Discussion Nvidia Blackwell in Q1-2025

[PJVol]

First working AI said to invest more money into it and then shut off.

Sounds almost like "due to the favorable position of the planets"

 

[Tup3x]

It looks like DLSS frame gen might become available for older series. At least he didn't just say just say no.

 

[Heartbreaker]

It looks like DLSS frame gen might become available for older series. At least he didn't just say just say no.

It would be a good idea to throw 30 series owners a bone now. I bet they could, but they probably won't bother.

Any marketing reasons for FG being a 40 series, don't really exist anymore, now that 50 series is here, and MFG is now the unique feature to market around.

 

[majord]

it looks like the performance page has changed since announcement , adding more games/perf metrics which is fine, but it's odd, on the 5080 page They've swapped out the non- 4x frame Gen supporting games for different ones, and the performance uplift over 4080 is much lower.

Seems unusually low to me tbh ,

(Top = day after announcement[iirc] , bottom = today

 

[adroc_thurston]

Seems unusually low to me tbh

No it's right where it should be.

it looks like the performance page has changed since announcement

New ones are lawsuit-proof.

 

[majord]

No it's right where it should be.

New ones are lawsuit-proof.

only 15% or so over 4080? (without MFG of course)

 

[adroc_thurston]

only 15% or so over 4080? (without MFG of course)

10-15% yea.

 

[Grooveriding]

These are also likely best case scenarios. Overall average may be even lower. We could be looking at what is basically a 4080 Super Super with a very small uplift.

I hope the 5090 is at least a good 35% on average over the 4090.

 

[adroc_thurston]

These are also likely best case scenarios

Yeah, might actually be games where 40% bandwidth actual does something.

We could be looking at what is basically a 4080 Super Super with a very small uplift.

At least it's a fair comparison here.
5070ti versus 4070ti, OTOH.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Look at these weasels: https://viperatech.com/shop/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-founders-edition/

$4800 for the Feb batch and $3800 for the April one.

 

[Hans Gruber]

It's not looking good for Nvidia and Blackwell. What went wrong? Nvidia usually delivers the goods. The smart move for Nvidia would be to roll back pricing and put downward pressure on the GPU market.

 

[adroc_thurston]

What went wrong?

Clocks.

The smart move for Nvidia would be to roll back pricing and put downward pressure on the GPU market

They already did, Blackwell as a baseline ships more generous chops (5070ti is an equivalent of 4070ti Super, not the vanilla SKU).

 

[Hans Gruber]

Clocks.

They already did, Blackwell as a baseline ships more generous chops (5070ti is an equivalent of 4070ti Super, not the vanilla SKU).

What I meant to say. Jensen doesn't like to lose and sometimes that means sometimes he doesn't care about margins. So a disappointing Blackwell with very aggressive pricing could still be a success at the expense of AMD. I know Nvidia announced lower pricing. If they got really aggressive on pricing, they could actually do well with Blackwell.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If they got really aggressive on pricing, they could actually do well with Blackwell.

Don't think that's happening. Especially not for 5070 Ti and up. Jensen thinks he controls the fate of AI and that his consumer cards are the gateway to AI heaven. I don't foresee any good deal on a 5000 series card for the entirety of 2025.

 

[adroc_thurston]

that means sometimes he doesn't care about margins

Everyone always does.

at the expense of AMD

AMD has better cost structure since they skipped GDDR7.

 

[Win2012R2]

$4800 for the Feb batch and $3800 for the April one.

"No returns or cancellations"

 

[Heartbreaker]

It's not looking good for Nvidia and Blackwell. What went wrong? Nvidia usually delivers the goods. The smart move for Nvidia would be to roll back pricing and put downward pressure on the GPU market.

Silicon process has gotten too expensive to simply throw more transistors at the problem. The only exception is for the price is no object 090 series buyers.

Dies are the same size or smaller, with equal or even less transistors, than 40 series, except in 5090 which gets a healthy ~30% increase in die size/transistor budget.

Without more transistors, the marginal gains in this scenario can only come from:

A) New architecture: There is none that impacts gaming rasterization. Only the RT/AI side has any kind of significant update.
B) Memory BW: There is a nice improvement in BW, but that only helps where you were BW limited, which isn't that widespread.
C) Clock Speed: It's the same underlying design on the same process. Significantly higher clocks weren't going to happen.


Bottom line on what happened: No more transistors to increase shader counts, and nothing else can have much impact on the exact same process with the same underlying gaming architecture.

 

[maddie]

Clocks.

They already did, Blackwell as a baseline ships more generous chops (5070ti is an equivalent of 4070ti Super, not the vanilla SKU).

I've been wondering about "clocks". First AMD and possibly now Nvidia. Are the tools failing at higher GHz?

 

[Golgatha]

It's annoying to re-paste and it's electrically conductive. It's possible when you separate the cooler from the PCB that the TIM could go into someplace it shouldn't and short out a $2000 card. No thank you. Same reason I wouldn't ever water cool a system unless it was absolutely necessary (say tightly packed servers or something); it's a potential headache down the road.

Following up on FE gripes. Besides using electrically conductive TIM, the 5090 FE also exhausts heat directly into the case through two tiny slots instead of venting out the back.

Edit: Reading further, it seems the two slots create an airflow boundary of some sort. Hot air exhausts on the top of the card, which would be directly into my very large CPU cooler. That configuration is an absolute no from me. It would probably work well in a SFF case with an AIO on the CPU though.

Top 5090 FE, bottom 4090 FE.


Source - https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/20/24347693/nvidia-rtx-5090-vs-rtx-4090-design-fans-hardware

 

[basix]

Basically every AIB card will exhaust 90+% of the heat into the case. And even worse, one half gets blown onto the motherboard and the other half at the side panel of the case and both air streams require a 90° turn to be exhausted out of the case. I think the new FE design is really smart and if you have a proper case fan setup, it will perform much better (considering the small size of the card). The same applies to heating up motherboard and CPU, if the cooling setup of the case is done right it will perform very well.

 

[Saylick]

Following up on FE gripes. Besides using electrically conductive TIM, the 5090 FE also exhausts heat directly into the case through two tiny slots instead of venting out the back.

Top 5090 FE, bottom 4090 FE.
View attachment 115295

Source - https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/20/24347693/nvidia-rtx-5090-vs-rtx-4090-design-fans-hardware

Wat? It vents all of its heat into the case via the two flow-through fans.

 

[Golgatha]

Wat? It vents all of its heat into the case via the two flow-through fans.

Yeah, I read it wrong the first time through. Edited the OP for clarity. Still a design that won't work well in a case with a large air cooler though IMO.

 

[gdansk]

Is there a 5090 blower? 10K rpm? You know for the AI crowd.

 

[Saylick]

I have to wonder. Given that dual tower 140mm CPU heatsink fans like the D15 are rated for 300W, how does the fin area of the D15 compare to the 5090’s total fin area, which is supposed to dissipate 600W? The 4090’s fans were 116mm in diameter. I’m now curious how loud it will be…

 

[Heartbreaker]

Yeah, I read it wrong the first time through. Edited the OP for clarity. Still a design that won't work well in a case with a large air cooler though IMO.

People said the same thing about the first single flow through designs, but that really didn't come to pass then, and I expect it will be similar now. A couple of degrees, but not a shot stopper.