CES 2025 News

I did not go to Las Vegas this year but thanks to the WEB3 Internet of today, we can at least read the news and look up on what has been announced at this year's Winter CES Show.

For example, Finally, AMD announced their 16-Core 9950x3D CPU for the AM5 socket.

I'll be sure to buy that later in the year but first I need to Update my Motherboard's BIOS for that but also, I need to buy a UPS since I don't want to suffer power outages like I did last year.

All in all, AMD's Keynote wasn't viewed as impressive according to the Industry insiders.

But the real meat and butter of the show was when NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang, 

wearing a new version of his classic trademarked Leather Jacket, 

Announced what we've all be waiting for:

THE GEFORCE RTX 50 SERIES OF GPUS.

Throughout 2024, this new GPU line has been hyped and is guaranteed to fix any wrongs the company had with marketing the previous Ada-Lovelace 40 series GPUS...

Some of us are stuck with the Ampere Cards, or even the earlier Turing or Maxwell cards....

while I represent the few who are currently at the ADA-LOVELACE architecture.

But the 50 series cards are different from all the previous architectures as the 50 series is under a new architecture known as BLACKWELL.

.....

WHAT IS WITH NVIDIA'S OBSESSESION WITH SCIENTIST NAMES?

.....

Ok Ok. It's not that farfetched considering AMD RADEON has their FISH names

and INTEL ARC has their DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Names.

But what's new for these BRAND SPANKING NEW Blackwell cards is the purported merging of AI and computer graphics workloads to offload any heavy duty work such as texture compression, shading, etc.

Now what I'm saying is only going to apply to the FOUNDERS EDITION Card but I've seen that how people on Social Media are saying that because of how insane the card is going to look, the card will look massive and might require 4 Brackets on your case.

Well that's not the case this time. This time it's been subverted.

Check this out:

We're going back to RTX 3080 territory in terms of Size-Real Estate of the card.

That means it's a 2-slotter with 65 degree angled connector for powering your card......

Though unlike the Ampere 30 series cards, the Blackwell 50 series will continue to use NVIDIA's BRAND SPANKING NEW 12VHPWR cables regardless if you use their splitters or the much better 12VHPWR cables included with your Power Supply.

To give you an idea of Size-Real Estate, 

Here's a photo of a 3080 compared to a 4080 Super for Size Comparison.

Now compare those two to the one below.

This is the 5090 on the image above so have at it.

FOUNDERS EDITION cards have always been Blower Cards in terms of their formfactor and shroud so it's a given.

Though the design has been changed as now, the fans are on the bottom, just like the 2080 cards from 2018.

But having watched both Jensen's keynote and a JAYZTWOCENTS video on the matter, it's shocking to see that the PCB is still not even as large as the shroud itself.

But then again, the PCBs on these cards aren't even the same length as the shroud anyway so that's a given.

But even with a smaller shroud with two brackets, take GPU SAG into consideration because I don't know how that's going to be when the Board Partners come out with their own variants of the 5090 because they design their shrouds to be far different compared to Nvidia's offerings.

The 5090 as usually will not be cheap.

Because of all that AI offset technology as well as 32GB of VRAM, the card will cost at most $1999.

And that's US Dollars.

I live in Canada and considering that I paid $1519 plus Tax and Levy for my 4080 back in November 2023, My Bank Card is in for a world of hurt..... especially since I plan to buy from the board partners unless you readers firmly believe that I should aim my sights for a Founders Edition.

I'll let you decide if I should buy a Founders Edition Card or from a Board Partner.

Surprisingly according to this price sheet below, 

The 5080 and 5070(Both regular and Ti) their prices are more reasonable.

But for me, I'm more impressed with the higher VRAM on the 5090 instead of the increased CUDA Cores on the lower-end models since their VRAM is unchanged from the previous architecture.

I could prod on about the greatness of the 50 series cards but my list will be long, dry, and boring if it came from my words so I kindly give you this Link to Nvidia's 50 series card on their website:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-me/geforce/graphics-cards/50-series/

Update as of February 5 2025:

The shortages are real. And it's all due to pricing too.

No, the Tariff threats had nothing to do with the it. 

But I've heard that stores like Micro Center are in short supply of the 50 series cards due to pressure by Nvidia to combat scalpers.

Forcing people like Jason Langevin of JAYZTWOCENTS to order it beforehand so he can get his hands on one.

Reception on the Blackwell architecture is however mixed.

People were really expecting the cards to rely on RAW GPU POWER but instead, Jensen Huang decided to use Tensor Core AI to offload the power draw for the lower end cards which had some gamers disappointed.

Especially since the 5090 is going to be as overpriced as the 4090 was, maybe even more because NVIDIA.

But hey, were disappointed with AMD's GPU reveal at CES too so two can play at that game.

And I heard Intel's Battlemage ARC Cards have become a surprise hit during the Holiday Season of 2024 so that's says something for the company who bounced back after suffering a terrible year for themselves due to delayed responses to the 13/14 Gen CPU stability debacle.

On a related note when I mentioned Micro Center, 

I heard that the Canadian Equivalent, CANADA COMPUTERS, recently shuttered the Renfrew, Grandview Highway Location in Vancouver.

And apparently, they had their last business day at January 31 2025.

I went to check, they're just clearing up before they move the inventory to the other locations in the Vancouver areas.

I was shocked to see that the Renfrew location shut down.

Well, I guess it's back to MEMORY EXPRESS at Broadway and Cypress St. for me again.

There is still a CANADA COMPUTERS at Broadway street, but why would I go there when it's situated a few blocks from the larger MEMORY EXPRESS Location?