While Nvidia hasn’t confirmed the release of its rumored new flagship GPU, the company’s recently shared news that CEO Jensen Huang will deliver the keynote at CES 2025 – which is 6:30 PM on January 6, 2025 – could indicate the long-awaited debut of the RTX 5090.
Rumors have been swirling about the RTX 5090’s specs, but Nvidia has remained painfully quiet. Huang’s CES keynote, his first for the major tech event held annually in Las Vegas in January, could be the moment we learn more. CES has long been the main stage for big Nvidia announcements.
Of course, Nvidia cards don’t always debut in Las Vegas. For example, the GeForce RTX 40 series debuted in September 2022. But the RTX 40 Super series and mobile versions did debuting at (or around) CES, in 2023 and CES 2024 respectively. This pattern, plus Nvidia’s announcement of Huang’s keynote, could indicate that the rumors of a CES 2025 reveal for its new flagship series are indeed true.
Listen to the #CES2025 opening keynote by our CEO Jensen Huang live in Las Vegas on Monday, January 6 at 6:30 PM PT. https://t.co/kMkKNXvRge pic.twitter.com/Adv1WfVPvjOctober 7, 2024
Everyone aboard the hype train…
The RTX 5090 is rumored to feature the Blackwell GB202-300-A1 GPU with 21,760 CUDA cores – that’s over 30% more than the 16,384 cores of the ultra-powerful RTX 4090. As for memory, it would have 32 . GB of GDDR7 RAM on a 512-bit bus. Combined with a possible 28Gbps memory chip, this could result in a staggering 1.78TB/s of memory bandwidth, a 68% increase over the 1TB/s you get with the RTX 4090.
Another point of speculation is energy consumption. Leaker kopite7kimi suggests that the RTX 5090 will require a PSU (Power Supply Unit) of up to 600 Watts, significantly higher than the 4090’s 450W needs. That’s not entirely bad, considering the 5090 is shaping up to be Nvidia’s most powerful GPU yet but it also means that gamers may have to spend even more on a new PSU for their PC, and perhaps even a new cooling system. And since the GPU itself is reportedly going to cost up to $2,000, you could be looking at an extremely expensive upgrade.