“When’s the next one coming out?” It’s that nagging little question that haunts PC builders before every major purchase. That’s especially true for graphics cards, where the next upgrade might be a tepid update or a literal game-changer. According to a recent presentation, Nvidia may be aiming for a 2025 release window for the next major upgrade to its GPUs, the RTX 50 series.
The info comes from a presentation given to the MLCommons (machine learning) consortium, of which Nvidia is a founding member. The slide spotted by German site HardwareLuxx (via VideoCardz) places the “Ada Lovelace-Next” GPU architecture squarely, if imprecisely, in the first half of 2025. That would put an RTX 5090 release (or whatever the initial flagship is called) at a little less than three years after the Ada Lovelace-based RTX 4090.
That’s a bit longer than Nvidia fans are used to, but given the general slowdown in new GPU designs, not entirely surprising. An initial release early in 2025 would also mean we’re more likely to see more mainstream cards, presumably an RTX 5070, before the end of the calendar year. And, while this information comes directly from an Nvidia presentation, we should stress that corporate timelines like this are always subject to change. The best-laid plans of mice and international chip megacorps, you know.
Beyond the date, all we can do is speculate, so trying to nail down anything like performance or price for eventual retail products is nigh on pointless. The same slide indicates an early 2024 refresh for the Hopper datacenter GPU and 2025 for the Grace ARM-based CPU architecture (the next-gen version of the Tegra chips that are found in the Nvidia SHIELD set-top box and Nintendo Switch), neither of which is particularly relevant for PC hardware.
For the sake of comparison, rumors place Intel’s second-gen “Battlemage” cards at a mid-2024 release, and AMD’s RDNA 4-based cards (RX 8000 series, presumably) aren’t expected before 2025. Of course, new mid-tier and low-end cards in both series might pop up before then.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.