All the news about Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs

Nvidia has announced a May 19th release date for its $299 RTX 5060 graphics card and the first laptops, which start at $1,099, that will feature it. The company says they’ll be available to buy from retail partners starting at 9AM PT / 12PM ET.

At 3,840 CUDA cores, the RTX 5060 has nearly 800 fewer cores than the 5060 Ti Nvidia released last month and is the most basic of the RTX 50-series. But like the Ti version, the 5060 has GDDR7 memory, supports DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, and gets the latest ray tracing and tensor cores. The company says more games are being updated with support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation before the 5060 launches, including MechWarrior 5: Clans on May 7th and New World: Aeternum on May 13th.

Every so often, Central Computers — one of the last remaining dedicated Silicon Valley computer stores — lets subscribers know it’s managed to obtain a small shipment of AMD graphics cards. Today, it informed me that I could now purchase a $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT for $850 — a $250 markup.

It’s not alone. I just checked every major US retailer and street prices on eBay, and I regret to inform you: the great GPU shortage has returned. Many AMD cards are being marked up $100, $200, $250, even $280. The street price of an Nvidia RTX 5080 is now over $1,500, a full $500 higher than MSRP. And an RTX 5090, the most powerful consumer GPU? You can’t even get the $2,000 card for $3,000 today.

Nvidia is releasing a new GPU driver today that includes a massive amount of fixes for bugs and crashes that have plagued its Game Ready drivers recently. After widespread reports of black screens, game crashes, and general stability issues, today’s 576.02 driver release (.exe download) not only bumps the version number significantly from last month’s 572.83, it also includes a number of significant fixes.

The release notes for Nvidia’s 576.02 driver mention that it fixes stability issues with Windows 11 version 24H2, a BSOD when playing DLSS 4 games with Multi Frame Generation, random black screen issues with the RTX 50-series GPUs, and general system stability issues. Nvidia has also addressed “game stability issues when playing games with DLSS Frame Generation + GSYNC.”

Nvidia is announcing its RTX 5060 family of GPUs today, just a day before it releases the RTX 5060 Ti on April 16th. Two variants of the RTX 5060 Ti are launching: the $379 8GB of VRAM model and the $429 16GB version. The $299 RTX 5060 will launch at some point in May with 8GB of VRAM.

The RTX 5060 Ti will ship with 4,608 CUDA cores, a 2.4GHz base clock, 2.57GHz boost clock, and a 128-bit memory bus with either 8GB or 16GB of GDDR7. Nvidia says the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is launching on April 16th and that the 8GB model will follow “shortly afterwards.” The cheaper RTX 5060 features 3,840 CUDA cores and uses a 128-bit memory bus with 8GB of GDDR7 memory.

Remember when Nvidia categorically told us that “no other Nvidia GPUs” had shipped, or would be shipping, with missing render units? Well, you can imagine our surprise to read that the company’s RTX 50-series laptop GPUs might be affected as well, with Heise Online and Hardwareluxx reporting that Nvidia has asked manufacturers to check their laptops for fewer ROPs than promised.

But Nvidia tells The Verge there isn’t actually a problem with those notebook GPUs. “All partners continue to run checks as part of our standard testing procedure,” Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells us, adding that Nvidia will reach out to both German publications to discuss.

When Nvidia originally confirmed that some of its new RTX 50-series graphics cards had a “rare” manufacturing issue that left them missing some promised render units and a slight amount of performance as a result, it only named three affected cards: the RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and RTX 5070 Ti. But now, Nvidia has confirmed to us that RTX 5080 production was affected by the same issue as well.

“Upon further investigation, we’ve identified that an early production build of GeForce RTX 5080 GPUs were also affected by the same issue. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement,” Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells The Verge.

It’s true: Nvidia has just confirmed it shipped some RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and even some RTX 5070 Ti graphics chips that were missing render units, as TechPowerUp originally reported — and that you’ll be able to get a replacement if your card was affected.

Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells The Verge:

Nvidia has yet to explain why it launched its GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs with barely any inventory, some major launch driver issues, and the occasional melting power connector, but it has apparently reconsidered its stance when it comes to scalpers. The company’s just announced a way for Nvidia fans to sign up for “Verified Priority Access” to buy the elusive two-slot SFF-friendly RTX 5090 and 5080 Founders Edition graphics cards.

Like a similar Verified Priority Access program for the RTX 4090, the new program is invite-only, but this time you’ll apply for access by filling out this form rather than being pre-selected. The site will check that you’ve already had an Nvidia account (accounts created after January 30th need not apply) and ask you whether you’d prefer a 5090 or a 5080. Then, it’ll apparently use an algorithm to figure out if you’re a real gamer (analyzing your Nvidia app / GeForce Experience use) before offering a card. Limit one per person.

Remember PhysX, the GPU-accelerated technology that let games realistically simulate destructible cloth, shattering glass, moving liquids, smoke, fog, and other particle effects? It only ever got deployed in a few dozen games — but with 32-bit PhysX turned on, those games reportedly now run faster on Nvidia’s last-gen cards than they do on a new RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti or beyond.

That’s because Nvidia has quietly removed support for PhysX in its latest graphics chips, the company confirmed this week, after buyers noticed PhysX games like Borderlands 2 were mysteriously taxing their CPU instead of their GPU and either chugging or failing to work. Nvidia points to a support page from January where it did say that the RTX 50 series would not support 32-bit CUDA applications, but that page doesn’t explicitly mention PhysX, and the company’s other PhysX support pages are several years old.

Nvidia’s new RTX 5070 Ti graphics card is the most intriguing entry in the 50-series lineup so far, promising to outperform last-gen cards that were even more expensive. At $749, it comfortably beats AMD’s $899 RX 7900 XT, trades blows with the $999 RX 7900 XTX, and is closer than I was expecting to Nvidia’s own $999 RTX 5080. It’s a capable card for a relatively good price, and that makes the RTX 5070 Ti an ideal choice if you’re tempted to move to 4K gaming or want a card that can deliver high frame rates for 1440p.

But like the rest of the 50-series cards, the RTX 5070 Ti is not as much of an upgrade as we’ve come to expect from Nvidia. The card is around 14 percent faster at 4K than the last-generation RTX 4070 Ti and 22 percent faster at 1440p. It’s nearly as fast as the RTX 4080 Super, which launched at $999, and it’s more than 80 percent faster at 4K than the two-generations-old RTX 3070 Ti. Those are decent numbers, but it’s mostly because the 40 series was such a big leap.

As always, the most important Nvidia graphics card is the one you can actually buy, and Nvidia’s talked a big game for its RTX 5070, making the dubious but nuanced claim it can deliver RTX 4090 performance for just $549. On February 28th, AMD will get its chance to intercept with the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, in a streaming event it just announced today. But Nvidia has now made its own wiggle room, delaying the launch of the RTX 5070 from February to March 5th, its product page reveals today.

Nvidia will ship its $749 RTX 5070 Ti ahead of AMD’s event, though, on February 20th, a week from today.

Ah shit, here we go again. Two owners of Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPUs have reported melted power connectors and damage to their PSUs. The images look identical to reports of RTX 4090 power cables burning or melting from two years ago. Nvidia blamed the issue on people not properly plugging the 12VHPWR power connection in fully and the PCI standards body blamed Nvidia.

A Reddit poster upgraded from an RTX 4090 to an RTX 5090 and noticed “a burning smell playing Battlefield 5,” before turning off their PC and finding the damage. The images show burnt plastic at both the PSU end of the power connector and the part that connects directly to the GPU. The cable is one from MODDIY, a popular manufacturer of custom cables, and the poster claims it was “securely fastened and clicked on both sides (GPU and PSU).”