News RTX 5090 FE unboxing reveals eco-friendly packaging — an inkless box made of "paper fibers

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I think you're taking that out of context, as I doubt that was meant to apply to the fundamental concept of review embargoes, but let's see what he says.


Of course they phase launches of different product tiers in certain ways, and for certain reasons. Whether or not they do that is beside the point I was trying to make.

So the official word is that we can say RTX 5090 reviews will go live on January 24. If you know anything about history, you might be able to infer something extra from that information.

Do you usually have plenty of time with GPUs at launch to do the testing and write your reviews, or is it usually/always a crunch?

It's pretty much always a crunch, because inevitably I'll test the new GPU and encounter performance oddities. Like for example if the 4080 Super were consistently slower than the 4080, it means either the 4080 Super drivers are flaky or games/drivers have changed and the 4080 numbers are now outdated. If it turns out to be the latter, it means retesting a particular game on the latest drivers and game updates. Which there inevitably will be multiple games that have something like this happen.

In the case of the 5090, things are particularly bad because we had Arc B580/B570 launches in mid-Dec and mid-Jan and I totally overhauled the test suite and hardware. All old results are useless, so I need to retest everything. Except, for the Intel GPUs I was running sub-$300 cards. For the 5090 and 5080, I'll want to test the $750+ cards (or $1000+ at least). There was no overlap.

Last week, we had both the B570 launch, which took up a few days of extra time. And we also had the Jan 15 NDA for all the Blackwell briefings at CES, which took up another couple of days. Before that, of course I was in Vegas for CES. And before that was a much-needed Christmas break. So even though we had Nvidia's preview drivers for the 5090 (but not the card), and I had my new test suite and hardware setup, I wasn't around to test anything.

Spoiler: 5090 review will probably only have four GPUs in the initial charts. I will go back and add more post-mortem, but there's no way to get everything done in time for the NDA time and date. I may have results for the 5090 on two PCs, though, just for kicks! Old 13900K and new 9800X3D... because at least that, I can run some tests on one PC while doing other tests on the other PC. But for the 9800X3D tests, I'm bottlenecked to one GPU per day basically.

 

[JTWrenn]

I think you're taking that out of context, as I doubt that was meant to apply to the fundamental concept of review embargoes, but let's see what he says.


Of course they phase launches of different product tiers in certain ways, and for certain reasons. Whether or not they do that is beside the point I was trying to make.

Huh? I said this

Thanks Jared that is crazy that they are that weird about it but thanks. At this point I kind of feel like these embargos don't make any sense. They just stop people from being informed.

He said
It's supposed to be a surprise, maybe? I don't know. Like Helper said, it's just marketing, and it's annoying."

How is that out of context?

 

[JTWrenn]

Spoiler: 5090 review will probably only have four GPUs in the initial charts. I will go back and add more post-mortem, but there's no way to get everything done in time for the NDA time and date. I may have results for the 5090 on two PCs, though, just for kicks! Old 13900K and new 9800X3D... because at least that, I can run some tests on one PC while doing other tests on the other PC. But for the 9800X3D tests, I'm bottlenecked to one GPU per day basically.

Hope we don't cause any trouble with all these questions but....did you get a 5080 for more or less time than a 5090 before the embargo lift dates? Like did you get them both at the same time but one has an earlier embargo than the other?

Whole thing is fascinating to me as I think it is typical marketing over reach that has unintended consequences. Sometimes complexity just breeds this type of weirdness, but I wonder what numbers they crunched to figure out all their launch days and stuff....and if none of it is needed because the 90 and 80 is gonna sell out almost no matter what.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Hope we don't cause any trouble with all these questions but....did you get a 5080 for more or less time than a 5090 before the embargo lift dates? Like did you get them both at the same time but one has an earlier embargo than the other?

Whole thing is fascinating to me as I think it is typical marketing over reach that has unintended consequences. Sometimes complexity just breeds this type of weirdness, but I wonder what numbers they crunched to figure out all their launch days and stuff....and if none of it is needed because the 90 and 80 is gonna sell out almost no matter what.

I got *a* 5080 around the same time as the 5090, but no drivers. Drivers just dropped. Also, I'm am "done" with the 5090 review-in-progress. There's a bunch of stuff I still want to do but I am too sleepy and so I'm stopping now to rest. Should have more stuff in there by tomorrow. LOL

I may do some "live benchmarks" though, later today. Maybe. On YT.

 

[JTWrenn]

I got *a* 5080 around the same time as the 5090, but no drivers. Drivers just dropped. Also, I'm am "done" with the 5090 review-in-progress. There's a bunch of stuff I still want to do but I am too sleepy and so I'm stopping now to rest. Should have more stuff in there by tomorrow. LOL

I may do some "live benchmarks" though, later today. Maybe. On YT.

Just wanted to say thanks for all the direct engagement on this Jarred. We all really appreciate it.