Author: Eternity Lab

• Nvidia’s Blackwell stock levels are again rumored to be shaky
• Launch stock of the RTX 5090 might be very thin on the ground
• The RTX 5080 should be better, but still might be tricky to find in the early days

Nvidia’s RTX 5000 graphics cards could be in short supply when these next-gen GPUs first arrive, if a fresh rumor is right – and this isn’t the first time we’ve heard chatter from the grapevine along these lines.

This time it comes from a regular source of rumors on YouTube, Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID), who discussed the subject of Blackwell stock in his latest video.

The top-level summary is that the RTX 5090 is looking very shaky indeed for its amount of launch stock, and the news doesn’t sound all that much better for the RTX 5080.

MLID’s first source – season all of this appropriately – works at a US distributor and said that their organization will only have around 20 boards for the RTX 5080, and nothing at all for the flagship. Yes, zero stock for the RTX 5090, which sounds worrying indeed.

The theoretical allocation of 20 or so for the RTX 5080 graphics cards is for the first month of sales (meaning February), and to compare with the last generation, this distributor had a couple of hundred RTX 4080s back at launch in 2022. So we could potentially be looking at a tenth of that stock for the RTX 5080.

The second source is a graphics card maker (presumably in the US) who said that their firm has the same amount of RTX 5090 boards as with RTX 3090 – and if you recall, RTX 3090 stock was vanishingly thin on the ground. As for the RTX 5080, apparently supply is a ‘fraction’ of that seen with the RTX 4080, although this source doesn’t estimate it’ll be quite as bad as a tenth – more like a third to half of that seen with the RTX 4080.

Another source, also a graphics card maker (in the EU), said that the RTX 5090 is looking like it’ll be ‘very rare’ but that the RTX 5080 seemingly has ‘okay’ stock levels, for the graphics card’s initial launch anyway.

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Remember that these are all rumors around third-party Blackwell graphics cards, so they don’t apply to Nvidia’s own Founders Edition RTX 5090 and 5080 cards.

MLID did hear from a contact at Nvidia, although that person made it clear that they weren’t involved in any discussions related to supply – but did observe that Team Green has warned staff that there won’t be many RTX 5090 Founders Editions available from the employee store at launch. They noted that with the RTX 4090, it was very easy to get one of those (heavily discounted) GPUs from that in-house store.

Nvidia RTX 5090 & 5080 Supply Leak | RX 9070 XT Benchmarks | AMD FSR 4 Support for RDNA 3 – YouTube Watch On

Analysis: Caveats and more optimistic glimmers

Obviously, all this comes with weighty caveats. It’s still only a few sources, even if multiple insiders have chimed in here – and it’s only the one US distributor (others could be faring better, perhaps, especially for the RTX 5080).

Indeed, there’s some mixed chatter here for the RTX 5080, and some indications of stronger stock levels, like that mention of inventory being a third to a half of that seen with the RTX 4080. That doesn’t sound as gloomy as some of the other estimations here, but as MLID points out, RTX 4080 supply wasn’t great, though, and part of the reason it hung around was because this GPU wasn’t very popular. The RTX 5080 could prove a great deal more in demand, and so could still sell out in a relative flash.

We don’t know how much trust to put in this speculation, of course, and the Founders Edition could be different too – there’s no solid evidence on those models. But it certainly makes sense that Nvidia wouldn’t particularly want to prioritize RTX 5090 stock in particular – for its own boards, or third-party graphics cards. Firstly, because AMD RDNA 4 isn’t even remotely competing with Nvidia’s new flagship, and secondly, because Team Green will doubtless want to use the top Blackwell chips for AI rather than the 5090, as that’s where all the big profits lie.

All this doesn’t fill me with confidence about the general picture of RTX 5000 stock, it must be said, particularly as a report from last week chimes pretty much with the assertions here, hinting that it could be a battle to get one of Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs at launch.

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• Nvidia’s Bryan Catanzaro suggests older RTX 3000 GPUs could potentially get Frame Generation
• The new Frame Generation model doesn’t need an Optical Flow accelerator
• Tensor Cores could be the deciding factor for the RTX 3000 series receiving Frame Generation

With Nvidia’s RTX 5000 series launch on the horizon, it’s easy to be tempted into buying the latest and (hopefully) the greatest, but Frame Generation could change that – it’s not just being improved on RTX 4000 series GPUs and Team Green’s latest Blackwell GPUs like the RTX 5090 (Multi Frame Generation), but potentially RTX 3000 GPUs as well.

Hints that older Nvidia GPUs might finally get Frame Generation, a clever feature that uses AI to generate additional frames to boost overall frame rates, comes from Digital Foundry’s interview (which you can view below) with Nvidia’s Applied Deep Learning Research VP, Bryan Catanzaro – as reported by Wccftech, Catanzaro mentioned Nvidia will be looking at ways to get the best out of older hardware. We know that the current model of Frame Generation will receive improvements later this month once the RTX 5080 and 5090 launch, which will utilize less VRAM while providing better performance thanks to Tensor Cores.

Catanzaro made it clear that DLSS 3 Frame Generation was built upon Nvidia’s Optical Flow hardware accelerator (motion detector for objects between frames), with the RTX 4000 series GPUs maintaining a much more improved version compared to RTX 3000 GPUs – the new model of Frame Generation (and Multi Frame Generation exclusive to RTX 5000 series GPUs) won’t require the Optical Flow accelerator, but rather an AI-based solution.

Since the new model will rely on a higher standard of Tensor Cores (which increases AI performance) which both RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 GPUs come with, it isn’t that simple for Team Green to bring Frame Generation to the older GPUs. With Frame Generation supposedly using much less VRAM usage and not needing an Optical Flow accelerator, however, RTX 3000 users could be in luck (despite the weaker Tensor Cores).

Inside DLSS 4 & Nvidia Machine Learning: The Bryan Catanzaro Interview – YouTube Watch On

Again, I must ask, is there a need to buy an RTX 5000 series GPU?

While this is essentially just speculation about future possibilities, there’s a chance that Nvidia RTX 3000 series users could get the full package of DLSS 4 that includes Frame Generation. DLSS 3 has been available to both RTX 3000 and 2000 series users with super-resolution, DLAA, and ray reconstruction at their disposal – but Frame Generation has so far been exclusive to the RTX 4000 series.

With the requirement of an Optical Flow accelerator now gone, the chances of Frame Generation making its way to RTX 3000 GPUs are now much higher. The main hurdle that could stop this is the weaker Tensor Cores as I mentioned, but the fact that we’re at least getting discussions about it with Catanzaro shouldn’t be taken lightly.

For now, it’s best to look forward to what improvements DLSS 4 will bring to older GPUs and stay patient for any future updates. If Frame Generation for RTX 3000 GPUs does happen, it could breathe new life into the older graphics cards, and could mean gamers that can’t afford a new RTX 5000 series GPU will continue to be able to play new PC games for a few more years.

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The National Audit Office (NAO) has found the UK government’s cyber resilience to be significantly behind where it needs to be, in the face of mounting and more dangerous threats.

In its Government cyber resilience report, the public spending watchdog warned that the cyber threat to the UK government is “severe and advancing quickly”. It found that 58 critical government IT systems, assessed in 2024, had significant gaps in cyber resilience, and the government does not know how vulnerable at least 228 “legacy” IT systems are to cyber attack.

The report does not cover the cyber resilience of local government, the NHS, or the nation as a whole. Fieldwork for the report was conducted between May and October 2024, with NAO staff interviewing officials from the Cabinet Office about efforts to support government departments in the implementation of the Government Cyber Security Strategy: 2022-2030.

The strategy included a target for key government organisations to be “significantly hardened to cyber attack by 2025”, but the government has not improved its cyber resilience fast enough to meet this aim, said the NAO.

The NAO also interviewed officials from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), along with cyber security civil servants from government departments and the British Library.

The biggest risk to making the UK government resilient to cyber attack is a yawning skills gap, according to the report. It found one in three cyber security roles in government were vacant or filled by temporary – and more expensive – staff in 2023-24, while more than half of cyber roles in several departments were vacant, and 70% of specialist security architects were staff on temporary contracts.

The NAO said departments reported that salaries and civil service recruitment processes are barriers to hiring and keeping people with cyber skills.

Other concerns include a lack of coordination within government, which is jeopardising effective cyber defence. The NAO found that the respective roles of departments and central organisations, such as the NCSC, are “insufficiently understood”, and nor have departmental leaders “consistently recognised the relevance of cyber risk to their strategic goals”.

The government must act now, urged the report’s authors.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The risk of cyber attack is severe, and attacks on key public services are likely to happen regularly, yet government’s work to address this has been slow.

“To avoid serious incidents, build resilience and protect the value for money of its operations, government must catch up with the acute cyber threat it faces.

To avoid serious incidents, build resilience and protect the value for money of its operations, government must catch up with the acute cyber threat it faces Gareth Davies, National Audit Office

“The government will continue to find it difficult to catch up until it successfully addresses the long-standing shortage of cyber skills, strengthens accountability for cyber risk, and better manages the risks posed by legacy IT.”

Cyber resilience gaps

The NAO evaluated whether government is keeping pace with the rapidly evolving cyber threat it faces from hostile actors. It found that it is not.

It spotted that the government’s cyber assurance scheme, GovAssure, which had independently assessed 58 critical departmental IT systems by August 2024, found significant gaps in cyber resilience, with multiple fundamental system controls at low levels of maturity across departments. GovAssure assesses the critical systems of government organisations. It was set up in April 2023.

According to the NAO report, government departments were using at least 228 legacy IT systemsas of March 2024, and the government does not know how vulnerable these systems are to cyber attack.

The report noted that in April 2024, the Cabinet Office Government Security Group (GSG) reported to ministers that some departments had significantly reduced their cyber security improvement programmes to fund other priorities. This was due to “cuts to programme funding, lack of access to cyber skills, challenges with delivery partners, and delays in departmental and cross-government approvals”.

As examples of how damaging cyber attacks can be, the NAO cited the instance, in June 2024, of an attack on a supplier of pathology services to the NHS in south-east London, which led to two NHS foundation trusts postponing 10,152 acute outpatient appointments and 1,710 elective procedures. It also cited the British Library ransomware attack in October 2023, which has already cost £600,000 to rebuild its services. The library expects to spend many times more as it continues to recover.

The report also gave other examples of attacks on the Ministry of Defence and Parliament. In May 2024, the MoD’s payroll contractor’s network was compromised by an attacker – a network that held armed forces staff members’ data. Further back in time, in 2021, a Chinese state-affiliated attacker was, said the report, highly likely responsible for a cyber campaign against the parliamentary email accounts of members across both Houses of Parliament.

The report stated that in March 2024, departments did not have fully funded plans to remediate around half of government’s legacy IT assets – 53%, or 120 out of 228.

The NAO recommends the government develops, shares and starts using a cross-government implementation plan for the Government Cyber Security Strategy within the next six months. It also suggests the whole of government needs to operate differently.

Within the next year, the government should make and enact plans to fill cyber skills gaps in workforces, said the NAO.

Of the technology trumpeted most by the current and previous government – artificial intelligence (AI) – the report said: “AI can improve government’s cyber security, but it can also help threat actors looking to interfere or undermine trust in our democratic system. The NCSC is collaborating with its partners to realise the benefits of AI and protect against the associated security risks.”

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