Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who in 2013 leaked labeled paperwork to the press revealing the existence of an in depth US digital surveillance regime, has come out as a surprisingly scathing critic of Nvidia’s new RTX 50-series of graphics playing cards.
“Endless next-quarter considering has diminished the Nvidia model to ‘F-tier worth for S-tier costs,'” Snowden wrote on Twitter. “5070 ought to have had 16 VRAM minimal, 5080 24/32 SKUs, 5090 32/48/+. Releasing a $1,000 GPU in 2025 with a crippling 16 GB is a monopolistic crime in opposition to the patron.”
After leaking paperwork that exposed the extent of the US National Security Agency’s regime of world digital surveillance to The Intercept, Snowden averted prosecution within the US by fleeing to Moscow, the place he lives along with his household as a naturalized Russian citizen. Snowden has continued to put in writing and discuss surveillance, cybersecurity, computing, and politics within the years since.
And I used to be nodding to myself saying “Yeah Edward Snowden, you are onto one thing with this one.” For readability, the $1,000 GPU with 16 gigs of VRAM in query is the RTX 5080, which left PCG {hardware} honcho Dave James nonplussed in his evaluate, calling it a “unusually unexciting” card with minimal gen-on-gen efficiency uplift with out the admittedly spectacular DLSS multi body gen expertise. The RTX 5090 fared slightly higher, with Dave praising each its customary and AI-augmented efficiency regardless of a $400 worth improve over the 4090.
The upcoming RTX 5070 is promising a powerful RTX 4090* stage of efficiency (with multi body gen enabled) at $550, however that 12 GB of VRAM is regarding: In a latest video, members of Digital Foundry mentioned the way it needs to be a suitable quantity for 1440p gaming proper now, however what about down the road? My RTX 3070’s once-voluminous 8 gigs now will get slurped up instantly by any triple-A sport at 1440p, and I discover myself eyeballing the $750, 16 GB 5070 Ti as a possible improve as a substitute.
Nvidia’s market dominance and AI enterprise have left it just about untouchable, at the same time as we appear to be getting one other blended bag graphics card technology after the unexciting 40-series—that dominance is probably not as iron-clad because it as soon as appeared, although. The RTX 5080 and 5090 offered out instantly at UK retailers, but it surely’s unclear how a lot that was pushed by demand versus extraordinarily restricted inventory, main Gamers Nexus to deem it a paper launch. Meanwhile, the potential OpenAI killer out of China, DeepSeek, managed to slash greater than $600 billion from Nvidia’s valuation with the announcement of its new R1 AI mannequin that calls for considerably much less GPU compute for the same consequence to market leaders.
What would actually change issues for players could be some constant competitors from AMD and/or Intel. At the second, that does not appear tremendous possible: The upcoming RX 9070 has thus far solely left us whelmed at greatest with its leaked benchmarks, and Intel’s upcoming Battlemage playing cards look to be shifting in the correct course, however aren’t world beaters fairly but.
