Nvidia’s incoming RTX 5090 has set tongues wagging again on the topic of how slim the next-gen flagship might just be.
VideoCardz noticed that Kopite7kimi, a regular on X (formerly Twitter) for GPU leaks, chipped in with another post that claims Nvidia’s version of the RTX 5090 (the Founders Edition) will be a two-slot graphics card.
No, RTX 5090 FE has a 2-slot cooler.May 29, 2024
While you might think that’s not exactly slim as such, it definitely is for a flagship GPU. The RTX 4090 spans three or more slots, eating up huge amounts of space inside the case of the PC it’s installed in.
The leaker further elaborates that the RTX 5090 will be a dual-fan card, so we’re looking at a two-slot cooler with two fans to keep the temperatures of the Blackwell flagship GPU in check.
Analysis: Efficiency in spades
For those who follow heavyweight GPUs, this rumor might be a difficult one to believe – and of course, we should exercise plenty of skepticism here (that’s true of any pre-release speculation).
However, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a slimmer RTX 5090, apparently due to a very different design approach Nvidia is taking with the flagship graphics card this time around. The source of that rumor mentioned a dual-slot cooling solution already (and that 32GB of VRAM might be the memory configuration for the 5090).
As we’ve noted before, with the RTX 5090 expected to make a big performance leap, this does beg the question of how much power it’ll use – and how good the cooling will have to be if it’s going to be a more compact solution in the next-gen flagship.
Kopite7kimi wouldn’t comment on the potential power usage of the RTX 5090, but does say: “I am sure the cooling design is more efficient.” This is certainly piquing our interest, as not only might the RTX 5090 forge ahead with gaming GPU performance, but it could also do that while being slimmed down – by a lot. This would fix one of our biggest issues with the RTX 4090 – namely, being able to fit the hulking thing into a PC case that isn’t the size of an aircraft hanger.
Does all this sound too good to be true? Well, to be fair it does, but we’ll just have to wait and see, though we may be in for a longer wait than is ideal, as the RTX 5080 might be the first Blackwell GPU to be released if the grapevine is correct. (That said, the RTX 5090 may not be far behind even in this eventuality).
