These AMD and Nvidia release date updates are giving me whiplash

By Monica J. White Published October 7, 2024

If you’re wondering about the future of Nvidia’s and AMD’s top graphics cards, you’re not alone. We all know it’s almost time for the next generation of GPUs to be released, but no one knows when exactly that’s going to happen. Today, another source weighed in with conflicting information regarding the release dates of the RTX 50 series and the RX 8000 series, and honestly, it’s all starting to give me whiplash at this point.

At the beginning of 2024, most enthusiasts and leakers alike believed that all three GPU makers — AMD, Intel, and Nvidia — would launch their next-gen products before the end of the year. In fact, early leaks pointed to an end-of-summer release for AMD. As time went on, we’ve all tempered our expectations as it became clear that we’re unlikely to see any new graphics cards before early 2025.

In the case of AMD, that still appears to be true — even with today’s report from UDN (first spotted by Jukanlosreve on X/formerly Twitter). According to UDN, AMD’s next-gen cards will be released in the first quarter of next year. This lines up with previous leaks from sources such as Kepler_L2, RedGamingTech, and Moore’s Law Is Dead.

It’s the Nvidia updates that are starting to get confusing. It’s gone from what seemed to be an all-but-confirmed release window in the fourth quarter of 2024, to an announcement at CES 2025, and now we’re now back to 2024 for the RTX 50-series. UDN claims that Nvidia Blackwell GPUs are expected to enter mass production this quarter, and that the cards are to be released starting at the end of this year. Mind you, this could also mean a late 2024 announcement and an early 2025 launch.

A single report may not mean much, but Moore’s Law Is Dead has also said in a recent video (where he also discussed RTX 50-series laptops) that the desktop RTX 50 cards might launch this year, with the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 expected to lead the charge.

We also got some information on which process node each manufacturer is planning to use. UDN reports that Nvidia will use TSMC’s 4nm process, which we’ve already heard from multiple sources. AMD is said to use TSMC’s 3nm, though, but that could be a translation error, as all previous sources pointed toward a 4nm node.

So, what will it be — this year or early 2025? Nobody knows for sure. We’re now stuck between conflicting reports and no official word from either AMD or Nvidia, so as things stand now, we have no choice but to wait and hope we might see some new GPUs this year after all.