GeForce RTX 50 series
The GeForce RTX 50 series of consumer graphics cards is the successor of Nvidia's GeForce 40 series. Announced at CES 2025, it debuted with the release of the RTX 5070, RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 in January 2025. It is based on Nvidia's Blackwell architecture featuring Nvidia RTX's fourth-generation RT cores for hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, and fifth-generation deep learning–focused Tensor Cores. The GPUs are manufactured by TSMC on a custom 4N process node.
Background
In March 2024, Nvidia announced the Blackwell architecture for its datacenter products. Like Ampere, the architecture is shared by consumer and datacenter products rather than having distinct architectures released simultaneously like Ada Lovelace for consumers and Hopper for datacenter.At the Game Awards in December 2024, a cinematic trailer for The Witcher IV was shown which had been pre-rendered on an "unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU". This was assumed to be an upcoming GeForce RTX 50 series GPU. Following the RTX 50 series announcement, Nvidia confirmed that the trailer was "pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5 on a GeForce RTX 5090". Later in the same month, it was reported that Nvidia had begun stockpiling GeForce RTX 50 series units in U.S. warehouses due to a threatened 10% import tariff and 60% tariff on Chinese imports that Donald Trump promised in his re-election campaign.
Announcement
On January 6, 2025, the GeForce RTX 50 series was officially announced for desktop and mobile devices during Nvidia's CES keynote in Las Vegas. The pricing announcement was met with surprise as the RTX 5080 at $999 was the same price that the RTX 4080 Super released at a year earlier despite the anticipated price increases. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang falsely claimed that the RTX 5070 could reach "RTX 4090 performance at $549" despite a heavy reliance on DLSS 4 upscaling and Multi Frame generation rather than raw performance.Features
Blackwell architecture
The GeForce RTX 50 series is powered by the Blackwell microarchitecture which continues Ada Lovelace's emphasis on high graphics frequencies and large L2 caches. The Blackwell architecture introduces Nvidia RTX's fourth-generation RT cores for hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing and fifth-generation Tensor Cores for AI compute and performing floating-point calculations.GDDR7
RTX 50 series GPUs are the first consumer GPUs to feature GDDR7 video memory for greater memory bandwidth over the same bus width compared to the GDDR6 and GDDR6X memory used in the GeForce 40 series. RTX 50 series desktop GPUs use GDDR7 modules from Samsung due to them being available for validation earlier than modules from SK Hynix and Micron.
12V-2×6 connector
The GeForce RTX 50 series uses the 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector which is a revision of the 12VHPWR connector featured on the GeForce 40 series. There were problems with the 12VHPWR connector melting on some RTX 4090 GPUs due to the connector not being fully seated and connector design flaws that did not implement a high enough safety and error tolerance. The 12V-2×6 connector revision, published by PCI-SIG in July 2023, addressed this by shortening the four sense pins so the connector will not push any power if it has not been fully seated. The 12VHPWR design would still draw up to 150W of power even if the sense pins were not making full contact. 12V-2×6 is backwards compatible with existing 12VHPWR cables and adapters.Nvidia has mandated to its partners that the 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector be used on all RTX 50 series designs. With the GeForce 40 series, the 12VHPWR connector was only mandated on higher power cards such as the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080, RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4090 while RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 AIB designs had the option of using 8-pin PCIe connectors. The 600W-capable 12VHPWR connector would not have been necessary on sub-200W cards.
DLSS 4
The fourth generation of Deep Learning Super Sampling was unveiled alongside the RTX 50 series. DLSS 4 upscaling uses a new vision transformer-based model for enhanced image quality with reduced ghosting and greater image stability in motion compared to the previous convolutional neural network model. DLSS 4 also allows a greater number of frames to be generated and interpolated based on a single traditionally rendered frame. This form of frame generation called Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to the RTX 50 series while the GeForce 40 series is limited to one interpolated frame per traditionally rendered frame. Nvidia claims that DLSS 4's frame generation model uses 30% less video memory with the example of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide using 400 MB less memory at 4K resolution with frame generation enabled. Nvidia claims that 75 titles will integrate DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation at launch, including Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Star Wars Outlaws.Media Engine and I/O
The RTX 50 series includes DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20 with higher display output data rates to support high resolution and high refresh rate displays. The GeForce 40 series received criticism for only including DisplayPort 1.4a while the competing Radeon RX 7000 series included DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR13.5. At CES 2025, VESA announced a collaboration with Nvidia on the new DP80LL UHBR20 active cable standard. DP80LL allows for 80Gbps DisplayPort 2.1 cables up to 3 meters long as passive DP80 cables are limited in length due to signal integrity concerns.The RTX 50 series introduces the ninth-generation NVENC encoder and sixth-generation NVDEC video decoder. For the first time in a consumer GeForce GPU, encoding and decoding video in the 4:2:2 color format for professional-grade higher color depth is supported.
Products
Desktop
GeForce RTX 50 series desktop GPUs are the second consumer GPUs to utilize a PCIe 5.0 interface and the first to feature GDDR7 video memory. They are fabricated by TSMC using a custom 5 nm process dubbed 4N.Mobile
Laptops featuring GeForce RTX 50 series laptop GPUs were shown at CES 2025. Laptops with RTX 50 series GPUs were paired with Intel's Arrow Lake-HX and AMD's Strix Point and Fire Range CPUs. Nvidia claims that Blackwell architecture's new Max-Q features can increase battery life by up to 40% over GeForce 40 series laptops. For example, Advanced Power Gating saves power by turning off areas of the GPU that are unused and the paired GDDR7 memory can run in an "ultra" low-voltage state. Initial RTX 50 series laptops will become available in March 2025 starting at $1,299.Controversies
RTX 5090 Founders Edition 12V-2x6 power connector issue
The 12V-2x6 connector used by the RTX 5090 Founders Edition faces criticism due to a design flaw that can potentially cause the connector to melt. These flaws are currently only present on the RTX 5090 FE and RTX 5080 FE and are similar to the failures seen on the RTX 40 series.Availability and pricing
The releases of the RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti were marked by severe availability issues and pricing well above MSRP.32-bit support removal for CUDA, OpenCL, and GPU PhysX
Support for 32-bit OpenCL, and CUDA applications, was dropped for the GeForce RTX 50 series, which resulted in several applications encountering performance issues with GPU PhysX options or not being able to run at all, causing negative reactions from numerous gaming communities.On December 4, 2025, with the release of driver version 591.44, 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX support was restored for certain games. Support for more games was promised in the future.
Incomplete dies and missing ROPs
The dies of certain RTX 5090/5090D, 5080, and 5070 Ti cards were missing eight render output units, resulting in slower graphics while pure compute and AI workloads are unaffected. Nvidia claimed that less than 0.5% of cards are affected and that the "production anomaly" has been rectified.Black screen issues
Some RTX 5080 and 5090 users reported an issue where the system would boot into a black screen after installing Nvidia drivers. Nvidia confirmed the issue and said that a new driver update would fix it for people who hadn't received a VBIOS update yet. Released on February 27, 2025 Nvidia drivers version 572.60 claim to have fixed the issue. Nvidia has since released multiple hotfix and Game Ready drivers that contain additional fixes for the issue.Windows driver branch quality and stability
Users and media outlets have complained about the quality and stability of the 572.XX and 576.XX Windows driver branch, also affecting previous generation Nvidia GPUs, including RTX 30 and RTX 40 series. Issues include BSODs, graphical corruptions and game specific problems.RTX 5060 Ti 8GB and RTX 5060 review restrictions
Nvidia decided not to supply reviewers with advance copies of RTX 5060 Ti 8GB cards and prevented certain partners from doing so. It also delayed reviews of the RTX 5060 as the review embargo was lifted on April 16, 2025, before reviewers could acquire the cards officially. NVIDIA chose not to offer samples of the RTX 5050.DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation (MFG) criticism
Several technology journalists have been critical of Nvidia's performance claims relating to GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards, as Nvidia published benchmarks using MFG to show significant increases in FPS over their previous generation. Additional concerns were uttered about image quality, the increase in input latency and general usability.Nvidia claims that the RTX 5070 is as fast as the RTX 4090, but this is untrue except the extreme scenario of 4x DLSS 4 Multi Frame generation and the lowest quality DLSS preset. This combination results in noticeable visual artefacts which are exacerbated if the base frame rate is too low; this is said to be between 40 and 60 fps by several reviewers. Additionally, while it may improve perceived frame rate through frame smoothing, it increases input latency and is thus unsuitable for latency-sensitive games such as competitive shooters, fighting games and virtual reality games.
Nvidia also claims that the RTX 5060 Ti is up to 50 times faster than the GTX 1060, a GPU released 9 years prior and with a significantly lower MSRP than the 5060 Ti. These performance claims appear to be based on the 1060's lack of support for hardware ray tracing, DLSS Super Sampling, and Multi Frame Generation; as such, they are of little relevance when evaluating the gaming performance of the 5060 Ti.