Saturday, February 1st 2025
Edward Snowden Lashes Out at NVIDIA Over GeForce RTX 50 Pricing And Value
It's not every day that we witness a famous NSA whistleblower voice their disappointment over modern gaming hardware. Edward Snowden, who likely needs no introduction, did not bother to hold back his disapproval of NVIDIA's recently launched RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 gaming GPUs. The reviews for the RTX 5090 have been mostly positive, although the same cannot be said for its affordable sibling, the RTX 5080. Snowden, voicing his thoughts on Twitter, claimed that NVIDIA is selling "F-tier value for S-tier prices".
Needless to say, there is no doubt that the RTX 5090's pricing is quite exorbitant, regardless of how anyone puts it. Snowden was particularly displeased with the amount of VRAM on offer, which is also hard to argue against. The RTX 5080 ships with "only" 16 GB of VRAM, whereas Snowden believes that it should have shipped with at least 24, or even 32 GB. He further adds that the RTX 5090, which ships with a whopping 32 GB of VRAM, should have been available with a 48 GB variant. As for the RTX 5070, the security consultant expressed desire for at least 16 GB of VRAM (instead of 12 GB).
But that is not all that Snowden had to say. He equated selling $1000+ GPUs with 16 GB VRAM to a "monopolistic crime against consumers," further accusing NVIDIA of "endless next-quarter" thinking. This is debatable, considering that NVIDIA is a publicly traded company, and whether they stay afloat does boil down to their quarterly results, whether we like it or not. There is no denying that NVIDIA is in desperate need of some true competition in the high-end segment, which appears to be the only way to get the Green Camp to price their hardware appropriately. AMD's UDNA GPUs are likely set to do just that in a year or two. The rest, of course, remains to be seen.
Source:
@Snowden
Needless to say, there is no doubt that the RTX 5090's pricing is quite exorbitant, regardless of how anyone puts it. Snowden was particularly displeased with the amount of VRAM on offer, which is also hard to argue against. The RTX 5080 ships with "only" 16 GB of VRAM, whereas Snowden believes that it should have shipped with at least 24, or even 32 GB. He further adds that the RTX 5090, which ships with a whopping 32 GB of VRAM, should have been available with a 48 GB variant. As for the RTX 5070, the security consultant expressed desire for at least 16 GB of VRAM (instead of 12 GB).
133 Comments on Edward Snowden Lashes Out at NVIDIA Over GeForce RTX 50 Pricing And Value
I don't think I'm in the bragging business when looking to upgrade my 2070 SUPER pal. Wake up.
Intel Is Working on Real-Time Neural Rendering
AMD's 'Neural Supersampling' seeks to close the gap with Nvidia's DLSS - NotebookCheck.net News
There's an interesting read, about how the CG industry would rather use additional power to enable more visual effects rather than doing the same thing but faster, which is an issue with 4K and high refresh rate becoming a thing. The CEO of Epic says that you could give them a gpu x10 faster than what we have now, they would still find a way to bring that hardware to its knees. But hardware isn't the only limitation. We've probably reached a point where CG artist are looking to fix problems that are glaring to their eyes, but that most gamers don't see. Hence any talk about why they are looking beyond raster graphics doesn't really hit with people. A bit like how a seasoned painter would see areas of improvement in his craft when someone with untrained eyes could think that he already reached his peak.
Other than that, interesting read. Still, my point stands - the 5080 will long be obsolete before we see anything come out of this research.
It's the same SER 1.0 feature implemented in Ada. This feature requires the development of a second code path in every game that uses it, as well as a second engine code path to support it. So, two years after its implementation, it is used in exactly one NV-sponsored demonstrator - CP2077.
There are no other demonstrators known to use it, or even planned ones. At this rate of adoption, this technology will never be implemented.
Thanks
are we going to quote everyone who says anything about this release now?
I think its been objectively shown many times now this release is a complete joke.
But consumers still line up to buy it.....so again, why even be mad at Nvidia?
Hell imo they should release their next line with again just 16gb or even less memory and only actually make the 90 version better, give the rest even more frame gen and exclusive DLSS 5 for all I care.
People will buy it anyway.
Unless they are kind of being a jerk about it..
NVidia's business practices are not agreeable and boarder on the predatory, but to imply that they have not brought significant innovations to tech and the world in general is not just silly and totally blind to reality, but utterly daft.
Edward Snowden's statement is clearly not from a techie's point of view. It was a frustrated outburst from someone who expected better from NVidia. Many of us feel the same way, myself included. However, at the end of the day, he's not talking from the perspective if a tech professional or enthusiast.THIS! YES! :rockout: I really wish more people had this perspective instead of being snooty, self-righteous, nose-in-the-air ahole elitists!
(hint, that was me being a smart-alec)
Ps. In the very closest past I read about Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series which leaked with its code naming.
Its also ironic because im pretty sure the first time DLSS was shown, that was how people described the look of it, vaseline on the screen.