5 reasons I don’t plan to upgrade to Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series

Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series announcement at CES 2025 is less than a week away, and almost everything about the next-gen graphics cards is all but confirmed, thanks to multiple rounds of rumors over the last couple of months. By now, we know what to expect from the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070, so it’s a good time to crystallize my overall thoughts on the upcoming launch.

Upgrading my existing RTX 3080 to one of the RTX 5000 series graphics cards has been on my mind for quite a while, but after seeing what we most likely have in store come January, I don’t think I’m going to go through with the upgrade, at least not in 2025. I plan to wait till the RTX 5000 Super refresh, but I don’t have high hopes for that either.

5

My RTX 3080 isn’t half bad

Still packs a punch

The RTX 5000 series will most likely be out of reach for the majority of gamers, but perhaps an unrelated reason for my personal disinterest is none other than my existing gaming PC. Outfitted with the RTX 3080 and the Ryzen 7 5700X, I realize I don’t “need” to upgrade anytime soon. The RTX 3080 is easily one of the standout cards of the last few generations, and I was fortunate enough to get it at MSRP. It has allowed me to enjoy nearly every demanding title at maximum settings and smooth frame rates.

Over the last 2 years of owning the RTX 3080, the time I spend playing big-budget AAA titles might have gradually decreased, but the itch to upgrade one of the latest and greatest graphics cards has remained strong. Despite that, I can’t fully justify swapping my RTX 3080 just yet, considering it still has a lot of life left in it, even in today’s heaviest titles as well as upcoming games in 2025.

Keeping one’s gaming PC up to date with a current-gen, high-end graphics card demands a significant investment, and considering I would not be able to devote as much time to gaming as I would like, it’s reasonable to retain my current GPU, carve out time for more gaming sessions, and contemplate an upgrade in late 2025 or beyond.

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4

Nvidia has priced me out

This should not surprise anyone

Even if I could allocate each of my weekends in 2025 to some hardcore gaming, Nvidia is hell-bent on making an RTX 5000 upgrade as hard as possible. Graphics cards being priced similarly to luxury goods is nothing new, and is a trend pioneered by none other than Nvidia, but the RTX 5000 series is set to take things to another level, if the latest reports are to be believed.

The current-gen RTX 4090 was already eye-watering at $1,600, but its successor, the RTX 5090, is likely to feature a $2,000+ price tag. Granted, the 90-series GPU isn’t what the average gamer has in mind, but this insane pricing strategy will naturally trickle down to the rest of the product stack. I had my eyes on the RTX 5080 as I considered it a true upgrade over my existing RTX 3080, but reports suggest that even the RTX 5080 would not be cheaper than $1,200, and that’s a conservative estimate.

The RTX 5080 might be around 35-40% faster than the RTX 4080, but if Nvidia decides to price it around $1,300-$1,400, it will become the next RTX 4090, a GPU that only a fraction of PC gamers ever consider splurging on. Going down the product stack, the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 will probably also feature significant price hikes compared to their current-gen counterparts, at which point considering them “mid-range” will require even more mental gymnastics.

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3

Even high-end models lack enough VRAM

Nvidia hasn’t stopped being stingy

Price isn’t the only problem with Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series graphics cards. The same reports I referred to above claim that only the RTX 5090 is getting a bump in VRAM (24GB to 32GB), whereas the RTX 5080 would get the same 16GB VRAM seen on the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super. A similar story will play out with the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070, as the former will support the same 16GB VRAM seen on the RTX 4070 Ti Super, with the latter having to make do with just 12GB, the same as that seen on the RTX 4070 Ti.

When such high-end models — the cheapest of which might even cost around $800 — aren’t deemed worthy of sufficient VRAM by Nvidia, it is genuinely impossible for gamers to take these cards seriously. Nvidia has been skimping on VRAM for a long time, and a lot has been said about it already, but it’s still appalling that the company consistently fails to equip its fastest cards with the necessary VRAM required to perform at high resolutions, especially in the latest and upcoming titles.

Nvidia might be using VRAM as another lever to differentiate between its SKUs, prompting customers to shell out extra for a higher-tier card than what they initially plan on getting. However, when the actual VRAM numbers are as low as 12GB on an $800+ GPU in 2025, it is not easy to see eye to eye with Team Green.

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2

Mainstream SKUs don’t feature a significant performance uplift

The best is reserved for the most expensive cards

Nvidia’s stance on the performance of its RTX 5000 series GPUs is perfectly in sync with that of VRAM, meaning it is planning real generational uplifts only on its flagship and higher-end models. The RTX 5090 is poised to be way faster than the RTX 4090, with some leaks even expecting a 70% performance increase. The RTX 5080 is also expected to be around 40% faster than its predecessor, the RTX 4080.

However, when you exclude those cards from the discussion, the performance gains promised by the RTX 5000 series fail to impress anyone. Sure, we could see around 20-30% improved performance on the RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti compared to the models they will replace, but these SKUs are already massively nerfed when compared to the flagship models. Coupled with the lack of sufficient VRAM, spending $800 to $1,000 on a 70-class card is what I consider the furthest thing from a good deal.

While it is reasonable to expect a significant performance difference between different tiers of GPUs, Nvidia seems to be widening the gulf compared to what we saw in the previous-gen models. The RTX 3070 Ti featured only around 4% more CUDA cores than the RTX 3070, whereas the gap increased to around 30% when comparing the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070. The RTX 5070 Ti is rumored to have around 45% more CUDA cores than the RTX 5070, something that would also be reflected in the RTX 5070 Ti’s pricing relative to that of the RTX 5070.

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1

RTX 5000 Super refresh will (probably) not be any better

More like super disappointing

Another significant difference in the upcoming generation of graphics cards will be the level of competition Nvidia faces in the high-end segment. AMD has confirmed that it will only focus on mid-range and budget graphics cards with its RX 8000 series, whereas Intel’s Battlemage graphics cards would also not compete head-on with Nvidia. This lack of competition would most likely ensure Nvidia will not have any incentive to offer better value to gamers with an eventual RTX 5000 Super refresh.

One of the reasons the RTX 4080 Super launched with a price cut compared to the RTX 4080 was the competition offered by AMD’s high-end RX 7000 graphics cards. In the absence of such pressures next year, Nvidia will do what it pleases. We might not even see the RTX 5080 Super or RTX 5080 Ti close the enormous gap between the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090, and Nvidia might just discontinue the RTX 5080 when a slightly faster 5080 Super is launched.

This is why I’m not confident that waiting for the eventual RTX 5000 Super refresh is going to pay any significant dividends for PC gamers. Unless Nvidia sees a miraculous drop in the sales of its latest GPUs in the next year, we have no reason to believe that value for money would be high on Nvidia’s list of priorities.

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Prepare for the worst, hope for the minimum

Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series will undoubtedly launch to a lot of hype and varied opinions, but I believe most of it will be centered around the insane pricing, a possible increase in power requirements, and a general disappointment with the state of the gaming GPU industry. We will see RTX 5090 memes, familiar stock issues, and endless rants on Reddit, but Nvidia will continue doing what it’s doing.

The gaming GPU market is a small portion of Nvidia’s overall business, with the bulk of its revenues coming from data center GPUs. And that’s where the company’s focus and priorities lie, at least in the new future. Gamers will have to accept whatever Nvidia comes out with next year, and hope that AMD and even Intel’s mid-range offerings force Nvidia to make some welcome changes, at least with its mainstream offerings.