Nvidia 50xx

[ddrueding]

The new hardware design of the 5090 (and possibly others in the lineup) looks very interesting. I'm curious to see what the waterblocks end up looking like for this card, it might get very compact.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Is Finally Here at CES 2025

Get ready to spend an arm and a leg for Blackwell.

nordic.ign.com

 

[Mercutio]

Up to the 3070, the standard was for the *70 card to have about 50% of whatever the biggest card has. Now it's all the way up to the 5080, and the 5070 is still a loser 12GB card that won't even have enough RAM for AAA 1440p gaming.
I'm glad the cards are physically smaller but we're still talking about almost 600W on the high end. It's hard to call that better.

 

[Mercutio]

I can't see any news at all about updated media compression support from either AMD or Nvidia.

Edit: Never mind. It's not on the 1 page data sheets but it IS on the developer web site. Blackwell supports AV1 and HEVC422 like actual grown-up hardware.

 

[jtr1962]

I'm glad the cards are physically smaller but we're still talking about almost 600W on the high end. It's hard to call that better.

On the bright side the cards can double as space heaters in the winter.

 

[ddrueding]

My existing system already serves just fine as a space heater. I'm still investigating a very large external radiator to move that heat into the main living area. 9x 200mm just sounds hilarious. Of course, one you add on the options for dual D5 pumps, integrated reservoir, and integrated fan controller, it is more than a very respectable gaming system just for the rad. The spec I was looking at is about €1400.

 

[Mercutio]

At this point I will give dd some bad ideas and suggest a nice hole and a geothermal heat pump as a very reasonable alternative his monster radiator setup.

 

[ddrueding]

When I was in a house I considered it, but now that we're in an apartment I was looking at industrial chillers

 

[ddrueding]

So performance numbers released for the 5090 today, videos available at all the usual sites.

Seems like 30% actual performance increase from 30% more transistors drawing 30% more power and costing 25% more money. No efficiency gains, just more fundamental power.

Unless you're doing AI stuff, where the bump to 32GB of much faster (80%+) memory helps quite a bit.

Since my new company may have some AI stuff in it, I'll see if I can get a founders card direct from Nvidia in the first shipment, otherwise I'll probably wait.

At least the "meh" improvement for games won't crush the resale value of the 4090?

 

[Mercutio]

The 5070Ti is looking like a "mainstream" option. Less than 16GB VRAM and I wouldn't want to bother with the purchase, but $750 is more than a flagship desktop CPU and that strikes me as absolutely galling. I'm hoping that AMD has my must-have feature so I can entertain sub-$500 options from anyone else. As of now, the A770 is still technically a more powerful card than the B580 and I'd RATHER have a midrange two-slot card that runs on under 300W than some space-hogging toaster of a GPU.

 

[Mercutio]

Apparently the 5070Ti will launch on February 19th with a base MSRP of $750. There WILL be a 16GB 5060 of some sort coming in Q2 as well, but historically those low-end cards are compromise hardware that give up other aspects of performance. This isn't really good news, but I guess that it is news.

 

[Handruin]

I know the 5080 is getting a lot of reviewer hate right now but I'm still considering one. Not sure how the 5070Ti fits into the performance envelope where the performance margins on the 4080 Super are already tight

 

[Mercutio]

Microcenter is showing MSRPs for non-Founder's cards around 10 to 30% over MSRP for a Founder's Edition card and feels like insanity for something that's only half a 5090. I feel like the value just isn't there.

 

[Handruin]

That kinda assumes anyone can get a 5090FE let alone at MSRP.

If I had a 4080 the 5080 is a complete waste of an upgrade. However from my position of having a 3080FE, the 5080 performance is a small tick above a 4080 super for the same price and a nicer cooling solution, so it feels reasonable enough to warrant the jump. I'm also waiting to see if my buddy who works at Nvidia can get me one through employee purchasing. He got me my 3080 for a small discount, maybe the same is possible for the 5080.

 

[ddrueding]

5090FE "preorder" went from "soon" to "sold out" in seconds.

 

[ddrueding]

Turns out that my local electronics seller, Proshop, had been trusted to handle the 5090FE sales from nVidia for Europe. Their internal sales URL was leaked in advance, and a bot purchased every EU 5090FE before the link on nVidias website even went live.

 

[sedrosken]

This AI bubble can not burst quickly enough. First it was crypto bros, now it's stupid AI dorks with too much money burning a hole in their pocket. And scalpers getting them to sell to both. I just want to play games, man. I hope it's exactly like the last crypto crash where nVidia was left with ridiculous amounts of stock that just didn't sell, and I hope this time they're strapped enough for cash that they can't go without slashing prices.

Then again, nVidia themselves ruined any chance of me buying this gen by making the midrange card as expensive as the top-end used to be. the 980Ti launched at 650 bucks. The 5070 is, what, 550? I think at this point I might just be done with PC gaming, or gaming in general. The industry's salivating at the prospect of R* launching GTA6 at a hundred bucks or more so it'll justify them doing the same with their craptacular horribly-optimized DLSSfests. The idea of running anything but indies at native resolution instead of using upscaling to trick your brain into thinking 440p is 4K is all but dead and will be within a hardware generation or two. I have an entire backlog that, by the time my 3060 is outmoded enough to struggle with, integrated graphics will be good enough to play.

 

[Handruin]

Turns out that my local electronics seller, Proshop, had been trusted to handle the 5090FE sales from nVidia for Europe. Their internal sales URL was leaked in advance, and a bot purchased every EU 5090FE before the link on nVidias website even went live.

That's definitely shitty. Given some of the details out there, I can't imagine they even were allocated much inventory. Seems like the amount of 5090s even the the US was abysmally low for retailers. This was hardly a real launch of their products

 

[ArAfGo]

Sedrosken, you are spot on with this:

This AI bubble can not burst quickly enough.

In another tech Community I have a thread going that is meant to draw out some really new thought processes on programming languages and that inevitably caused a bunch of the citizens of that Community to wander into the AI sandstorm.

Then a few weeks ago I was reading some of their stuff (and please don't get me wrong; there is some brilliant stuff coming up in that thread [seriously technical]) - - - anyway, for some reason while I was studying some of their ideas I remembered something from way, way back.

This:

And the note I have with the link in my initial log is as follows:

When AI Gets Rude
What would you do IF your AI program started talking back? Maybe it became an "adult" AI, as in, no longer just artifiical.

A trial of that idea is here: [That link] Well, sort of a "trial".

 

[Mercutio]

This AI bubble can not burst quickly enough.

It's going to happen. AI is a real "Emperor has no clothes" situation. DeepSeek offering 30x the efficiency of ChatGPT OM1 means that US Tech has been vastly overspending on hardware and that's for products that don't really do all that much for the overwhelming majority of people who use computers in the first place.

SoftBank just became the majority shareholder in OpenAI and Softbank is where bad ideas go to die.

 

[ArAfGo]

Interesting to see that thought process about SoftBank, as I had an interesting skirmish with them last year and eventually had that brought to a close that was not so bad for both them and I, but only after a gentle bit of a push from the CEO and the assigning of one of their smarter management folks to the case. But the opening phase of that skirmish did surprise me, and only because of what seemed like too much of a lockstep style in their middle management ranks. Kind of reminded me of the military style of how to get things done.

Of course, I am fully aware of that style being the norm with many Japanese companies for so many years, but I had, until last year, thought that SoftBank had departed from that style and developed a more think-on-your-feet style, instead of "Here's the playbook and rigid adherence to it is required."

This is worthy of note:

... and Softbank is where bad ideas go to die.

Lucky for me I keep a Net log of all my activities, so I can set that aside in an existing log for later contemplation. That's worthy of extra thought.

First thought is you've nailed that one.

But it makes me wonder when they got in the wrong lane on that particular giant corporate freeway that passes through the Japanese sphere of influence? I doubt I'll live long enough to be able to properly find the answer.

But as the admin tools show on this site, I am definitely still tied to them. Have been ever since they bought Yahoo's assets here in Japan. Heck, they (SoftBank) went to great lengths to justify why I couldn't keep my static IP address. What a bummer that was. So many years with one, and then 'POOF' taken away. Well, I mean at a reasonable cost. Cost is everything, right?