Dark clouds are looming over the future of Nvidia’s best graphics cards. According to a new report, Nvidia told some of its partners that it will be delaying its upcoming Blackwell GPUs, and is now aiming for an early 2025 release instead. Delays are one thing, but the cause is perhaps the most worrying part of it all — design flaws. What does this mean for Nvidia’s RTX 50-series?
This worrying report originates from The Information, which cites two sources who helped produce the Blackwell chip, as well as its server hardware. Bloomberg recounts that the chips may be delayed by over three months at this point. Nvidia is preparing B100 and B200 chips for some of the world’s most prominent tech companies, including Meta, Google, and Microsoft, so these delays could hit pretty hard.
Design flaws aren’t something that can be figured out in a day, though, hence the hefty delay. The source claims that major shipments of Blackwell may now not start until the first quarter of 2025. It’s hard to say whether Nvidia is confirming or denying that, though, as it told The Information that “production is on track to ramp” later in 2024. Still, with how long we have left in this year, that does sound like an early 2025 release.
These delays, so far, appear to only impact Nvidia’s enterprise GPUs — think the AI accelerators that you find in data centers. But it’s easy to assume that the consumer version of Blackwell may suffer the same fate, especially when you consider that there have been reports of RTX 50-series delays from other sources.
Of course, Nvidia is not using the exact same chip in its consumer GPUs as it does in its $70,000 AI graphics cards. However, the overarching Blackwell architecture applies to both kinds of cards. Depending on the severity and the extent of the flaw, we might have our answer as to why leakers now claim that the RTX 50-series won’t hit the market until 2025.
When I first heard that Nvidia might choose to delay the RTX 50-series, I have to admit that I was surprised. A launch in late 2024 would have been on track with Nvidia’s usual release cadence, and it would allow it to tap into the holiday season, which is always good for sales. Now, with major publications claiming that enterprise Blackwell GPUs are delayed, everything is slowly starting to add up.
Ultimately, this is good news. If the RTX 50-series will arrive late, but in good shape, it’s for the best. While 2024 may turn out to be a disappointing year for PC hardware, at least we might avoid another fiasco like what Intel’s unstable CPUs are going through right now.
