Images released by Nvidia on its official GeForce X account earlier in the week have been making the rounds. A large monolith-style graphics card obscures the sun and is tagged "Eclipse2024." This is obviously a precursory teaser for the RTX 5090 coming later this year, right?

No wait, isn't this the RTX 4090 Ti? No, it should be RTX 4090 Super. ......" In other words, it's definitely about to be released, and it's so incredibly exciting that it's literally an eclipse. But almost certainly it is none of the above. [For starters, this is a still from a teaser video posted back in January for the rollout of the then-new RTX 40 Super series cards, including the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4080 Super.

In other words, this is almost certainly not a preview of an unreleased graphics card. More likely, Nvidia is just saying "eclipse is cool, right?" That's just what they are saying. This is in light of the fact that there was actually a total solar eclipse earlier this week.

Of course, at first glance, it looks like a cryptic teaser image for something new. In fact, that is exactly what it looked like in January.

Thus, no doubt a bit naughty for Nvidia. It must cause a bit of a stir. But even if it wasn't an old image, it is certainly too early for Nvidia to tease the next (supposedly) RTX 5090 design. Perhaps the earliest we will see that new board will be in October.

Also, if indeed the 5090 is coming later this year, it will be a little too late for the RTX 4090 Ti or 4090 Super. There is not enough time left for such cards to be marketed.

In other words, Nvidia has not teased an earth-shattering or truly eclipse-like new GPU. And given the actual position of the GPU cycle, a new vaguely affordable graphics card from Nvidia is still a year away. [But AMD may give us a bit of a break with the RDNA 4 cards, which are highly anticipated this year and, according to all the rumors, are targeted at the mid-range rather than the high-end, possibly offering RTX 4080-like performance at a much cheaper than before They will offer it at a price.

There is also Intel's upcoming Battlemage GPU, which will be the second generation of the Arc line of graphics cards. The latest word is that it will be available before Black Friday, i.e., on November 29. Battlemage's performance is also expected to be in the RTX 4070 to RTX 4080 range.

If these two come out later this year, the mid-range will truly be the most competitive in years. I have high hopes.