Nvidia’s RTX 50 series will reportedly feature DisplayPort 2.1 and use TSMC’s 3nm node

Nvidia’s next-gen Blackwell GPUs will reportedly feature a hefty DisplayPort upgrade and utilise TSMC’s latest lithography tech

Nvidia’s RTX 40 series of graphics cards are over a year old now, and we know that Nvidia are working hard on their next-generation successors. Nvidia Black well is coming, and rumour has it that the GeForce RTX 50 series is launching in 2025. Thanks to @kopite7kimi on X, we now know a little more about what to expect from Blackwell.

Unlike AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 series, Nvidia’s RTX 40 series launched without DisplayPort 2.1 support. Nvidia is expected to address this issue with their RTX 50 series. AMD has successfully marketed DisplayPort 2.1 support as a design win for their RDNA 3 based graphics cards, despite the rarity of compatible monitors. Even so, DisplayPort 2.1 monitors like the ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQXR do exist.

DisplayPort 2.1 supports up to three times as much bandwidth as DisplayPort 1.4. This allows DisplayPort 2.1 to offer users more bandwidth than HDMI 2.1, enabling support for high resolutions, screen refresh rates, and support for HDR at higher resolutions. Theoretically, DisplayPort 2.1 can support 4K 240Hz without using Display Stream Compression (DSC).

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— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) November 15, 2023

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 on TSMC 3nm

Blackwell is expected to be based on TSMC’s 3nm lithography node, the same node that was used to create Apple’s M3 series of processors. Apple often pays to be an early adopter of TSMC’s latest lithography nodes, and companies like AMD and Nvidia frequently transition to these nodes when they are more mature.

Nvidia’s RTX 40 series of GPUs use TSMC’s 4nm lithography node. Simply put, Nvidia would be foolish not to move to a newer lithography node for their GeForce RTX 50 series Blackwell GPUs. Newer lithography nodes enable increased transistor densities, heightened power efficiency, and faster clock speeds. All of these traits will help Nvidia to offer gamers boosted performance with their next-generation graphics cards.

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— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) November 15, 2023

Nvidia are expected to reveal their RTX 40 SUPER series of GPUs at CES 2024 during the company’s “Special Address“. This leads us to suspect that Nvidia’s RTX 50 series is not launching anytime soon. This makes the GeForce RTX 50 series’ rumoured 2025 release timeframe seem increasingly likely.

You can join the discussion on Nvidia’s RTX 50 series GPUs on the OC3D Forums.