It’s that time of year again. No, the holiday season, we’re over the stage, but the time is coming for CES 2025. The Consumer Electronics Show will officially kick off on January 7 in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, and this year’s occasion is already full of hope and promise. , especially for PC gamers.
After all, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang giving the keynote (and announcing the next-gen Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs) and all the hot tech corporations rushing to find out potential announcement dates, it looks like CES 2025 will be full of Delicious hardware, for the most part. of the variety of games.
I’ll be packing my Christmas bags and gaming money (just kidding) and heading to this year’s show with several other members of the PC Gamer hardware team to provide on-the-ground coverage. Las Vegas, here we come.
But before that, I’ve outlined a rundown of everything we expect to see, as well as some of the most promising possibilities. Who said we were cynical, huh?
Okay, you don’t need to raise your hands at once.
At this point, I would eat my metaphorical hat if we didn’t see at least some of Nvidia’s next-generation RTX 50 graphics cards announced at CES. This comes as no surprise to those of you who have been following your news for the past few months, as the leaks have come thick and fast for what is likely to be the biggest GPU launch in many moons.
No one was more surprised than us when CES 2025 became the right choice for the launch venue, as it’s historically considered a more laptop-centric show. Still, the most recent rumors suggest that we’ll see the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070 revealed at the same time. This would be another break in Nvidia’s recent tradition, as these are the two high-end cards that debuted before the mid-range offerings of the last two generations.
Recent leaks suggest that the RTX 5090 will be an absolute monster of a card, with kopite7kimi claiming it’ll have 32 GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus, a peak power demand of 600 W, and 21,760 CUDA cores. For those keeping count, that’d be 33% more cores than the RTX 4090, a GPU that’s still considered overpowered to this day. That tracks with an even more recent RTX 50-series specs leak, this time apparently from Zotac—and this one even lists a potential core count for the RTX 5070 Ti.
So can we imagine 4 desktop GPUs launching at the same time? We’ve even heard rumors that cellular GPUs could also be on the table; At this point, the speculative roar is so loud that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. Either way, it looks like Nvidia GPUs are on the horizon, so expect to see a slew of new Blackwell-based graphics cards at the start of the show, with potentially some AI wizardry in the form of “neural. ” rendering”.
What is it then? We’ll be honest: we probably literally won’t know unless it’s officially announced, because technically DLSS, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction can all be called Neural Rendering. So it may just be a rework of all those existing features. But Nvidia is as deep as it can get into the AI toolbox, so I wouldn’t rule out a large-scale, entirely AI-based rendering strategy, which we haven’t noticed yet. At least, in a way that works for games, rather than a tech demo.
It’s exciting stuff, though, right?
It’s not just Nvidia GPU announcements we’re expecting at CES 2025, as AMD’s four RDNA graphics cards have long been expected to appear. In September we reported that AMD’s next-generation cards are expected to launch in January, if you’re looking for a potential competitor to the RTX 5090 or RTX 5080, chances are you’ll be disappointed.
That’s because AMD’s Jack Huyhn has gone on record saying that the high-end market isn’t the priority. This tracks with more recent reports that what’s rumoured to be the top-end card, the RX 8800 XT, will instead deliver raster performance similar to the RTX 4080 Super, and 45% faster ray tracing performance than the current top-end AMD card, the RX 7900 XTX.And you know what? I’m kinda down with that. After all, we’re expecting Nvidia’s top-end offerings to be mightily expensive, so if AMD can launch a card that matches the RTX 4080 Super for raw grunt and fix the woeful ray tracing performance of the previous generation, I reckon it might be a bit of a winner—providing it’s launched at the right price.
That’s a big if, of course. Further down the range, there have been rumors of a non-XT variant of what could simply be AMD’s new top-end card (at least of this generation), and potentially an RX 8700 and RX 8600 as well.
So don’t cry too much into your cereal, AMD fans. There are also other potential developments worth getting excited about in the team’s red box, in the form of the FSR four. Rumors suggest that the next edition of AMD’s DLSS upscaling competitor will be AI-based, which also hints that the new cards will have some sort of equivalent NPU/Tensor core to handle the load. What if we saw the new cards presented as expected? So FSR will most likely be followed by four.
As my own tests show, FSR 3. 1 still lags behind the most recent edition of DLSS. Therefore, an AI-enhanced edition is an exciting thing for those of us who hope to have four capable but affordable four RDNA GPUs in our future. Fingers crossed, to say the least.
Well, here’s a return to tradition: CES is usually about laptop releases, and this year they’ve got some shiny new chips to nestle inside. We’ve already had a play with AMD’s Strix Point Ryzen AI 300-series CPUs and Intel’s Core Ultra 200-series mobile CPUs, and we’ve been thoroughly impressed. So we’re expecting to see every major gaming laptop manufacturer under the sun release new models at CES 2025, many of them taking advantage of the shiniest silicon available today.
That means Razer, Asus, Alienware—basically, think of a gaming laptop manufacturer, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a new model or two to reveal at this year’s show with either AMD or Intel’s most recent efforts
Of course, there’ll be Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops too, although I’ll be keeping a special eye out for anything making use of AMD’s Strix Halo APU. It’s looking like it might be a very performant chip in early leaks, so I reckon we’ll see the odd ultra-thin, ultra-light machine touting its gaming capabilities.
So January’s looking like a superb time to start thinking about your next gaming laptop. With existing efforts like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 and the Razer Blade 14 taking the form to sleeker, svelter, and more desirable heights, I reckon 2025 might be the year we see gaming laptops blossom wholesale into the ultra-desirable machines we imagine in our heads.
The cantankerous chassis designs of old are starting to fall behind us now, so I’m expecting slim, portable, and luxurious to be the order of the day.
And I haven’t even got onto the displays yet. OLEDs in gaming laptops are a proper thing now, and I’d wager we’ll see plenty more models released with screens capable of inky dark black levels and gorgeous colour reproduction. Probably the odd Mini LED unit too, just to shake things up a bit.
Oh, and higher refresh rates. It’s not just me who notices that peak gaming PC displays are approaching the 240Hz mark and beyond, and I don’t see that slowing down any time soon. Speaking of which…
CES has also traditionally been about monitor releases. Or rather, TVs and monitors, as it’s technically the Consumer Electronics Show, so expect plenty of screens designed to sit in your front room as well as on your desktop from many of the major manufacturers.
Expect gaming monitors of all sizes, shapes, and features to dominate your news feeds over the course of the show, with many of them aiming to reach new heights of nirvana when it comes to refresh rates. Esports is paramount for many monitor brands that are a major part of the day, so I expect to have to work my way through the megastars of the web (whose names I don’t know) to be able to access the new monitor of the moment. I came here to promote.
I’ll be gentle, I promise. Still, fast displays make wonderful gaming monitors for the rest of us (to a point), and it’s on the user where that refresh rate stops being a number on the box and becomes more enjoyable to look at. So I’ll be sure to take a caffeine inventory and get in front of as many of them as possible, along with the rest of our team members. The verbal exchange will be quick and cheesy. You can be sure of that.
Once again, we expect OLED gaming monitors, and perhaps even more affordable models, if we’ve really been smart about it. Plus, there are regularly a few laptops with fold-out screens to admire, before we all agree that it looks a bit flimsy and move on to the next stand. Anyway, monitors, great screens, you have to wait a lot.
Remember what I said about the new chips? Well, now that Lunar Lake and Strix Point officially exist, we’re all very excited at PC Gamer towers to usher in the next generation of gaming handhelds. APUs in older devices are starting to take a bit of a long look, so we expect high-powered portable gaming PCs to be the order of the day.
Personally, I’m going to be keeping an eye on Lenovo, as leaks regarding the Lenovo Legion Go S have been so frequent this year, I feel like I’ve seen it already. Providing it does actually exist (wouldn’t it be a turn-up for the books if it didn’t?) and makes an appearance (who knows?), it’ll likely find itself sitting in amongst some tough competition, given that the handheld market seems to be growing at a phenomenal rate.
The original MSI Claw didn’t exactly set our hearts aflutter earlier this year, but the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is touting some remarkably high benchmark numbers, courtesy of testing performed by, err, MSI. We’ll be sure to get our hands on one of those if we see one, although obviously we won’t be able to benchmark it ourselves at the booth if MSI has one to show off. I mean, probably. Still, it’s an interesting thing and seems much worthier of consideration than the old, Meteor Lake-based model.
Then there’s the Adata handheld prototype that my dear hardware lord Dave got his hands on at Computex this year. A strange device, to be sure, but we enjoyed the creativity on display. Will he make a comeback, possibly with some adjustments? Time will tell. Still, I’m hoping to play on some shiny handhelds, so keep an eye on our canopy as we tour the living room, to see all the newest laptops.
Why is this confemplist? Thanks to some leaks, we expect to see motherboards employing new chipsets from Intel and AMD, and they are rumored to be called B860 and, uh, B850. Yes, two brand new chipsets, from two other, highly competitive companies, separated by a single-digit change.
So, to clarify, the B860 deserves to be Intel’s newest Arrow Lake-S chipset. If leaks are to be believed, it will sit below the line’s existing Z890 chipset with support for forty-five high-speed I/O lanes and up to 12 USB 2 ports and six USB 3. 2 ports. It is currently believed to be blocked from overclocking the chip, and overclocking the RAM is assisted. Keen eyes have already spotted listings for Asus motherboards employing the new chipset, which is rumored to arrive at CES 2025.
On the AMD side we have what could well be the B8five0 chipset for Zen 5 processors. Videocardz already has images of what a reader claims to be the Gigabyte B8five0M Aorus Elite WiFi6e Ice (another striking motherboard call to get on the list), and is said to offer PCIe five for NVMe drives and in all likelihood graphics. Leaked images of the board show 4 DDR5 DIMM slots, connections for 24+8-pin power connectors, and many of the board’s elements hidden under glossy white covers.
I guess it’s not the most exciting look at CES, but it’s what we have to convey for now. Expect to see me through chipset naming schemes at this year’s show and in fact probably at the long-term ones as well.
Now we’re talking: wiring and connection standards! The existing HDMI 2. 1 specification supports a 4K solution at 120Hz uncompressed and up to 10K 100Hz with Display Stream Compression (DSC). It all depends, of course, on the cable and the monitor (or television). ) you’re using, but rumors suggest we’ll see HDMI 2. 2 announced at CES 2025, which will support. . .
In fact, we have no idea. Only the possible announcement is what has been leaked so far. Of course, if we get a new HDMI connection standard, it will most likely be able to far exceed the maximum 42 Gbps knowledge speed of existing HDMI 2. 1 connections. But to what extent, we cannot say at this time.
However, when it comes to gaming monitors, we’re currently looking at a 240Hz limit in 4K using the existing peak HDMI standard, which could sow the seeds for future ultra-high refresh rate 8K presentations. Not that modern GPUs can use that kind of space yet, but hey, faster hardware is coming, which means faster connections and cables will eventually be needed to accommodate it.
You wouldn’t expect to see an HDMI 2. 2 port on new mainstream player graphics cards for a while, but you never know, right?
Last year’s exhibition revolves around AI. Guess what that’s all about? Yes, the rise of AI is still far from exploding, so once again it’s time to put on our anti-junk hats and dive into all the AI offerings to see if any of them deserve to be mentioned.
Just kidding, I’m kidding, AI has its uses. I mean, we had trouble locating them at last year’s event, but in 2025 we’re going to walk the aisles to see if we can find AI products that make sense. Of course, Nvidia will likely communicate about all kinds of AI shenanigans , and I’ve already mentioned the possible AI integration that we hope to see in FSR 4 if it happens. Maybe we’ll get some other chance to play with Nvidia ACE, the AI-NPC generation that stunned our Jacob in 2024?
And who can forget my legendary post-show article from last year, summing up three AI features we thought we might use, and three we definitely wouldn’t? Even me apparently, because I’ve just rediscovered it. Still, AI will be all over Las Vegas this year as well I’m sure, so here’s hoping I end up writing an AI product redemption piece now the tech has hopefully matured. See, I told you we weren’t cynical. Just bitter, and that’s a different thing entirely.
Andy built his first gaming PC at age 12, back when IDE cables existed and there was no best solution. After spending over 15 years in the production industry overseeing a variety of live and recorded projects, he began writing his own hardware blog in the hopes that other people could send him stuff. And they did it! Now working as a hardware editor for PC Gamer, Andy has traveled the world attending product launches and industry shows, while reviewing every single piece of PC hardware he can get his hands on. You call it, if it’s hot stuff, he’ll write words about it, reviews and all.
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