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Was just said? Edward Snowden’s public criticism of Nvidia RTX 5000 Series is a sign that the series has been disappointing. Snowden, a former NSA contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the agency’s global surveillance program in 2013, has not been a fan of RTX 5000. Snowden, in a post on his official X page, blamed Nvidia for reducing its brand to
Snowden also criticized the amount of VRAM that is found in Blackwell consumer graphics card products. He writes that the RTX5070 should have a minimum 16GB instead the 12GB GDDR7 offered by the product.
Snowden says that the RTX 5080 should have 24GB or 32GB of memory, just like the RTX 5070T, which has 16GB VRAM. He also believes the 32GB RTX-5090 should have an alternative version with 48GB or more VRAM.
Nvidia’s brand has been reduced to “F-tier value for S-tier prices”because of the endless next-quarter thinking. 5070 should have at least 16GB of VRAM, 5080 with 24/32 SKUs and 5090 with 32/48/+. It is a monopolistic offense to release a $1,000+ graphics card in 2025 that has a crippling amount of 16GB.
Edward Snowden (@Snowden). Snowden is right. January 31, 2025.
This one we have to agree on. Our review of RTX 5080 highlighted poor generational improvements. The $1,000 card has a cost per frame that is only 10% (at best), better than the RTX 4080 Super. We gave it a score 70.
Although we acknowledge that the RTX 5090 now tops the list when it comes to gaming performance, a 30% increase for what will at least be a 25% price hike isn’t ideal.
Nvidia probably limited the VRAM in the 5080 to encourage people to upgrade to the $2,000 RTX5090. This stingy amount of memory leaves Nvidia open to releasing RTX 5000 Super Series cards with higher prices and more VRAM in the future.
Despite a largely negative press and consumer response, gamers (and hairdressers) camped out in stores for days before the RTX 5000 5080 and 5090 launch last week. In Japan, people queued up to get a chance to purchase one of the cards.
Due to the severe shortage of Blackwell cards, many people have labelled this launch as a “paper launch”. Many Micro Center outlets received only a few GPUs, mainly RTX-5090s. In some cases only four or five flagships were available for purchase.
