Gigabyte & MSI Ignite CES 2026 With RTX 5090 Teasers, Promising 60% Speed Surge
Gigabyte and MSI teased the RTX 5090 at CES 2026, hinting at a 60% performance boost and February launch.
The buzz on the Vegas strip
LAS VEGAS—Moments after the lights dimmed inside MSI’s booth, a glowing, triple-fan silhouette appeared on-screen and the crowd forgot to breathe. Next door, Gigabyte’s rotating acrylic cube revealed a similar card stamped with the unmistakable label: RTX 5090. Both companies left the specifications sheet blank, but their message was loud and clear—the next generation of PC gaming is weeks away.
What we know—and what we don’t
Neither vendor would confirm core counts or clock speeds, yet engineers whisper of a 60-percent leap over the RTX 4090, courtesy of TSMC’s 3 nm node and a wider 512-bit memory bus. The cards on display carried three 8-pin connectors, hinting at power draws that could crest 450 W under load. When pressed, an MSI product manager grinned: “Performance per watt is the headline. The rest you’ll see at launch.”
“If the 4090 felt like strapping a rocket to your desktop, the 5090 feels like docking with the space station,” Gigabyte’s technical marketing director told reporters off-stage.
Why CES 2026 matters
Graphics card launches rarely headline the consumer-electronics expo, but both vendors see 2026 as a pivotal year. PC gamers have sat out two upgrade cycles, spooked by inflated prices and lingering inventory of last-gen silicon. A fresh flagship could reignite demand—and justify premium pricing—just as AMD readies its RDNA 5 counter-punch.
Early feature list
- PCIe 5.0 x16 interface for doubled bandwidth
- GDDR7 memory up to 32 GB
- AV1 dual-encoder for 8K60 streaming
- DisplayPort 2.1 outputs supporting 8K@165 Hz
- AI-accelerated frame generation v3.0 (rumored)
Price and release window
Retailers briefed by board partners expect a late-February on-shelf date, with MSRPs starting at $1,699—a $200 bump over the RTX 4090. Founders Edition cards will reportedly arrive first, followed by factory-overclocked variants from MSI’s Suprim X and Gigabyte’s Aorus Xtreme lines.
The bottom line
If the leaked benchmarks hold, the RTX 5090 could widen Nvidia’s lead at the top of the GPU stack and push game developers to adopt even more demanding ray-tracing pipelines. For now, the teaser is enough to make enthusiasts hover over the “notify me” button—and to remind rivals that CES remains Nvidia’s home court.