NVIDIA 5 Series cards - Get your wallets ready boys and girls....

[Aapje]

6 hours ago, okopanja said:

Meanwhile with DEEPSEEK, I wonder if Jensen should reconsider the pricing for 5090 (and the rest)...

Looks like he will have extra capacity to offer within high end chips to the gaming market.

I think that it is inevitable the bubble will pop, but Jensen is a smart cookie. I think that he already signed lots of contracts for future shipments, so if the bubble pops, the customers can't cancel the contracts and they are left holding the bag. Of course it will still impact Nvidia, but the actual impact on the company may not be that bad.

[SharpeXB]

Already bouncing back, an opportunity a blind man could see

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/28/small-investors-bought-the-dip-in-nvidia-by-a-record-amount-monday.html

Edited January 28 by SharpeXB

[Aapje]

6 hours ago, okopanja said:

Western countries did place all the semiconductor future hopes into a single box called Taiwan. No surprise there - it was profitable, except one tiny problem - this is not exactly the safest place on Earth.

What a weird take. TSMC outcompeted Intel (and Samsung). There was no conspiracy to make Taiwan very important.

Also, the chip industry is very much globalized. Other countries like The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan and the US also have crucial expertise and facilities.

[LucShep]

 

11 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

13 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

”Now I have the fastest computer I will ever need” Said nobody ever…

That was my point. My dad was very much in the race for a long time, in fact, he'd been at it since he swapped his second Atari for a PC. As a kid, hand-me-downs from him were sufficiently powerful that I seldom complained about not being able to run something, except when things like SSE2 appeared, at the time I had the last high end AMD CPU that didn't support it, which kind of sucked when it became a hard requirement. At one point, he just decided further upgrades weren't worth the money, the 20xx series RTX being a bit of a dud had a lot to do with it, and the 30 series launch pricing sealed the deal.
 

12 hours ago, Dogmanbird said:

it might still be a wake-up for some and reveal the level of coding skills v relying on hardware improvement. I think this is a good moment and may trigger some changes

The "target consumers" are getting tired of ballooning prices for incremental performance gains. While I haven't yet declared the 3090 will be the last GPU I buy, unless something truly revolutionary is added (more than spamming fake frames, anyway), I expect it to suffice for the foreseeable future. When I do upgrade my rig, it'll likely be because something like retina-level VR came out.

Well said.

I'm not sure what other "gaming" interests are among people here in DCS forums, but I'm quite active in other PC gaming genres (and modding as well). 
I've been into it for well over two decades (maybe three?) and I clearly see a shift in mentalities like I haven't for many years, somewhat similar to what I recall in the late 2000s.

I'm noticing lots of new people in forums, clearly resorting to older games, and also emulators (previous gen consoles gaming, on pc), finding out that there's a huge list of quality game titles providing gameplay fun and enough eye candy. More so with modding, which also empowers and prolongues the life of such games, which don't require ubber-hardware, and are relatively bug-free at this point.
UE5 is getting a pretty bad rap with the unoptimization issues stuff, quickly becoming a meme among most gaming communities, who'll likely start boycotting any and all games powered by it. Which, in these days of social media and community driven groups, may not really be a minor thing.

I'm also noticing increasing numbers of disgruntled DCS users joining ranks on certain competitor titles.
I can only guess but, I'd wager, might have to do with having far less concern and issues with performance and hardware requirements, as you do in DCS (outrageous when it comes to VR), being a major part of it.

Money isn't growing in trees and, years after the pandemic (when so many bought decent gaming PCs), there are more and more people deciding to keep what they have, and use it for as long as they can, rather than spend another small fortune in yet another expensive system (or hardware part) upgrade. 
I'm building or upgrading less and less computers these days and, those that I get involved with, there's more and more "mid-range" and far less "high-range" systems, even for people who I remember years back spending big bucks on "top stuff".

I too decided to hold on my current GPU - also an RTX3090 (I think I said here before). It still runs great, not going to spend my hard earned money, also on matter of principle.
The price gouging of GPUs (and other hardware) has become just stupid with every new generation and, as much as I like PC hardware, I won't be a part of it this time around.
 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

30 minutes ago, LucShep said:

there are more and more people deciding to keep what they have, and use it for as long as they can, rather than spend another small fortune in yet another expensive system (or hardware part) upgrade.

Well the upside of graphics card demand is that it’s possible to sell your old one for a good amount and offset the cost of the upgrade. 4090s are now selling for a full $1,000 more than I paid for mine although I suspect that will change when 5090 becomes available. 

Edited January 29 by SharpeXB

[SharpeXB]

32 minutes ago, LucShep said:

I'm noticing lots of new people in forums, clearly resorting to older games

DCS is an older game. It’s far from the most demanding title out there. It’s not MSFS that’s for sure. Until I replaced my 7-10 year old PC two years ago it was the only game I could still run decently. The performance trouble with DCS comes from trying to run it in VR at the higher setting which are intended for 2D

[LucShep]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Well the upside of graphics card demand is that it’s possible to sell your old one for a good amount and offset the cost of the upgrade. 4090s are now selling for a full $1,000 more than I paid for mine although I suspect that will change when 5090 becomes available. 

A four year+ used RTX3090 is worth no more than 550,00~650,00 Euros through private seller these days.
I can risk the selling, but then I don't think it's worth the bother because....

Even with that money credited back, I'm not going to bank close to 3000,00 Euros (if not more?), which is what the RTX5090 (aka RTX4090Ti lol) is expected to cost in Europe.
That's just stupid for one GPU. It could have Jensen's jacket and signature on it included, for all I care!  ...I could buy, I don't know, another motorcycle for that money, FFS.

The RTX4090 has also increased in price lately (retailers trying to milk people who run for those last units in stock!) to even more stupid prices than before.
And, sure as heck, I'm not going to gamble on a used 4090 with the current particular scamming issues on them.

And, for sure, I'm not going to upgrade to an RTX5080 that is basically just an "RTX4080Ti" (wait for the reviews, it'll be worse than it has been with the 5090), with less VRAM and not really so much faster than my RTX3090 to make it worth the 1700,00+ Euros price, that I see rumoured to be tagged on them in Europe. 
 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

8 minutes ago, LucShep said:

I'm not going to bank close to 3000,00 Euros (if not more?), which is what the RTX5090

That price is indeed nuts. Aren’t there any legit retailers in the EU who will sell that at a normal price? I’ve never paid more than MSRP for a card here. 

[LucShep]

51 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

That price is indeed nuts. Aren’t there any legit retailers in the EU who will sell that at a normal price? I’ve never paid more than MSRP for a card here. 

These are the very best prices I can find for a brand new RTX4090 in my country (now check its MSRP again?).
Half of them will say "out of stock, will notify etc" when you add the product to basket. And then through Amazon(ES) is even more ridiculous.

What do you think will happen with the RTX 5000 series, stock and price, particularly with the 5090? 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[Panzerlang]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

DCS is an older game. It’s far from the most demanding title out there. It’s not MSFS that’s for sure. Until I replaced my 7-10 year old PC two years ago it was the only game I could still run decently. The performance trouble with DCS comes from trying to run it in VR at the higher setting which are intended for 2D

No, that's not the case at all. Graphics settings on high-end GPUs account for nothing when the CPU is having one or two cores flogged to their knees. DCS is a CPU killer, not a GPU one.

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, LucShep said:

Half of them will say "out of stock, will notify etc"

Same here. I’ve always just gone on the notify list and got it when the hype cools off. 

23 minutes ago, Panzerlang said:

No, that's not the case at all. Graphics settings on high-end GPUs account for nothing when the CPU is having one or two cores flogged to their knees. DCS is a CPU killer, not a GPU one.

Maybe with VR that’s more often the case. For me on a 4K screen I’m GPU limited. My theoretical CPU limit is about 152 FPS. By comparison in FS2024 I’m CPU bound in the 40s but using FG to boost that into the 80-90s and it honestly looks really nice. 

Edited January 29 by SharpeXB

[LucShep]

13 hours ago, Panzerlang said:

No, that's not the case at all. Graphics settings on high-end GPUs account for nothing when the CPU is having one or two cores flogged to their knees. DCS is a CPU killer, not a GPU one.

Oh, if it was just the CPU utilization issue...
It's the whole I/O operation, it's... "complicated", to say the least.

VRAM on the GPU, for instances. 
Try running DCS (in VR or in 4K) with an F-4E Phantom II, or F-14A/B Tomcat, or AH-64D Apache, or CH-47F Chinook, or Mi-24P Hind (and wait for the upcoming MiG-29A and the Typhoon, should be nice for this...) in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Kola, or South-Atlantic maps (among other maps).
Check the used VRAM (used, not allocated) - seeing over 16GB VRAM hasn't been uncommon for sometime now (and hence why RTX X090 GPUs are so highly sought for DCS). 

DCS swaps a lot. Most of the textures are stored in compressed .ZIP format. The bigger the texture size, the longer DCS will take to extract it from the .ZIP file and then swap. Now, go check the ammount and size of the textures that are used, and how many, in the Core files, in the Maps, and especially in the Modules?  

And notice, it doesn't only do that on the modules you own. For example, I don't have the F-4E but if I'm on MP and someone else joins with an F-4E, at that very moment I have to load all of his 4K DXT5 32-bit textures.  And so on for other modules I don't own (etc etc). 

When the VRAM limit of the GPU is hit (and on any 8GB or 12GB GPU it will be hit in MP), it then goes to consume your Swapfile/Pagefile if there isn't enough RAM (when that can easily go to 40GB usage on its own, if in MP).  And neither RAM (best case, even with fastest DDR5 available) or Swapfile/Pagefile (worst case, no matter how fast the NVME) will be anywhere near the speed of dedicated VRAM on the GPU. *stutters gallore*  And why this is such a big problem with DCS.

And, again, considering that most of the DCS userbase is very unlikely to be with 16GB+ VRAM (RTX X090 24GB) GPUs and 64GB of RAM, the stuttering complaints are pretty aknowledged and recognized across the board... It gets very expensive very quickly, just to "disguise" the problem with hardware.
So, the CPU utilization is really just one issue among many.

And BTW, before anyone plays the "just reduce the texture size in options" card, that doesn't help entirely, because the Core and Modules don't have separated "low" and "high" textures (only the Maps have them), the whole texture (every single one) will have to be extracted from the .ZIP file even before being resized and then swapped.
And to make it even nicer (lol) the resizing according to the texture quality you chose in options is done through a MIP of (each of) the DDS files, which is bad quality and results in a horrible blurry texture image....

Really, DCS is an amazing simulation experience.
But there's a whole lot of things so friggin wrong with it, and it goes beyond any outrageously priced top hardware that you may throw at it. LOL  "the mind boggles"

 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[Panzerlang]

4 minutes ago, LucShep said:

Oh, if was just that CPU issue...

It's the whole I/O operation, it's... "complicated", to say the least.

VRAM, for instances. 
Try running DCD VR with an F-4E Phantom II, or F-14A/B Tomcat, or AH-64D Apache, or CH-47F Chinook, or Mi-24P Hind (and wait for the upcoming MiG-29A and the Typhoon...) in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Kola, or South-Atlantic maps (among other new maps).
Check the VRAM - seeing over 16GB VRAM hasn't been uncommon for sometime now (and hence why RTX X090 GPUs are so sought for DCS). 

And more, DCS swaps a lot. Most of the textures are stored in compressed .ZIP format. The bigger the texture size, the longer DCS will take to extract it from the .ZIP file and then swap. Now, go check the size of the textures that are used, and how many, in the Core files, in the Maps, and especially in the Modules?  

And notice, it doesn't only do that on the modules you own. For example, I don't have the F-4E but, if I'm on MP and someone else joins with an F-4E, I have to load all of his 4K DXT5 32-bit textures.  And so on for other modules I don't own (etc etc). 

When the VRAM limit of the GPU is hit (and on any 8GB or 12GB GPU it will be hit in MP), it then goes to consume your Swapfile/Pagefile if there isn't enough RAM (when that can easily go to 40GB usage on its own, if in MP).
And neither RAM (best case, even with fastest RAM available) or Swapfile/Pagefile (worst case, no matter how fast the NVME) will be anywhere near the speed of dedicated VRAM on the GPU.
And why this is such a big problem with DCS.

And, again, considering that most of the DCS userbase is very unlikely to be with 16GB+ VRAM (RTX X090 24GB) GPUs and 64GB of RAM, the stuttering complaints are pretty aknowledged and recognized across the board... The CPU utilization is just one issue among many.

And BTW, before anyone plays the "reduce the texture size" card, it doesn't help entirely, because the Core and Modules don't have separated "low" and "high" textures (only the Maps have them), the whole texture will have to be extracted from the .ZIP file before being resized and then swapped.
And to make it even nicer (lol) the resizing according to the texture quality you chose is done on a MIP of the DDS files, which is bad quality and results in a horrible blurry image....

Really, the DCS is an amazing simulation experience, but there's a whole lot of things so friggin wrong with it, and it goes beyond any outrageous priced hardware that you may throw at it. LOL "the mind boggles"

 

Even with a 4090 and 64GB of 6400 RAM, still the micro-stutters and jerks. But nowhere bad enough to spoil play, fortunately. After weeks of tweaking shedloads of things however.

Why can't ED give us the option to have permanently un-zipped textures? Or are we talking terabytes?

[LucShep]

30 minutes ago, Panzerlang said:

Even with a 4090 and 64GB of 6400 RAM, still the micro-stutters and jerks. But nowhere bad enough to spoil play, fortunately. After weeks of tweaking shedloads of things however.

Why can't ED give us the option to have permanently un-zipped textures? Or are we talking terabytes?

What they should do instead is store the textures in uncompressed packages, like most games do.
That way they're "tidy" as desired and access/loading is not halted by decompression.

But still, that would just solve one among many of the optimization issues (VRAM utilization by overkill texture size and formats, bad CPU utilization, Weather/Clouds system that can be utterly demanding, Explosions and Weapon effects that bork performance, avionics/electronics hitting resources like the cookie-monster, spaghetti code, etc etc). 
As said, it's everything, the whole I/O operation, it's "complicated", to say the least. Vulkan may alleviate things, but how much it'll do is unknown.
 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[EightyDuce]

Early 5080 performance leaks.

 

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/s/zK6gC4QigQ

Edited January 29 by EightyDuce
Added source link

[kksnowbear]

21 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Those target consumers just got a performance gain in the form of more efficient AI.

There is no statement from Nvidia regarding 'target consumers'.  You are expressing an opinion which is not based on factual knowledge.  (You'll be good enough to tell us if you do, in fact, have first-hand access to such knowledge from Nvidia.  I suspect you do not.)

Factually, 'fake frames' don't improve performance *at all* unless supported in a given game.   AI does nothing for sheer horsepower, and 'fake frames' come with drawbacks, such as input lag and "artifacts".

Factually, the gain in performance without the smoke and mirror nonsense is small, and even then it only applies to those running 4k - which, factually, are far and away in the minority.

The vast majority won't see even these 'disappointing' gains (per Steve at HUB) and again, as I posted previously:  Even at 4k, we're seeing "no improvement in cost per frame".

Nvidia has not in any way limited 5090 sales specifically to 4k monitor users, nor indeed restricted sales of those units to any particular 'target' consumers.

In my view, the 'target' is anyone who has money enough to blow on being able to brag about getting a 5090 before anyone else, even though unless they meet very specific conditions, they aren't getting anywhere near what they're paying for.  (And that's *assuming* MSRP isn't a joke that may yet be rendered moot by politics.)

Being on a wait list doesn't put a card in anybody's hands.  As many (many) learned with other GPU releases, orders/pre-orders can be cancelled by vendors with zero notice or explanation.

And there are also quality issues in many titles.  I watched a video yesterday from HUB saying that they recommend MFG (the 'smoke and mirrors' that the 50 series brings) *only* when you're getting a base render rate of 100-120 FPS anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_fGlVqKs1k

...so if you're already getting 100-120FPS without *any* 'magic', why would anyone need to introduce problems like input lag and artifacts, poor image quality...?  (Particularly if their 4k monitor only refreshes at 120 or even 144 lol).

Do we just need to brag about 350FPS that badly, when the monitor cannot physically display that number of frames?

So now the 4k monitor needed to realize any real benefit from 50-series smoke and mirrors, should also be a high refresh model?

If someone has consistently said their beautiful 48" OLED monitor is 120Hz, and their 4090 gets over 120FPS, so they cap frames just below the 120 refresh of their monitor...

How's a 5090 supposed to make the monitor display more frames than it's even physically capable of?

So now, if we assume best case for the card itself (MSRP at $2000), with even conservative taxes puts you up near $2150...plus how much for a 48" 4k OLED high refresh monitor, another $2150 after taxes?  So, $4300 all in?

Someone please tell me I've got the math wrong here...

(BTW that's just a price for a 144Hz monitor I found...so you'd still only get 144 at most; seems given a 240Hz model would be even more outrageous...but I had trouble finding a 48" 240Hz 4k OLED unit, though admittedly I didn't look too hard.)

Edited January 29 by kksnowbear

[EightyDuce]

Reviews going live and as expected, lackluster boost over 7900xtx or 4080.

[SharpeXB]

15 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

Being on a wait list doesn't put a card in anybody's hands.  As many (many) learned with other GPU releases, orders/pre-orders can be cancelled by vendors with zero notice or explanation.

I’ve purchased many of my graphics cards from such wait lists over the last 12 years. Never had any vendor back out of one. They eventually come through or I’ll end up finding the same price on Amazon that their direct e store charges. I’ve never paid over MSRP for any of them.

21 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

...so if you're already getting 100-120FPS without *any* 'magic', why would anyone need to introduce problems like input lag and artifacts, poor image quality...?  (Particularly if their 4k monitor only refreshes at 120 or even 144 lol).

Indeed I don’t personally see a need for using DLSS or Frame Generation (if it was supported) in DCS, just for a bump from 90FPS to 120, the loss in quality isn’t worthwhile to me. Now in FS2024 FG works really well plus it’s necessary as without it I’m CPU-limited in the 40s and with FG I get in the 80-90s. And I can’t discern any loss of quality there. FS2020 did not do as well. FG introduced this flickering on some textures and cockpit displays. Why FS24 is better? Is it the game or just a better version of DLSS but it looks great. Cyberpunk 2077 again needs DLSS plus FG to get nice settings out of it but it also looks really good, again I can’t see any quality difference when enabling this.

[LucShep]

As expected, the RTX5080 is even more underwhelming when compared to previous gen competitors...

RTX5080 review (same as youtube's HUB, but in written format):  https://www.techspot.com/review/2947-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080/

Quoting:
"Sure, the 5080 was, on average, 11% faster – so at least we hit double digits – but that's still quite underwhelming for a next-gen GPU.
Compared to the original RTX 4080, it's only 14% faster, and when stacked against AMD's nearest competitor, it offers just an 8% gain over the 7900 XTX."



...and if you think that the expected "real" price increase (forget MSRP, it won't happen in practice) is far higher than the very small performance improvement, when compared to the current RTX4080S, it starts to look like this might be the worst release for an Nvidia GPU series since the early 2000s maligned FX-5000 series.  
 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[kksnowbear]

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I’ve purchased many of my graphics cards from such wait lists over the last 12 years.

That doesn't change the fact that being on a wait list doesn't guarantee a card.

Edited January 29 by kksnowbear

[LucShep]

55 minutes ago, LucShep said:

As expected, the RTX5080 is even more underwhelming when compared to previous gen competitors...

RTX5080 review (same as youtube's HUB, but in written format):  https://www.techspot.com/review/2947-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080/

Quoting:
"Sure, the 5080 was, on average, 11% faster – so at least we hit double digits – but that's still quite underwhelming for a next-gen GPU.
Compared to the original RTX 4080, it's only 14% faster, and when stacked against AMD's nearest competitor, it offers just an 8% gain over the 7900 XTX."



...and if you think that the expected "real" price increase (forget MSRP, it won't happen in practice) is far higher than the very small performance improvement, when compared to the current RTX4080S, it starts to look like this might be the worst release for an Nvidia GPU series since the early 2000s maligned FX-5000 series.  
 

A fun fact.....  AMD RX 7900XTX and 7900XT are already getting increased prices (look'em up), right after the disapointing Nvidia RTX5080 reviews gone out. 

 

 

Edited January 29 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

34 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

That doesn't change the fact that being on a wait list doesn't guarantee a card.

Every time for me it has or the hype dies down and the card is readily available anywhere. I’ve never been completely unable to buy one at MSRP. For example, the wait for my 2080 Ti was about two months but I eventually got it from EVGAs queue. The 4090 I was able to buy instantly since that was maybe a year after launch.
That’s been true for me over the last 12 years so I don’t see why that would change now. Hey if the card sucks then demand won’t be so high and they’ll be easier to find

[kksnowbear]

34 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Every time for me it has or the hype dies down and the card is readily available anywhere. I’ve never been completely unable to buy one at MSRP. For example, the wait for my 2080 Ti was about two months but I eventually got it from EVGAs queue. The 4090 I was able to buy instantly since that was maybe a year after launch.
That’s been true for me over the last 12 years so I don’t see why that would change now. Hey if the card sucks then demand won’t be so high and they’ll be easier to find

And yet, somehow, none of that changes the fact that being on a wait list doesn't guarantee a card.

Demand will still be high only because it's relative to supply, which everyone already knows Nvidia is manipulating to control the market.

As I (and others) already explained, the simple "supply and demand" argument doesn’t apply here.  That "law" exists as a means to explain an inversely proportional relationship to grade-schoolers, not to account for questionable ethics and business practices where intelligent adults are concerned.

Nvidia is perfectly happy if some people believe that simple supply and demand explains their behavior.  Some of us know better.

Besides that, most of what's driving demand in this case is people who will pay exorbitant prices to secure bragging rights - and Nvidia figured out long ago that those people will pay, even though the facts show that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the real value just isn't there.

Edited January 29 by kksnowbear

[Dragon1-1]

20 hours ago, Aapje said:

What a weird take. TSMC outcompeted Intel (and Samsung). There was no conspiracy to make Taiwan very important.

Also, the chip industry is very much globalized. Other countries like The Netherlands, Belgium, Japan and the US also have crucial expertise and facilities.

No, but a single company outcompeting the others to such an extent is bad for both the market and the customers, in the long run. Especially if the product in question forms the basis of much of the national infrastructure. This is a very notable instance of free market not delivering a good result for everyone, but resulting in one company attaining a near-monopoly position. It may be "efficient", but it's an extremely brittle state, and the nature of the semiconductor industry means it's hard for a smaller competitor to get off the ground.

Other countries have expertise, and efforts are being made to diversify and strengthen national chip manufacturing, due to how strategic it is (some leaned their lessons after the pandemic chip shortage), but they're slow and we've still got a long way to go. Right now, neither Nvidia nor TSMC have viable competitors, which led us to the situation we're in now.

[SharpeXB]

9 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

And yet, somehow, none of that changes the fact that being on a wait list doesn't guarantee a card.

Well it has every time for me or the demand dies down and they’re available everywhere. No reason to expect that will be different this time. I’ll let you know.

11 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

Demand will still be high because it's relative to supply, which everyone already knows Nvidia is manipulating to control the market.

Nvidia doesn’t have a monopoly here although they do make a good product. Again both the RTX 4080 and equivalent AMD 7900 XTX sell at the same $999. If Nvidia is price fixing why is the AMD competitor just as expensive? And the RTX 4060 at $299 is actually less expensive than its AMD rival the RX 6700 XT at $479. Sure the price of the behemoth 5090 is eye watering but that’s not what the most common buyers are using. Those are like the top 1%ers.