The hype is real: Nvidia finally teases the RTX 50-series

By Monica J. White Published December 13, 2024

It’s finally happening. Nvidia has just teased the upcoming RTX 50-series in a major way, with a full-on fan event leading up to the official announcement in January. Under the banner of #GeForceGreats, Nvidia is celebrating some of its best graphics cards, but it’s already looking to the future. Here’s what’s happening and how to get involved.

After a long stretch of silence, the Nvidia GeForce social media accounts posted updates about GeForce at CES 2025, inviting fans to watch the keynote on January 6, 2025. We already knew about the keynote, but this is the first official confirmation that it won’t be all about Nvidia’s data center business — we’re definitely getting updates on next-gen gaming GPUs, too.

That little update is far from the only thing that’s happening, though. Nvidia is celebrating the fact that it’s now been 25 years since it launched its first GPU, the GeForce 256, with a look back at the past. The company is inviting gamers and enthusiasts to participate on social media using the hashtag “GeForceGreats,” with continued engagement leading to prizes.

Liking, commenting, and sharing posts using the hashtag will fill up Nvidia’s GeForce Hype Meter, which can be seen live on Nvidia’s Twitch channel. Prizes await, and although Nvidia didn’t specify what exactly to expect, the prize pool will expand as the meter grows, so we might find out more about that soon enough.

Nvidia is also bringing back an event that it held in 2011 and then never again: The GeForce LAN party. This is going to be an online and in-person gaming marathon that will last for 50 hours and will end right before Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang begins his CES 2025 keynote. Is the 50-hour runtime a coincidence? No chance.

The original Nvidia LAN party was hosted aboard a decommissioned USS Hornet aircraft. Now, a lot of the event is going to take place online, starting from 4:30 p.m. PT on January 4. Nvidia teases “epic online GeForce LAN Missions” that will reward in-game prizes, as well as more of the GeForceGreats hype for other things to win. These events will also take place live in several places across the planet, including Las Vegas, Beijing, Taipei, and Berlin. You’ll be able to sign up for these events on Nvidia’s LAN 50 website, but the registration isn’t open just yet.

So, what comes next? To fill up Nvidia’s Hype Meter, fans should interact with the company’s social media sites, including GeForce, GFN, Studio, and AI_PC profiles, using the GeForceGreats hashtag. Other than that, we should keep our eyes open for potential leaks, because the run-up to Nvidia’s RTX 50-series has finally started. Most recently, a well-known leaker said that the RTX 5090 might be up to 70% faster than the RTX 4090.