Nvidia's Reliance On AI Makes GPUs Cheaper, But Not Without Caveats

When Nvidia launched the RTX 40 Series graphics cards in 2022, it met with mixed reviews, with gamers arguing that the new products were not an incremental upgrade over the previous generation RTX 30 Series.

But then again, Nvidia wasn't a $3-trillion market cap company in 2022.

Fast forward to Jan. 7, 2025, Nvidia unveiled the RTX 50 Series graphics cards — their first launch since becoming a they're-not-just-a-GPU-company-anymore.

The RTX 50 Series could become Nvidia's most groundbreaking launch since the iconic GTX 10 Series back in 2014 — graphics cards which are used by gamers even today.

Driven by powers of Generative AI, the new series of cards takes cues from its recent predecessors and builds on the idea of something called 'AI-driven rendering'.

The RTX 40 Series of cards from Nvidia is not all about performance. In fact, its biggest moat is pricing.

Founder Jensen Huang, in his presentation, claimed the base model of RTX 5070 will offer similar performance as the RTX 4090, the most powerful graphics card available in the market right now.

With more focus on neural rendering (remember this term for future context), predictive analysis and higher Tensor cores, Nvidia has managed to bring down pricing heavily.

In fact, the RTX 5070 (at least the Nvidia Founder's Edition) will be launched with a price tag of just $549 (around Rs 47,000), compared to its direct peer RTX 4090's $1,599 (around Rs 1.37 lakh) — that's a 65% discount!

The highest model of the RTX 50 Series — the RTX 5090 — will be available for $1,999 (nearly Rs 1.7 lakh), which makes it the one of the most expensive gaming GPUs ever launched.

However, as Nvidia claims, the top-shelf model packs twice as much as power as the outgoing generation's flagship, RTX 4090.

To understand the role of AI in graphics cards, we must understand how a traditional GPU operates.

Most of these GPUs are all about deterministic rendering, meaning these devices focus on brute-force calculations by rendering every pixel using physical simulation (another key term to remember).

What differentiates the RTX 50 Series GPUs is their prominent use of neural rendering.

The idea of neural rendering is to make graphics processing faster and more efficient. Instead of calculating each and every pixel, neural rendering computes only a subset while using AI to predict the rest.

Traditional rendering is like cooking a meal from scratch, where you prepare every ingredient and cook each step slowly and carefully.

Neural rendering is like using a smart kitchen assistant who already knows the recipe and can quickly finish the meal by suggesting and preparing parts of it for you, saving you time while still delivering a great dish.

"The future of Computer Graphics is neural rendering. We ray trace only the pixels we need and we generate with AI all the other pixels," Huang said in his presentation.

How does this help Nvidia? The emphasis on neural rendering negates the need for abundance of expensive transistors for brute-force processing.

By offloading part of the rendering workload to specialised AI units (Nvidia calls them 'Tensor cores'), GPUs would theoretically require fewer rendering pipelines, leading to smaller, and in turn, cheaper chips.

This explains the edge Nvidia's RTX 50 Series GPUs enjoy in the pricing war.

On paper, Nvidia's RTX 50 Series appears to be too good a deal to miss. It provides users access to more powerful, AI-led graphics card at a fraction of the price of previous models.

But there are a few red flags about these new GPUs one must be aware of.

While the reliance on AI-driven technologies like DLSS 4.0 (exclusive to the Blackwell Architecture), Ray Construction and Super Resolution, offer substantial visual enhancements, there's an array of caveats hidden beneath.

A significant bottleneck could arise from the limited adoption and support for these features in games.

Despite Nvidia's claim of day-one support for 75 games and apps, the slow rollout means that many RTX 50 Series owners may not fully benefit from the cutting-edge capabilities of these GPUs in their gaming experience. The lack of widespread support for these features in existing titles may frustrate users expecting immediate performance enhancements and seamless experience.

Think of it as buying the fastest supercar in the world, but you cannot enjoy it to the fullest because streets it can be driven on are limited.

In this case, of course, Nvidia is relying on game developers to roll out more AAA titles that can benefit from the new technologies and that too, at a faster rate than ever before.

Moreover, we are yet to see how an AI-driven graphics card can render visually stunning elements without making it look artificial (how ironic). Is Nvidia ditching the powers of physical rendering too early?

With past two RTX line-ups, Nvidia had failed to properly assign ideal use cases for their cards.

In earlier series, the 50 models (like the GTX 1050, RTX 2050) were advertised as base models. But gamers soon complained about Nvidia nerfing the 50 models in the last two instalments. It was the 60 models, which had become the 50 models, argued gamers.

With the RTX 50 series, Nvidia has a chance to avoid these gripes.

Then come million-dollar questions: Is RTX 5090 an overkill for gaming? Will RTX 5070 with 12 GB VRAM be future proof? Can AI really replace physical rendering?

Benchmarks for the new GPUs have a lot of questions to answer.