Unleashing Power: Nvidia’s Game-Changing RTX 50-Series Blackwell Chips for PC Gamers

Nvidia introduced new chips for desktop and laptop computers on Monday that incorporate the same Blackwell architecture forming the backbone of the company’s leading AI processors for data centers and servers.

The chips, designated GeForce RTX 50-series, will be included in computers priced between approximately $550 and $2,000, the firm stated. Laptops featuring these chips are scheduled to begin shipping in March.

Nvidia presented these processors at CES in Las Vegas, where CEO Jensen Huang gave a keynote address on Monday.

“Can you envision this amazing graphics card, Blackwell? I’m going to compress it and fit it in there,” Huang remarked while showcasing a laptop.

Nvidia, which has surged beyond $3.5 trillion in market capitalization by selling AI chips to major cloud providers and other tech enterprises, was primarily recognized in recent years for delivering graphics processing units (GPUs) to enhance video gaming. The company’s first chip introduced in late 1999 was designed to swiftly render triangles and polygons for 3D games.

“Naturally, back in those days, we were a gaming enterprise, and these GPUs were crafted to enhance gaming performance,” observed Justin Walker, senior director of product at Nvidia, during a press call.

Presently, Wall Street exhibits less enthusiasm regarding Nvidia’s gaming sector due to the rapid growth of AI and the continually escalating requirement for additional processing capacity. In the quarter ending in October, gaming sales represented less than 10% of total revenue for Nvidia, contrasting with 88% from data center chips.

Nvidia dominates the AI GPU market for data centers, surpassing competitors Advanced Micro Devices and Intel.

However, CES, formerly recognized as the Consumer Electronics Show, primarily emphasizes consumer products, and the newly announced chips are chiefly intended for gaming.

Nvidia states that the RTX 50-series chips will offer a feature named DLSS 4, which utilizes AI to enhance gaming frame rates. They will also present character faces with greater detail, delivering users enhanced graphics and higher resolution overall.

The gaming division of Nvidia is experiencing growth, with revenue rising 15% from the previous year in the latest quarter. However, sales in data centers have at least doubled for six consecutive quarters, exceeding $30 billion in the most recent timeframe.

Nvidia asserts that the technical advancements made for its extensive AI operations will benefit its graphics cards for gaming.

“Although we are now both an AI and gaming company, our gaming sector continues to gain significant advantages from our identity as an AI company,” said Walker.

The Blackwell GPU architecture and core design utilized in the 50-series chips first emerged in the company’s AI accelerators, which were unveiled in March and commenced shipping later the previous year. Nvidia indicated that these were specifically created and optimized to operate the neural networks employed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

The upcoming chips for PCs and laptops will be available in various configurations. The company reveals that the most expensive and powerful chip, the RTX 5090, will be available for $1,999 separately and is twice as fast as its predecessor, the RTX 4090. Nvidia claims it contains 92 billion transistors, compared to 208 billion transistors on the company’s B200 GPU designed for servers.

Nvidia mentions that the new chips will be optimized for executing AI models and handling computer graphics, not solely for running the latest games. They will possess sufficient power for certain game developers to incorporate generative AI into their characters in games such as “PUBG: Battlegrounds.”

The forthcoming processors will also be sufficiently powerful to operate large language models and image generation models from firms including Meta, Mistral, and Stability AI, according to Nvidia.

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