We’re hopefully only a few weeks away from the grand unveiling of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 lineup at CES in January now, but the latest rumor about the new Blackwell gaming GPU lineup is that the specs are very similar to those of the current RTX 4000 series. The one exception, according to a tech leaker who claims to have seen the specs, is the flagship RTX 5090.
The latter certainly looks set to be a formidable GPU from what we’ve seen of the RTX 5090 specs so far. If current rumors are to be believed, the new top-end Nvidia graphics card will come equipped with a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM that’s attached to a super-wide 512-bit memory interface, while the GPU itself comes equipped with up to 21,760 CUDA cores. That’s a decent upgrade over the current RTX 4090, but the rest of the Blackwell lineup is apparently looking less inspiring.
In fact, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) by regular tech leaker Olrak29_, the RTX 5000 specs are “BORING aside from the 5090,” saying that the “excitement immediately went away when I saw all the new GPU configs.” Olrak29_ later expands on these statements in a reply further down the thread, saying that the “configs (especially on the lower end dies) are very similar to Lovelace.”
This tallies with other rumors we’ve seen about the new Blackwell gaming GPU lineup so far, which suggest that the RTX 5080 specs have the same 16GB of VRAM as the RTX 4080, but using GDDR7 rather than GDDR6X, while the RTX 5070 specs are still rumored to sport just 12GB of VRAM, and the RTX 5060 is reportedly still sticking with just 8GB of VRAM, again just like their Ada predecessors. Comparatively, even Intel is upping the stakes here, with the $249 Intel Arc B580 coming equipped with 12GB of VRAM.
However, there are rumors that RTX 5090 ray tracing will be “enhanced” compared to previous-generation GPUs, and there may be a new version of Nvidia DLSS in the works too. It looks as though, once you step down from the RTX 5090, Nvidia is mainly looking to improve gaming performance using AI, while also boosting ray tracing performance, rather than focusing on raw shader performance.
If that’s true, then it’s disappointing, but it’s hardly surprising when Nvidia has so little in the way of competition right now. The specs and price of the RTX 4060 were disappointing too, but that hasn’t stopped it from racing to the number three spot on the latest Steam hardware survey, while AMD is nowhere to be seen outside the top ten.
Of course, Nvidia hasn’t officially confirmed any information about the new RTX 5000 lineup yet, so take the above with a grain of salt for the moment. We’re hoping to get a proper look at the new GPUs at CES 2025, but in the meantime, check out our guide to the best graphics card if you’re looking to upgrade your gaming rig now.