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Everything wrong with RTX 50 series launch [complete list]

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A quick summary of everything that went wrong. I thought I'll summarize it so we do not forget since there is so much of it and most of it is completely outrageous.
  1. RTX 5070 being presented as similar performance to RTX 4090 thanks to "AI". While this is obviously false in so many ways (FG and MFG introduces latency over native, also MFG 4x has much more artifacts over 2x not to mention over native, 5070 has only half the RAM of 4090)
  2. RTX 50 cards being artificially VRAM limited - i.e. compared to relative compute performance / VRAM vs. competition. This will no doubt become similarly crippling in the future as it is currently crippling to i.e. 3070 in certain games.
  3. 50 series presented as having 3x AI, 2x RT and 1.5x shader speedup relative to 40 series. But somehow none of this shows in the benchmarks. For example there seems to be no RT speedup relative to raster speedup in 5090 and 5080. While the consensus nowadays seems to be that Blackwell is basically the same architecture as Ada with just minor tweaks. And yet competitors were able to i.e. provide meaningful improvement in RT relative to raster despite facing similar node limitations as Nvidia.
  4. Also the naming scheme of what 5080, 5070Ti etc. are supposed to mean seems to be quite inflated relative to what it used to mean. 5080 being only small improvement over 4080Super. 5070Ti is basically 1:1 performance replacement for 4080.
  5. We were promised "great availability" yet the cards are nowhere to be found and it is by far the most paper launch of launches by Nvidia in history.
  6. MSRP prices are nowhere to be found either (as expected). But the 5070Ti launch was cause of yet another controversy as there is no FE version of the card and thus Nvidia sent Asus Prime cards to some reviewers as the "MSRP" variant. Yet Asus had this card listed with price 20% over MSRP. Thus depending on who you asked (Nvidia or Asus) the same card had completely different value proposition.
  7. RTX 40 series cards are also nowhere to be found. Creating artificial scarcity and driving prices of all Nvidia GPUs up. A scenario orchestrated by Nvidia either on purpose or by sheer incompetence (but judging by lessons from history, the former is more likely)
  8. Despite problems with melting 12VHPWR connectors & RTX 4090s, Nvidia didn't make any design improvements and is now using it for 5090s which for certain AIB variants can exceed 600W. While 4090 is a design downgrade from 3090Ti which had certain protections built-in so that you couldn't cut 5 out of 6 cables and keep the card still running. But this is completely possible on 40 and 50 series - i.e. delivering all the current via single cable until meltdown. It is now consensus of most electrical engineers that Nvidia's design is inexplicable as it leaves no safety margin thus even a slight deviation from ideal scenario can create meltdown or potential fire hazard scenario. Also the tactic of blaming customer for "improper" setup etc. is a completely inappropriate excuse. Even if the meltdowns were caused by some suboptimal handling by customer - it is quite certain it wouldn't have happened if the cards were using the standard PCIe cable connectors. While at the same time this could easily be caused by imperfections in connectors / cables and their respective manufacturing processes instead of just customer handling error.
  9. Nvidia enforces use of 12HPWR connectors even for their AIB partners for completely unknown reasons. While the competition keeps using PCIe connectors and doesn't seem to have any problems powering GPUs with comparable TDP to Nvidia cards.
  10. Blackwell has stability issues when PCIE 5.0 is enabled on certain (or maybe most?) motherboards. The problem could be farther exacerbated by early driver versions. Supposedly some cards have been bricked because of these problems, but usually it is enough to downgrade PCIE to 4.0 in motherboard BIOS. However this is a pretty big oversight and no explanation from Nvidia if this is hardware related or could be fixed by BIOS update etc. Also some PCIE extenders don't work even if you downgrade to 4.0 speed.
  11. In their flashy presentation Nvidia forgot to mention that support for 32bit PhysX on Blackwell is discontinued. Among affected games are titles like most of the games from Batman Arkham series, most from older Metro series etc. Now if you want to play these games on Blackwell GPUs you can either emulate it on CPU (while for 8core CPU you can expect around 40ish fps on your 5090) or you can buy separate older Nvidia GPU just for "PhysX". Isn't that nice and convenient? Yet no word from Nvidia of some emulation layer that could translate it to 64bit calls.
There is so much of it that it's still possible I forgot about something. Anyways, since I need Nvidia for work I don't have a choice. And yes Nvidia is still the best, but I nevertheless hope the incredible arrogance displayed by them will one day lead them to similar path to Intel. As this seems highly reminiscent of Intel couple of years ago (except maybe even worse). 4 cores as desktop standard forever, miniscule 5% improvements between generations, shady tactics with other HW manufacturers, total market domination, especially server market etc. All reasons why I am not sorry for what happened to them (again despite most of my CPUs were intel)

PS: I may update this list if new facts emerge
 
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I don't get this lack of cards that has been present for the last 3 years. Is it done on purpose to drive up prices?
It's just token sales by Nvidia, the real sales are done in the business sectors.

That's not to say there arnt passionate gamers within Nvidia, but money above everything else.
 

Everything wrong with RTX 50 series launch [complete list]​


We are being taken for fools.

The really sad thing is people still clamor to want this.
AMD never fail to dissapoint. Somehow they will mess it up. They already have in a way pulling out the high end when it was ripe for the taking.

Longer this goes on, more people are forced to buy something. Most people love gaming too much to stop on principal.
 
There is a littany of chicanery and shady tactics with this launch that sticks in my craw. I suppose thematically the thing that gets me the most is the sheer audacity of parties up and down the chain to increasing prices, reduce value, and just plain lie. When nV says a 5070 is the same performance as a 4090 -- something pattently false -- it's only one instance of a broad pattern of deceptiveness.
 
My biggest issue and one I can't get over is the connector. My PC runs 24/7 and I have no issues leaving it like that, but with these new cards (at least at the high end) I'd worry about still leaving it running over night.

Unfortunately there's not going to be a fix for it this gen, so at most I'd have to look at a 5070 Ti.
 
Oh, and what about the tiny PCB's on the FE cards, for example the RTX 5090 FE card. Majority of the space for the GPU is for cooling and fans. The PCB is smaller than a Series X motherboard and daughterboard!

Surely, such a tiny PCB will have an impact on the design in terms of lifespan of the cards, in terms of lack current regulation, for example the melting 12v cables and the GPU PCB?
 
1 - Agree, but not a huge deal because nobody buying one was born yesterday and if you know enough to watch the presentation then you know enough to not believe it's as powerful as a 4090

2 - Not as bad as 40 series. There are sufficient choices with enough vram. Some are lower than they should be, but the customer still has enough choice to pick one with more vram if they want to

3 - Really? It was always assumed to be just a refresh because it's on the same node and the design is pretty much the same. It was never going to be a huge performance uplift over 4000 series

4 - 100% agree, the naming is completely borked. 5080 is 5060TI performance. 5070TI is what I'd expect from a 5060.

5 - Where was 'great availability' promised? I don't recall seeing that anywhere.

6 - Consumers caused this problem by overpaying in the first place. If people refuse to pay those prices then companies will stop charging them

7 - They stopped making 40 series so they could make 50 series, they're on the same node. What do you expect?

8 - Yea, they should have learned their lesson and used something better. The sooner they move away from this 12VHPWR issue the better

9 - AIB should be allowed to use any connectors they like, I agree

10 - PCIe 5.0 is working fine here. It's also a motherboard issue not a GPU issue. The cards are designed to 5.0 spec, but if the motherboard is doing it wrong how can you blame the GPU?

11 - This should 100% have been mentioned. Or they should include a translation layer in the Nvidia app. Keeping quiet about it was very dishonest of them and I'm not happy about it either.

All in all, some points I agree with, others I don't. I feel people make a lot of fuss over nothing with some of those issues. But others, like the PhysX issue, people have not made enough noise about. I think some of these issues are only there because people didn't think things through. Like availability, it was obvious there would not be widespread availability. Unless you've been living in a cave since COVID, this should have been known to everyone. Also the performance uplift, it's on the same node and it's the pretty much the same design with no upgrade to the raster cores. Expecting a large uplift would be daft.

My issues list would be a lot smaller and would only consist of PhysX, extremely poor and buggy launch drivers, 12VHPWR being used again and the ongoing issue with Nvidia naming 60 class performance as 70 - 80 class.
 

Can add this to the list.
 

Can add this to the list.

Will wait and see if it's a Zotac bios issue first
 
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