RTX 50 series performance and release date leak suggests potential 2024 launch and generational gain that lags behind RTX 40

NVIDIA’s next GPU architecture codenamed “Blackwell” is rumored to bring up to a 2.6x performance uplift over RTX 40 Ada cards when it comes to the top-of-the-line RTX 5090 board with the GB202 GPU. The uplift could be a result of an increased SM count of 192. RedGamingTech has now revisited the RTX 5090 specifications confirming the SM count. Additionally, Moore’s Law Is Dead has alleged RTX 50 performance and release date information.

RTX 50 series release date and performance

Starting with MLID’s report, the leaker claims that, per one of his NVIDIA sources, Team Green is readying the RTX 50 Blackwell cards for a Q4 2024 launch if the company deems it right. NVIDIA is allegedly planning the early launch situation based on factors such as RTX 40 sales and how well-positioned RDNA 4 seems to be in the holiday season. The source also mentions that NVIDIA is “planning to make a big deal about RTX 5000 efficiency at CES 2025”.

When it comes to performance, MLID’s source reports that the RTX 50’s rasterization gain won’t be “as impressive as Ampere to Ada”. Per our testing, the RTX 4090 is, on average, 1.9x ahead of the RTX 3090 in the 3DMark Time Spy Graphics benchmark. Keeping this in mind, the RTX 5090 performance might not be anywhere close to 2.6x that we’ve been hearing about.

Interestingly, MLID’s informant alleges that, since the RTX 4090 “was cut down by more than 10%”, NVIDIA can make the RTX 5090 performance bump “feel” similar if the situation arises.

RTX 5090 specifications

In addition to the RTX 50 performance and release date, we also have RTX 5090 specifications to go through courtesy of RedGamingTech. Unfortunately, the leaker doesn’t share anything radically new as we’ve already heard most of the hardware details he talks about.

First up, RGT suggests that the RTX 5090 (GB202) will have 192 SMs, 36 GB of 36 Gbps memory, and a 384-bit bus. The leaker also suggests a monolithic die fabricated on the TSMC N3E process.

Finally, RGT claims that the rumored 96 MB of L2 cache may not be correct.

Long story short, the RTX 50 series of GPUs may launch late next year or in early 2025 with a performance increase that may not match up to the generation bump we saw in the RTX 40 series. But, as is the case with leaks of such nature, the information is unofficial and, therefore, liable to change.

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