The graphics card hype train left the station weeks before CES 2025 kicks off in early January, with the launch of Intel’s $249 Arc B580 – the GPU we’ve begged for since the pandemic. But make no mistake: Intel decided to launch its second-gen Arc in December because CES is shaping up to be an absolute banger for graphics card releases.
Nvidia is already teasing an RTX 50-series announcement at CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote, while the rumor mill claims AMD’s new Radeon cards will also make an appearance at the show. Yes, friends, after a disappointing few years for graphics cards, the next generation of gaming goodness should be unveiled at CES 2025 and Nvidia, AMD, and Intel look ready to brawl. Let’s dig in.
Let’s start with Nvidia’s hotly anticipated GeForce RTX 50-series, because the company is already actively, not-so-slyly teasing it. Then again, who misses the opportunity to hype your next-gen GPU in the debut trailer for Witcher 4?
New GeForce cards are a given; the only question is which exact models we’ll see announced at the Nvidia keynote. But what’ll be powering them?
Specs for the GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 leaked months ago. (Hit that link for full details.) Normally, we wouldn’t give much credence to ancient rumors, but they’ve remained consistent ever since, and the timing makes sense given that the “Blackwell” GPUs were reportedly delayed by manufacturing issues.
The RTX 5090 looks to be the most beastly of the bunch (no surprise there), allegedly providing huge buffs to the 4090’s CUDA count, memory capacity and bandwidth (32GB over a 512-bit bus!), and power draw – leaks say this monster of a GPU could draw 600 watts, a humongous 150W increase over its predecessor. And if you thought the RTX 4090’s $1,599 price point was high, prepare to be shocked; I expect the 5090 to cost an astronomical sum given its clear excellence in machine learning tasks if the leaked specs prove true. Button up.
Nvidia is building hype for its new cards with social promotions and a massive “GeForce LAN 50” global LAN party.
Nvidia
Details are still largely murky about the RTX 5070 (perhaps it won’t be announced at CES?) but the RTX 5080 looks like much less of an upgrade. Rumors put its CUDA core count at 10,752, a mere 10 percent increase over the existing 4080. Memory configuration remains the same, aside from a switch from GDDR6 to GDDR7, while the total graphics power is expected to increase from 320W in the 4070 to 400W in the 5070.
Keep in mind that the Blackwell architecture that powers the RTX 50-series will include technological differences from the 40-series’ Ada Lovelace architecture, so comparing raw CUDA counts isn’t really apples-to-apples. Nvidia often tinkers with the bones of its GPU architectures to improve performance in various ways (the RTX 40-series packed a new dedicated Optical Flow Accelerator to enable DLSS 3 Frame Generation, along with a new Shader Execution Reordering function to accelerate traditional rendering, for example).
The biggest wildcard here? Software. Nvidia pumps out software features at a frenetic pace, releasing not only DLSS 3 Frame Generation but also DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction during the RTX 4090’s lifespan, along with helpful tools like RTX Video Super Resolution. With Nvidia reigning at the top of the stock market due to the current AI frenzy, I’d be shocked if the company doesn’t announce some new AI-powered tricks at CES 2025.
AMD
Compared to Nvidia, AMD has been relatively tight-lipped about its CES plans aside from announcing a keynote on Monday, January 6, mere hours before Nvidia’s own. AMD computing and graphics chief Jack Huynh teased “our next generation of innovation across gaming, AI PC, and commercial” in reference to the keynote on X, however, so rumors of next-gen Radeon GPUs may prove true.
But what sort of graphics cards does AMD have up its sleeves for the Radeon RX 8000-series (or whatever it’ll be called)? Don’t hold your breath for an RTX 5090 competitor.
In September, Huynh said that trying to compete for “King of the hill” hasn’t historically worked out for Radeon. “I want to build the best products at the right system price point. So, think about price point-wise; we’ll have leadership.” The company hopes to drive higher adoption in mainstream price points to convince developers to focus on Radeon products. Gaming and AI are both very hot categories right now, and while AMD has footholds in both territories, Nvidia dominates.
Currently rumors are swirling around alleged Radeon RX 8800 XT specs, which if true, means that AMD will continue to battle in all but the tippity-top of the of the GPU grunt charts. If the leaked specs are truly leaked and not simply “made up,” the card could see a big boost in both ray tracing performance and energy efficiency.
But big-iron GPUs aren’t the only potential game in town.
AMD’s Radeon-infused Ryzen Z1 processors power most of the current crop of gaming handhelds, from the Steam Deck to the Asus ROG Ally. The landing page for the company’s keynote says demo areas will include “AMD Ryzen and Radeon gaming from handhelds to laptops.”
Sure, that could simply mean showing off the existing AMD-powered handheld portfolio. But we still haven’t seen any handhelds packing the significantly more powerful Ryzen Z2 chip, and AMD said we can expect to see those early in 2025. Valve did just update its branding guidelines to include a new “Powered by SteamOS” badge for third-party hardware, and we’re already seeing leaks of a second-gen Lenovo Legion handheld. (The first was powered by AMD.)
Is CES going to be the big Z2 blitz? Fingers crossed.
Intel just unwrapped the fantastic $249 Arc B580 in December. Expect to see the company showing off its second-gen Arc graphics cards at the show – not just partner models of the B580, but also the cheaper $129 Arc B570. That GPU was announced alongside the B580, but won’t hit the streets until January 16. Intel and its partners will no doubt be putting a spotlight on their designs in their booths.
Intel
I’d also expect to see at least one gaming handheld powered by Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” laptop chip, which includes the same Xe 2 graphics cores as Arc. MSI’s Claw was the first Intel-powered gaming handheld at CES last year, and the new Lunar Lake-powered Claw AI Plus series is already being shown off, with a scheduled release date of January 15. So that’s a lock for MSI’s booth at CES. The only question is whether any other handheld vendors will take the plunge alongside MSI.
I’ll be on the ground at CES 2025 with a bunch of my PCWorld buds, ready to bring you the latest news as it happens and interviews with the people making all this swell new PC hardware. The show officially runs January 7 to 10, but the big keynotes happen on Monday, January 6, with other information usually trickling out the weekend beforehand to get ahead of the deluge. Stay tuned here on PCWorld and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and TikTok so you don’t miss a thing! Hit subscribe on our Full Nerd channel too so you’ll catch our delirious thoughts in podcast form, live from Las Vegas.
