CES 2025 is officially here, and with it comes a slew of tech announcements. The annual consumer tech conference in Las Vegas has already seen reveals from the likes of Samsung, AMD, Intel, and others, with Nvidia just concluding its keynote at the marquee event.
Along expected lines, Nvidia announced its next-generation GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, with promises of advancements for gamers, developers, and content creators. The GPUs come with state-of-the-art Blackwell architecture and improvements in AI-powered rendering, real-time ray tracing, and neural shader technology.
Central to the RTX 50 Series is NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture, which introduces improvements in graphics processing. Built with fifth-generation Tensor Cores and fourth-generation RT Cores, Blackwell architecture focuses on AI-driven neural rendering, providing faster, more efficient, and highly realistic graphics. This architectural evolution delivers a major leap in computing power, enabling better performance for complex tasks like ray tracing and AI modeling.
The RTX 50 Series GPUs will be available from the end of the month, from January 30. Pricing for the flagship RTX 5090 is set at $1,999, with the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti priced at $999 and $749, respectively. The RTX 5070, which delivers RTX 4090-level performance, will be made available for $549.
The flagship model, the RTX 5090, is the fastest GeForce RTX GPU so far, and comes with its 92 billion transistors and the ability to perform over 3,352 trillion AI operations per second. This represents a twofold improvement in performance compared to its predecessor, the RTX 4090. “Blackwell, the engine of AI, has arrived for PC gamers, developers and creatives. Fusing AI-driven neural rendering and ray tracing, Blackwell is the most significant computer graphics innovation since we introduced programmable shading 25 years ago,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, commented on the development.
A key feature of the RTX 50 Series is the introduction of DLSS 4 (Deep Learning Super Sampling). This latest iteration employs AI techniques such as Multi Frame Generation to enhance frame rates. By generating up to three AI-driven frames for every traditional rendered frame, DLSS 4 delivers up to an eightfold increase in performance. Additionally, DLSS 4 integrates transformer-based models, a first in the industry, to improve ray tracing and image super-resolution. DLSS 4 is supported in over 75 games at launch.
The series brings improvements for gaming as well – the company’s ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) technologies enable non-player characters (NPCs) to exhibit human-like behavior, responding dynamically to in-game scenarios. This feature is already being integrated into games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds and InZOI.
In addition to this, the RTX 50 Series also brings Blackwell technology to laptops and the integration of the company’s Nvidia’s Max-Q technology is set to extend battery life by up to 40% (so consumers can have thinner, lighter laptops without compromising on power, making them ideal for mobile gamers and professionals). The RTX 50 Series also introduces RTX Neural Shaders, which incorporates small AI networks into programmable shaders to enable real-time rendering of film-quality materials, lighting, and textures. Neural Faces technology takes this further, offering lifelike rendering of digital humans by using generative AI to process rasterized faces and 3D pose data.
