5 improvements I want to see from the Nvidia RTX 5000 series

Nvidia has dominated the GPU landscape for years, and given the rumors we have about the RTX 5000 series, it looks like Team Green will continue its reign. That said, the current-gen Ada Lovelace cards are far from perfect. To be more precise, this generation has had quite a few issues, including memory-starved GPUs and borderline unhinged prices. While I’m still looking forward to the upcoming Blackwell GPUs, I do hope Nvidia improves these five aspects in the RTX 5000 family.

5 Better pricing

More of a pipe dream, to be honest

Ever since the launch of the RTX 2000 series, Nvidia has skewed the price-to-performance ratio of its cards. Unfortunately, this trend has gotten worse with time, as the high-end members of the RTX 4000 family cost way more than they should. And don’t even get me started on the bonkers $1,599 price tag on the flagship RTX 4090.

Part of the reason is that even the best current-gen card from AMD can’t compete with the sheer performance of the RTX 4090. With Team Red pulling out of the GPU wars, Nvidia has zero incentive to offer sensible prices, especially for its flagship RTX 5090. But I sure hope Team Green stabilizes the price of its mid-range cards.

4 Sensible power requirements

Two 12VHPWR connectors are just insane

Leaving aside the price of the actual graphics card, you may also need to invest in a higher capacity power supply when upgrading your GPU. Going by the leaks, it seems like every GPU in the Blackwell family will draw more power than its Ada Lovelace counterpart.

And then there’s the RTX 5090, a behemoth that’s rumored to need two 12VHPWR connectors to keep up with its 600W TGP requirement. Considering that we had similar rumors about the RTX 4090’s supposed 800W power draw that got debunked at the time of its launch, there’s a modicum of hope that the actual PSU requirements of the Blackwell cards aren’t as high as the leaks suggest.

3 PCIe 5.0 support

It’s time to move away from PCIe 4

The fifth iteration of the PCI Express interface has been out for a while, but even the best graphics cards continue to rely on the outdated PCIe Gen 4.0 slots. With the latest PCIe standard featuring double the bandwidth, frequency, and speed over its predecessor, the top-of-the-line RTX 5000 cards can definitely benefit from the faster PCIe 5.0 interface. Thankfully, all leaks point to the Blackwell lineup featuring PCIe 5.0 connectivity.

2 Proper tiers and naming schemes

If it has the same specs as a typical xx50 GPU, it shouldn’t be called xx60

One of my biggest gripes with the RTX 4000 family is its deceptive tiering, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. Take the RTX 4060, for example. Besides being crippled on the VRAM and bandwidth fronts, the xx60 GPU of the Ada Lovelace family is just a glorified RTX 4050 card built on a different die.

In fact, the same can be said about nearly every graphics card in the Ada Lovelace family once you start comparing their price with the VRAM and non-DLSS-aided performance. And I really hope the Ti Super branding never makes a comeback.

1 More VRAM

And a wider bus

With games requiring more VRAM than ever, the RTX 5000 cards desperately need more video memory than their last-gen equivalents. The RTX 4060 was a stark example that 8GB of VRAM just isn’t good enough for modern games. Since we have an RTX 4060 Ti version packing 16GB of video ram, it wouldn’t make any sense if Nvidia decides to limit the RTX 5070 to the same 12GB VRAM as the RTX 4070.

The bus width was another Achilles Heel of many Ada Lovelace cards. And I’m not just looking at the RTX 4060. Even the RTX 4070 Ti, the king of mid-range cards, possesses a paltry 192-bit bus. To put that into perspective, even the RTX 3060 Ti has a whopping 256-bit bus!

RTX 5000 series: Equal parts exciting, equal parts terrifying

Judging by the recent rumors about the RTX 5090 and its 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, it looks like the flagship Blackwell GPU will leave the RTX 4090 in the dust when it comes to performance. Unfortunately, this is more of a double-edged sword, as we’re bound to see an even more ridiculous price tag on the enthusiast-grade RTX 5000 card. Factor in the past trends and AMD’s decision to focus on mid-range cards, and it’s easy to imagine Nvidia setting even more obscene launch prices for its upcoming Blackwell cards.

Related

AMD Radeon RX 8000 series: All of the rumors so far

With Team Red reportedly planning to exit the high-end GPU market, the upcoming RX 8000 cards sound pretty tempting for mid-range gamers