Nvidia RTX 5090 launch might hinge on AMD’s RDNA 4 success
Gamers and makers waiting for Nvidia's next-generation RTX 5090 in 2024 should keep a close eye on what AMD does next year, as Nvidia may time the RTX 5090's launch based on what AMD does with its own next-generation GPUs.
In a recent video, tech channel Moore's law is dead has delved into the possible release date of the Nvidia RTX 5090, and the launch of the company's next-gen cards in 2024 largely depends on the competitiveness of AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 GPUs according to an Nvidia source.
The source indicates that Nvidia's new consumer architecture, based on the upcoming Nvidia Blackwell GPU architecture, is being prepared for a possible release in the fourth quarter of 2024, depending on how well sales of the current RTX 40 series hold up in 2024 ( especially with the release of the new RTX Super SKUs expected in January 2024) and whether AMD's next-gen cards, which are expected to focus on the mid-range market, will impact Nvidia's year-end sales.
Although AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs are aimed at the mid-range, a successful launch could also challenge Nvidia's dominance in the high-end market, which could force Nvidia to introduce a new flagship graphics card to put the focus back on the GeForce establish a line. At least that's the thinking.
Regardless of what happens in 2024, PC gamer notes that Nvidia plans to heavily promote the RTX 5000 series at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), pointing to an early 2025 launch of the next generation of GPUs.
This timeline is earlier than initial reports that suggested Nvidia's next-gen cards might not arrive until later in 2025, but even the accelerated timeline still leaves the new GPUs a year away at the earliest.
How fast will Nvidia enter the graphics card market in 2024?
The real question here, though, is whether any of this will even matter by the end of 2024.
Nvidia became a billion-dollar company almost overnight thanks to its prowess in AI chips, and while AMD and Intel are positioning themselves to rival Team Green in this area, Nvidia's first-mover advantage here is pretty much a goose that leaves a lot lays golden eggs.
Nvidia doesn't have its own factories, unlike Intel, so the amount of silicon they can leverage will always be limited, and as I've been saying for months, Nvidia isn't in the consumer graphics card market for much longer. . The profits to be made with AI are simply too astronomical to ignore and they are significantly higher than the margins Nvidia can make by selling graphics cards to gamers.
It's no surprise then that, according to a profile in The New YorkerNvidia CEO Jensen Huang himself emailed the company a few months ago saying, “We are no longer a graphics company.”
With all that in mind, even it will be are an RTX 5090 in 2025? How much money will Nvidia make on an RTX 5090 and what is the real opportunity cost given up if the silicon in the RTX 5090 could instead be put into new AI chips that Nvidia can sell to Google and Open AI for virtually anything it wants ?
That all remains to be seen, but it's pretty clear that Nvidia has to make some pretty consequential decisions regardless of what AMD tries to do.