Rumor suggests Nvidia’s planned launch timeframe for laptops with RTX 5000 GPUs got pushed back - what does this mean for PC gamers?

(Image credit: Peter Hoffmann)

Nvidia purportedly planned the release of RTX 5000 laptops for January 2025
Rumor claims that original timeframe was pushed back to March (and April for lower-tier notebooks)
This is seemingly wrapped up in chip production and tweaking issues where gaming GPUs are not a priority compared to AI graphics cards

Nvidia’s stock levels for its Blackwell GeForce GPUs are becoming an increasing source of concern, and the brows of PC gamers hoping to get an RTX 5000 graphics card won’t be any less furrowed by fresh news from the grapevine

This is actually on the topic of laptop GPUs, but it applies more widely to the overall situation with Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, as we’ll see.

With the RTX 5000 laptops, Nvidia already told us that RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti laptops are set to launch in March – with pre-orders going live on February 25 – and then notebooks with the RTX 5070 aren’t due until April

You may like

However, as VideoCardz noticed, a report from DigiTimes carries word from the notebook supply chain that Nvidia originally planned a January debut for high-end Blackwell laptops, which has been pushed back to March. And that the mid-to-low-end notebooks – presumably referring to those carrying the RTX 5070 – were originally scheduled for March but got pushed to April.

Add plenty of skepticism, as ever, and we wouldn’t exactly call a laptop packing an RTX 5070 anything like ‘lower tier’ by any means. Maybe translation issues are coming into play there a bit, unless the report is referring to RTX 5060 models as well (but those haven’t been announced by Nvidia yet).

At any rate, the really interesting bit with this article is that DigiTimes furnishes us with a reason for this apparent delay, which is unexpected by the industry at large, namely that Nvidia is having its R&D resources stretched too far in different ways.

Basically, the broad assertion is that the “debugging” (tweaking and honing) needed for Nvidia’s Blackwell data center and gaming products is pulling the firm this way and that, and something’s got to give. And guess what? It isn’t the AI or heavyweight GPUs that are getting the short end of the stick, as that’s where the big money lies – it’s the less profitable gaming graphics cards.

Or that’s the theory anyway, and it seems a believable enough piece of speculation.

DigiTimes reports that anonymous sources from the supply chain have said: “Nvidia, which has never been late [to launch a product] in the past, also encountered this situation. It is probably related to Nvidia’s full sprint to AI servers. Even though there are differences in server and PC chip design and manufacturing processes, the company’s resource allocation may still affect the debugging efficiency of new products.”

On top of this, further buzz about reasons for the laptop GPU delay point to performance falling short of expectations, and “screen problems after the hardware is turned on” (again, be very careful around potential translation issues here, and remember all of this is just rumors).

A gaming laptop partially shown with a gamepad and headphones — (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Analysis: More stock woes?

This purported pushing back of the laptop GPU launch timeframe is unusual for Nvidia, then, which generally hits these dates bang on (even if stock levels aren’t always guaranteed to be healthy, as we’ve seen recently with the RTX 5090 and 5080 desktop GPUs, and in the past, too).

Indeed, I’d agree, it is unusual for Nvidia not to make an announced launch timeframe, and perhaps tellingly, this is exactly what has happened with the RTX 5070 desktop graphics card. Both this GPU and its 5070 Ti desktop sibling had been confirmed for February, and then suddenly we heard it’s now going to be March 5 for the RTX 5070, with Nvidia glossing over that. (The RTX 5070 Ti is still due in February, next week, fact).

All this, and various rumors about stock concerns for the RTX 5070 and 5060 desktop models, further fans the flames of worry around Blackwell gaming GPUs in general. And this DigiTimes report also notes that “no one can guarantee whether the release date [of RTX 5000 laptops] will be extended,” suggesting a possible further delay could even be in the cards.

Which all adds to the general doom and gloom of the Blackwell launch so far. The rumor peddlers are getting a bit too loud and consistent for my liking in terms of all this fretting, that’s for sure.