Nvidia just dropped a big hint about the RTX 50-series release date

Speculation has been running rampant about Nvidia’s launch of next-gen RTX 50-series GPUs, but the company itself just dropped a big hint about when they may show up. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to take the stage as the keynote speaker of CES 2025 on January 6, where there’s a good chance we’ll hear about Nvidia’s next generation of graphics cards.

Although Nvidia is at the annual tech show each year, Huang — who recently surpassed the worth of all of Intel — hasn’t made an appearance in five years. The executive will likely focus heavily on AI, as it has catapulted Nvidia to become one of the world’s wealthiest companies. But RTX 50-series GPUs should make an appearance, too. Nvidia usually takes advantage of CES to launch new graphics cards.

Last year, Nvidia introduced its RTX 40-series Super refresh, and in 2023, we got the RTX 4070 Ti. We don’t typically see the launch of an entirely new generation on the CES stage, but it’s not out of the question. Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture, which is what the RTX 50-series cards use, was reportedly delayed due to a design flaw, which would’ve pushed back the launch date.

It hasn’t been clear up to this point if Nvidia would launch its RTX 50-series GPUs this year or wait for early 2025. However, recent reports claim Nvidia is targeting an early 2025 release for the RTX 5090, with some leakers pointing specifically to a launch at CES 2025. This speculation came before Nvidia revealed it would be hosting the keynote at CES, lending some credibility to the claims. Although the release date remains a mystery, most reports suggest Nvidia will launch the RTX 5090 first, followed by the RTX 5080 at a later date.

The release date is up in the air, but one thing is certain — the RTX 5090 won’t be for the faint of heart. Credible leakers say that the flagship GPU will require upwards of 600 watts of power, as well as come strapped with 32GB of next-gen GDDR7 memory. Despite that, leakers say that the card will use a dual-slot cooler, potentially making it smaller than the RTX 4090 while drawing significantly more power.