Nvidia’s next generation of graphics cards, reportedly known as Nvidia Blackwell, has been the subject of plenty of rumors since at least 2023.
The most recent one seems to confirm that the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 will be launching in Q4 2024, according to Twitter leaker Kopite7kimi and reported on by PC Gamer. While finally getting a hold of what could easily be the best graphics cards sounds like great news to some, finally getting a sign of the cards’ imminent release, they’re honestly coming out way too soon.
There have been reports that the Nvidia RTX 5080 would have better ray tracing capabilities and pricing than the 4080 and that the RTX 5090 would be up to 70% faster than the 4090, which sounds great on paper. But when you consider how already powerful the 4000 series of cards are, it seems a bit pointless. It’s wonderful that ray tracing, speed, and performance might be improved, but to what benefit?
We aren't even taking full advantage of current gen cards, so what's the value of buying a Nvidia 5000-series GPU later this year?
PC games haven’t even reached the point that they truly challenge the mid-range and high-end 3000-series of graphics cards (hell, an argument can be made that they can’t fully challenge the RTX 2070 Super in ways that truly matter), let alone the current gen. One could argue that the only reason why the current gen was so necessary was thanks to the crypto mining craze completely ruining the 3000-series market and making it nigh impossible to get your hands on one for a remotely affordable price.
And right now, the 4000-series is quite excellent performance-wise, as it’s able to handle ray tracing and other advanced effects and tools like no other. The RTX 4090 in particular is nearly perfect in what it can offer, and the lower cards are still absolute performance beasts. This isn’t even mentioning the Super series refreshes, which added even more oomph to your favorite graphics cards while keeping the prices either the same or lowering them.
There’s also the fact that some cards, like the RTX 4070, didn’t sell nearly as well as Nvidia wanted and in fact were rumored to be a “disaster.” While that doesn’t reflect the sales numbers for the rest of the graphics cards, it’s not a good look to see the base versions of your mid-range cards doing poorly. And while the RTX 4080 Super seems to be out of stock in many retailers, that could just as well be due to low stock in the first place.
With all these issues cropping up, releasing RTX 5080 and 5090 doesn’t seem to be such a smart move on Nvidia’s part. Though the Q4 2024 launch date is still just a rumor, it would be wise for the tech giant to release these cards in 2025 at the earliest to give its 4000-series some proper breathing room.
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