After months of rumors, Nvidia unveiled its latest generation of graphics cards for desktops and laptops at CES 2025. The RTX 50 series is the fastest line of GPUs Nvidia has ever developed. Starting with its RTX 5070, Nvidia says it offers the equivalent performance of the previous generation's top model, the RTX 4090, for just $549 instead of the 4090's $1,599. Going forward, the RTX 5070 Ti will cost $749, with the RTX $999 5080 and $1,999 for the RTX 5090. All of these cards will be available starting end of this month.
The RTX 50 series marks the jump to GDDR7 video memory (VRAM), which is more powerful and energy efficient than the GDDR6x used in most RTX 40 series cards. Chief among the cards' new features is The RTX 50 series, in addition to its power increase, is DLSS 4. It is based on Nvidia's previous iterations, all of which aim to increase gaming performance while making a series of visual trade-offs (i.e. reducing rendering resolution, using AI to generate new frames and making games run better) that become increasingly difficult to detect as technology improves. Nvidia touts that DLSS 4 further leverages AI (generating 3 frames with trained AI for every 1 render on the GPU) to allow games to look better and run faster. Relying so heavily on Tensor AI cores in the GPU is part of what makes Nvidia's RTX 50 series more efficient, Nvidia says.
It was a big day for new gaming GPUs, as AMD also announced new hardware at CES. The company's new RDNA 4 graphics architecture and FSR4 framing and scaling technology will debut soon on graphics cards, including the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070. No pricing or availability has been announced for these cards, although . It will likely compete directly against GPUs from Nvidia's RTX 50 line.