frames based on the most recent mouse input immediately before display. This can reduce latency by up to 75%, providing a potential advantage in competitive gaming and improving responsiveness in single-player titles.
Blackwell’s Impact on Shaders and Digital Humans
NVIDIA introduces RTX Neural Shaders with the RTX 50 Series, integrating small AI networks into programmable shaders. This is claimed to unlock more realistic materials, lighting, and other effects in real-time games.
Rendering realistic digital humans is a key focus. RTX Neural Faces utilizes generative AI to render high-quality, temporally stable digital faces in real-time, taking rasterized face and 3D pose data as input. This is complemented by new RTX technologies for ray-traced hair and skin, and RTX Mega Geometry, which supports up to 100 times more ray-traced triangles per scene.
Autonomous Game Characters with NVIDIA ACE
The RTX 50 Series GPUs provide the AI TOPS necessary to power autonomous game characters alongside game rendering. NVIDIA’s new suite of NVIDIA ACE technologies enables game characters to perceive, plan, and act similarly to human players. These ACE-powered characters are being integrated into games like KRAFTON’s PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and InZOI, as well as Wemade Next’s MIR5.
AI Foundation Models and Tools for RTX AI PCs
NVIDIA is releasing a pipeline of NIM microservices and AI Blueprints for RTX AI PCs, sourced from developers like Black Forest Labs, Meta, Mistral, and Stability AI. These microservices cover a range of AI applications, including LLMs, vision language models, image generation, speech, and more.
Project R2X was also previewed, demonstrating a vision-enabled PC avatar powered by NIM microservices.
AI-Powered Tools for Creators
The RTX 50 Series GPUs are designed to enhance creative workflows. Notably, they are the first consumer GPUs to support FP4 precision, reportedly doubling AI image generation performance for models like FLUX and allowing generative AI models to run locally with reduced memory usage.
The NVIDIA Broadcast app gains two AI-powered beta features for streamers: Studio Voice, which enhances microphone audio, and Virtual Key Light, which relights faces. Streamlabs is also introducing an Intelligent Streaming Assistant, powered by NVIDIA ACE and Inworld AI.
Availability and Pricing
The GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 will be available on January 30th, priced at USD 1,999 (Rs. 1,71,285 approx.) / Rs. 2,14,000 in India and USD 999 (Rs. 85,600 approx.) / Rs. 1,07,000 in India, respectively.
The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will be available in February, priced at USD 749 (Rs. 64,180 approx.) / Rs. 80,000 in India and USD 549 (Rs. 47,040 approx.) / Rs. 59,000 in India, respectively.
NVIDIA Founders Editions will be available directly from nvidia.com and select retailers. Custom models will be available from various add-in card providers and system builders.
Laptops featuring RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 Ti GPUs will be available starting in March priced at USD 2899 (Rs. 2,48,435 approx.), USD 2199 (Rs. 1,88,445 approx.) and USD 1599 (Rs. 1,37,010 approx.), respectively, while RTX 5070 Laptop GPUs will be available in April price starting at USD 1299 (Rs. 1,11,305 approx.).
These laptops will be available from manufacturers such as Acer, ASUS, Dell, GIGABYTE, HP, Lenovo, MECHREVO, MSI, and Razer.