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Masa Son says AGI will be here even sooner than expected, but don’t get your hopes up

It’s only Tuesday but OpenAI has had a great week so far, seemingly making forgotten all the talk about DeepSeek. That’s the viral AI from China that challenged the best ChatGPT model last week, tanking the US stock market in the process.

Since Friday, OpenAI has made several announcements. First, ChatGPT o3-mini and o3-mini-high were released to all ChatGPT users. On Sunday, OpenAI unveiled the ChatGPT Deep Research model, which is available to ChatGPT Pro users. On Monday, OpenAI confirmed that it plans to make a piece of ChatGPT hardware to challenge the smartphone, something we all expected.

On Monday, OpenAI’s finances became a hot topic. Sam Altman was in Japan to kickstart a local venture with local giant SoftBank. The “SB OpenAI Japan” joint venture will see SoftBank spend $3 billion on securing access to ChatGPT for all its subsidiaries.

Separately, SoftBank will invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI in the near future, which could make the Japanese giant the biggest investor in the ChatGPT maker. Remember that SoftBank is also a key partner on the already announced $500 Stargate AI infrastructure plan for OpenAI.

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In this context, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said he was wrong about AGI, or artificial general intelligence. This massive milestone in AI development is coming earlier than he thought. That suggests the next-gen ChatGPT upgrade might be closer than we thought, and it may very well be. But you probably shouldn’t get too excited about experiencing AGI on your own just yet.

“I now realize that AGI would come much earlier,” Son said on Monday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Son predicted a few months ago that AGI would be achieved within two or three years. That timeline is in line with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent remarks that AGI might be here in 2026 or 2027.

Earlier this year, Altman penned a blog post in which he teased that AGI is close and that his company knows how to reach this ChatGPT milestone. “We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it,” he said, reminding us that AGI is just a term that can mean anything.

As for how OpenAI understands AGI, the company’s definition mentions “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” 

The OpenAI-Microsoft definition of AGI is AI that can generate at least $100 billion in profits. When that happens, Microsoft will stop having access to OpenAI tech. Until the SoftBank rumored investment is confirmed, Microsoft will remain OpenAI’s biggest investor.

That’s not to say Son’s remarks on Monday aren’t important; they are. After all, he’s ready to invest tens of billions into AI tech, whose potentially brilliant future isn’t guaranteed. That’s why he must be privy to the inner workings of ChatGPT in ways we can’t imagine. Son saying that AGI will be here sooner than expected can’t be just marketing hype, which a CEO could also be prone to.

But it’s important to remember that the definition of AGI isn’t perfectly clear. The lines can be moved to serve certain interests. AGI is considered the kind of intelligence where AI will be able to handle any tasks you’d entrust it with with the same approach as a human.

However, AGI would have the advantage of having access to massive sources of information during training and new ones, on-demand, via a live connection to the internet. AGI would, therefore, exceed human abilities to some degree.

Son’s AGI reference might be about something else. He’s still referring to highly capable AI models but in the context of the corporate world, which has access to the resources needed to make AGI possible. Here’s how The Journal details Son’s AGI expectations.

Son said that artificial general intelligence, in which computers have human-level cognitive abilities, will likely be realized faster in the world of big corporations than that of individuals because the former has ample financial resources and vast amounts of specific data to train computers.

That is, we shouldn’t expect AGI to come cheap. Regular AI isn’t that cheap either, no matter the breakthroughs from DeepSeek.

Put differently, it’s likely that OpenAI will develop more advanced ChatGPT tools soon, including AI agents and next-gen models, which would bring us closer to AGI. But it’s possible those tools will be reserved for ChatGPT Enterprise users who are ready to pay the extra processing costs associated with AGI performance.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT users like you and I might have to wait a little longer for the AGI experience for the home. That ChatGPT model won’t be cheap, but it could arrive years after the AGI for Enterprise is reached when computing efficiencies are achieved.

This is speculation, mostly because AGI is a theoretical term that might not mean anything in the real world. With the goalposts shifting, we might see different definitions of AGI in the near future.

What’s clear is that multiple AI firms will reach versions of AGI in the coming years, not just OpenAI. ChatGPT won’t be the only option, whether it’s for big corporations or regular consumers. When those versions of AGI are ready, AI firms will want to make a big deal about them to sell versions of AGI to all sorts of interested buyers.

Back to ChatGPT, as that’s the main product Son’s companies will use; I’ll remind you that OpenAI has yet to announce an upgrade for GPT-4o. There’s been talk about GPT-5 delays, and some people associated the model with AGI in the past. It’s unclear when ChatGPT will be deployed.

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Nvidia’s DLSS 4 is amazing – here’s what AMD’s FSR 4 needs to do to take it on

  • Nvidia’s DLSS 4 has set the bar for AMD’s FSR 4, with its new transformer model
  • The first looks at FSR 4 in performance mode are very promising
  • Team Red may struggle to compete if the entire package of FSR 4 is exclusive to RDNA 4

Nvidia has impressed me with its new DLSS 4 transformer model, which provides great image quality and stability even at super-resolution ‘performance’ modes – and now, I’m really hoping that AMD can keep up with FSR 4.

Based on my previous coverage regarding DLSS 4’s enhancements across several games, Team Red definitely has a big task ahead at potentially competing with Nvidia in this space. At the time of writing, FSR 4 is only confirmed to be available on RDNA 4 GPUs (no news yet on whether it can be used on RDNA 3 GPUs), so it may already be at a disadvantage up against DLSS 4 in terms of its capability of catering to older GPUs, since Nvidia’s new upscaling tech will be compatible with GPUs way back to the RTX 2000 series.

Taking DLSS 4’s jump from CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) to the new, superior transformer model into consideration, games will benefit from this, particularly in cases of poor optimization – while this shouldn’t give game developers an excuse to slack off in the optimization department, it’s hard to deny how important it will be going forward.

Demo footage of AMD’s FSR 4 is already out in the wild from CES 2025, and a prime example of this is the Hardware Unboxed FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 comparison video on YouTube (available below). In the same manner that Nvidia’s DLSS 4 impressed me with its improved visual clarity with DLSS 4 in performance mode, FSR 4 appears to follow in those same footsteps – now there’s no frame rate counter, so it’s difficult to judge just how good this mode will be performance wise, but it’s certainly a good sign.

Hands-On With AMD FSR 4 – It Looks… Great? – YouTube Hands-On With AMD FSR 4 - It Looks... Great? - YouTube Watch On

If AMD’s FSR 4 comes close to Nvidia’s DLSS 4, what does this mean in terms of competition?

In the event that FSR 4 goes toe-to-toe with DLSS 4, the only aspect that would then be holding Team Red back from competing would be the possible exclusivity to RDNA 4. While that could come down to hardware limitations preventing it from working on older GPUs, I’ve once held the same frustrations with Nvidia before regarding DLSS 3’s Frame Generation being exclusive to RTX 4000 series GPUs – so the same case applies here.

In this case, it would be an even bigger omission – we’re not just talking about FSR 4’s frame gen potentially being exclusive to RDNA 4, but the entire package that includes its super-resolution technology too.

As much as I absolutely want AMD to provide the necessary competition against Team Green in the GPU market, it already stated that the focus will be on mid-range GPUs (which we’re yet to really determine with the RX 9000 series), and DLSS 4 will be available on all RTX GPUs – if we’re being honest, it won’t help AMD’s position in this race…

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Bad news, PC gamers: this retailer’s worst-case prediction for the Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU is a long wait until almost June for the GPU to be back in stock

  • Nvidia RTX 5090 supply is looking very shaky according to a UK retailer
  • Overclockers has a worst-case ETA of 16 weeks for RTX 5090 stock
  • The RTX 5080 is better, but could still take up to six weeks before it’s available to buy again

Nvidia’s RTX 5090 stock situation is rather dire, to say the least, and could stay that way for longer than you’d expect – and the RTX 5080 is looking unhealthy inventory-wise, too, going by the prediction of one UK retailer.

As you doubtless realize if you’ve been mulling a purchase of either of the new Blackwell graphics cards, the RTX 5090 and 5080 are out of stock everywhere (except on auction sites where scalpers are flogging their ill-gotten GPUs at massively inflated asking prices, of course).

According to a major components retailer in the UK, Overclockers (OCUK), RTX 5090 and 5080 stock is sold out and (unsurprisingly) pre-orders aren’t being offered any longer, and they won’t be until the company has “greater clarity on availability and have fulfilled the pre-orders we have taken.”

We are told by OCUK (in the above post on X) that the ETA for stock of the RTX 5090 is three to 16 weeks, and the ETA for the RTX 5080 is two to six weeks, a bit more palatable, but still a potentially long wait.

Note that pre-orders that have been successfully placed with OCUK (but not yet dispatched) are in a queue, and the retailer is “working with our supply chain to fulfill these within the ETAs above, or sooner if possible.”

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 sitting on its packaging

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Analysis: Another GPU launch hit with stock misery

Surely a bit of stock of these RTX 5000 GPUs is going to be coming in over the course of February? That must be the case (I assume), but the way in which the above statement is worded makes it sound to me like the small amount of Blackwell graphics cards that will be arriving is going towards fulfilling existing pre-orders. So, there won’t be any available stock to actually buy on the OCUK site for quite some time – maybe towards the lengthier end of the ETAs provided.

The fact that the RTX 5090 is pushed out to a possible 16 weeks is going way past the most pessimistic thoughts I was having, though. That would put us at almost the end of May before the ‘Buy’ button lights up again on some of the flagship Blackwell models, an eyebrow-raising prospect.

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Perhaps more disappointing is the news that this retailer isn’t going to have stock of the RTX 5080, a much less niche proposition than the RTX 5090, for maybe up to six weeks. That’d put us in the middle of March before the graphics card was available again (perhaps only briefly).

We shouldn’t get carried away with the timeframes from just one retailer, of course, and the worst-case scenarios presented by OCUK – but this does, of course, broadly reflect everything we’re seeing right now. And the general accusation of a ‘paper launch’ being leveled at Nvidia, meaning a launch with no real quantity of stock behind it (in the face of major demand).

Unless we do get a quick recovery for RTX 5080 stock that runs against OCUK’s expectations – we don’t expect the RTX 5090 to be back on shelves quickly by any means, especially given that its Blackwell chip (GB202) is more profitable in AI graphics cards, not gaming products – a lot of hope lies with the incoming RTX 5070.

Nvidia’s RTX 5070 vanilla version uses a different GB205 chip – the RTX 5070 Ti is built with GB203 (a rumor that’s now confirmed), also the engine of the RTX 5080 – and so we can hope that Nvidia has more of a depth to its GB205 production, especially as the RTX 5070 is coming a bit later. (If rumors are right, perhaps at the end of February – there’s even talk of a delay to March, which wouldn’t be a positive development, of course).

All in all, though, the situation looks distinctly rocky with Blackwell stock for now, and AMD has a chance to fully capitalize on this by building up good levels of RDNA 4 supply at retail for the launch of its RX 9070 models in March, to take on Nvidia’s RTX 5070 graphics cards. This is a clear opportunity for Team Red in the mid-range bracket of the GPU market, although AMD has had its own missteps with the RDNA 4 launch, it must be said.

Those looking for an Nvidia Blackwell graphics card should keep an eye on our guides on where to buy an RTX 5090 and an RTX 5080 respectively, where we’ll keep you up to date should we spot stock coming back in at big retailers. Best of luck out there, GPU hunters, but for now, the outlook remains seriously bleak.

Via Tom’s Hardware

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Nvidia and AMD are set for a showdown in March, if this rumor holds any truth

  • Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 are reportedly set for launch in March
  • This will directly compete with AMD’s Radeon RX 9000 series launch
  • We could be seeing a repeat in this generation of 8GB of VRAM with the RTX 5060

Nvidia‘s RTX 5000 series GPU launch is well underway with the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 now sold out at virtually every retailer (unsurprisingly), and Team Green looks set to roll out the rest of its lineup very soon – which means key rival AMD may be set for a big battle.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 are supposedly set to launch in March according to Chinese hardware manufacturer Chaintech. This is when AMD‘s Radeon RX 9000 series GPU lineup is slated to launch, which would ultimately put Team Green and Team Red in direct competition – AMD has already made it clear that mid-range GPUs will be its focus, and the new xx60-class Nvidia cards could likely challenge them.

A mysterious silhouette of a graphics card with a question mark in the center.

Will the RTX 5060 prove to be the greatest budget GPU the world has ever seen? The jury’s still out. (Image credit: Nvidia, Shutterstock)

We’re awaiting details regarding the pricing of the RX 9000 series along with just how powerful they could be compared to the previous RX 7900 XT and XTX GPUs – considering the official pricing of Nvidia’s RTX 5070 ($549 / £549 / AU$1,109), prices for the RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 could be much lower. Depending on the performance of these GPUs, AMD could win the mid-range battle – just as long as prices for its next-gen GPUs are reasonable.

Can we just be done with 8GB GPUs, please?

Looking at both Nvidia’s and AMD’s low and mid-range GPUs, my only hope is that we can finally say goodbye to 8GB of VRAM as a baseline industry standard. Games are becoming increasingly VRAM-hungry, and gamers need every advantage possible considering how bad PC ports have been recently. I believe a minimum of 12GB of VRAM is necessary for modern PC gaming – even just at 1080p – but unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that will happen.

EEC filings from Maxsun suggest the RTX 5060 will utilize 8GB of VRAM, which could mean it ends up following in the same footsteps as its predecessor – this will be disappointing, to say the least, especially since Intel‘s affordable new Battlemage GPUs have opted to give that 8GB figure the boot.

The Intel Arc B570 uses 10GB of VRAM while its big brother the B580 dons 12GB of VRAM – these are both considered to be budget- to mid-range GPUs that are capable of 1440p gaming. While the rumored 8GB RTX 5060 will likely do the same using DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation, the comparatively low amount of VRAM would be a worry for those looking for an affordable way into the RTX 5000 series experience.

There’s nothing confirmed on Nvidia’s part regarding the RTX 5060 Ti or 5060, but let’s hope these VRAM rumors are false. But with the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti slated for release later this month, March certainly does seem like a reasonable launch window for the budget Blackwell GPUs.

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Apple’s App Store is under investigation in China

The European Union forced Apple last year to open the App Store under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) work. iPhone users in the EU can install third-party app marketplaces, use third-party payment systems, and sideload apps as a result. Apple and the EU are still fighting over the DMA implementations.

As an iPhone user in the EU myself, I haven’t even bothered trying to take advantage of what the DMA does for me. I don’t want access to third-party apps or payment systems, and I’ll never sideload apps.

However, I said that Apple’s war on preserving the old ways of the App Store is doing more damage than good. Apple should open the App Store similarly in other markets and let every iPhone user and developer deal with the consequences. Most people will not change a thing.

The alternative is for more jurisdictions to investigate the App Store practices. Some of them can then pass laws with similar effects to the DMA.

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China is the newest addition to the list of countries investigating Apple’s App Store practices. The government started a probe before President Trump took office, but the investigation is making the news now, in the middle of another phase of the US-China trade war. Earlier this week, China announced a formal probe into Google right after the new US tariffs on China came into effect.

The investigation into Apple isn’t as advanced, Bloomberg reports. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) is currently examining Apple’s App Store practices.

People familiar with the proceedings informed the paper that the agency has spoken with Apple officials and app developers since last year. It’s looking at Apple’s 30% fee on in-app purchases and the ban on third-party app stores and payment systems.

The agency won’t necessarily go after Apple if the conversations go well. But changes to the App Store might have to happen.

The report notes that Chinese regulators share the same concerns as other watchdogs investigating Apple’s App Store policies.

People familiar with the probe told Bloomberg that regulators believe Apple may be charging Chinese developers unreasonably high fees. Also, the unavailability of third-party app stores and payment systems on the iPhone impacts competition and hurts consumers.

The same sources said that the government may launch a formal investigation if Apple resists making changes to the App Store.

This sounds like Apple will be encouraged to open the App Store in China just like it did in the EU, but without a legal framework like the DMA in place to force Apple’s hand.

Then again, the DMA already forced Apple to develop all the tools it would need to open the App Store in other jurisdictions. Apple could probably open the iPhone in China just as easily as it did in the EU once it reaches some sort of deal with the Chinese regulator.

It’s all speculation, however. We’re looking at entirely different conditions here. Apple manufactures many of its products in China, and the government will probably want to keep Apple happy to some extent.

On the other hand, iPhone sales aren’t doing that great in China, which is a huge market for any smartphone vendor, especially Apple. The iPhone maker might want to use third-party app stores and payment systems to generate positive buzz around the iPhone.

Then there’s the US-China trade war the Trump administration reignited. Going after big tech firms like Google and Apple might be part of China’s strategy to reach a compromise.

But even without these complexities, the App Store issues would still linger. Some app developers want to pay lower fees to Apple. Others want to deploy third-party app stores and payment systems. Apple wants to keep in place the current practices and fees, as it believes its way of policing the App Store is in the consumer’s interest.

Unlike the EU’s DMA, there are no deadlines here. It’s unclear how the informal investigation will proceed, how long it will take, and when to expect App Store changes in the country.

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Nvidia’s new Smooth Motion technology is exclusive to RTX 5000 series GPUs, but not for long

  • Nvidia’s Smooth Motion replicates AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames, a driver-based version of Frame Generation
  • This will allow you to activate Frame Generation in games that don’t have native support
  • The feature only works in DX11 and DX12 games as of now

Nvidia is firing on all cylinders this generation, with the RTX 5000 lineup at the forefront of the GPU department – and now, Team Green looks set to replicate AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames not only for its new GPUs, but the RTX 4000 series too.

Highlighted by VideoCardz, Nvidia’s new Smooth Motion technology (currently exclusive to the RTX 5000 GPU lineup) will be making its way to RTX 4000 series GPUs in a future update – this will act similarly to its rival AMD‘s Fluid Motion Frames, which will allow Frame Generation to be utilized in any DX11 or DX12 game via driver settings – unlike how Nvidia’s DLSS and frame-gen tech currently needs to be implemented at the developer level.

‘GeForce Evangelist’ (an Nvidia promoter) Jacob Freeman, further hinted that while the new feature will act similarly to Frame Generation (now Multi Frame Generation for the RTX 5000 series), it won’t come close in terms of image quality and input latency. Despite this, Smooth Motion will still be highly beneficial for older games that don’t have access to Frame Generation and are unlikely to have any native support added by developers.

While DLSS 4 has already been shown to provide a significant leap in image quality and stability while using performance mode in games (and it’s now available for all RTX users), this is yet another addition that will help gamers in cases of poor optimization on PC.

A smartphone showing a red and green graphic of 'AMD VS Nvidia'.

Nvidia is really going at it against AMD this generation? Can Team Red hit back? (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Perhaps this could finally be a gateway for RTX 3000 and 2000 series users to utilize Frame Generation…

Now, looking at AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames, it’s already widely available for Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 series GPUs including a range of mobile laptop GPUs and even APUs in handheld gaming PCs. It functions by inserting an AI-generated frame in between two rendered frames, as a driver-based solution to increase in-game smoothness and increased frame rates, much like how Nvidia’s existing DLSS frame-gen solutions work. Nvidia’s Smooth Motion promises the same thing, and will even work in games that don’t support DLSS.

Not too long ago, Nvidia’s Applied Deep Learning Research VP Bryan Catanzaro hinted at the chances of Frame Generation coming to RTX 3000 series GPUs – the matter supposedly comes down to optimization of the technology, and the promise of being able to get the best out of older hardware was clear, so could Smooth Motion be the start of that?

We’ve already got confirmation that Team Green’s Reflex 2 feature will first be exclusive to RTX 5000 series GPUs but will eventually be rolled out to older GPUs, so perhaps the same could happen here. It might not turn out to be as effective as native Frame Generation (or Multi Frame Generation) in games, but it gives plenty of players a solution for games that may need it for better performance on PC.

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Regardless, it’s nice to see that Nvidia isn’t locking certain features to the RTX 5000 series when they can reasonably be used on older GPUs, and long may it continue. After all, getting your hands on an RTX 5090 isn’t exactly easy right now…

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Turbulent times ahead for tech

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28 January 2025

Turbulent times ahead for tech

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In this week’s Computer Weekly, the World Economic Forum in Davos highlighted growing risks to digital supply chains – we examine the turbulence ahead. Data sovereignty is becoming a growing issue as companies move to the cloud – we look at the regulatory challenges. And we analyse the best practices in automated patch management. Read the issue now.

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Nvidia’s new DLSS 4 driver might be appealing, but you might want to avoid it for now

  • Nvidia’s new 572.16 driver appears to be causing crashes across several games, along with other system issues
  • Enabling Frame Generation in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 causes BSoDs
  • Multiple users across Nvidia’s forums, Steam, and Reddit have voiced the same frustrations

It’s no secret that Nvidia‘s new driver that brings DLSS 4 support for multiple games is an incredible addition for all RTX GPU users, most notably for improved image quality in DLSS performance mode – but if you’ve updated, you actually might want to roll back your driver for now.

Based on multiple user reports on Nvidia’s forums and Reddit, Team Green’s latest 572.16 driver is causing plenty of issues, including crashing games and restarting PCs across multiple titles – with some even resulting in a Blue Screen of Death. I can corroborate these reports – on multiple occasions (after reinstalling the new driver and ensuring there were no other system instabilities), attempting to switch on Frame Generation in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 caused repeated instances of the dreaded BSoD.

While it was more common in Marvel‘s Spider-Man 2, the same occurred when attempting to launch Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, with rolling back my drivers left as the only fix. This was already suspicious, and the reports suggest these issues may indeed stem from Nvidia’s new driver.

The same issue has been discussed by some users in the Steam Community forums, further indicating that enabling Frame Generation causes affected PCs to restart. It’s not exactly clear why this is happening, but it appears that it could be a combination of issues with Nixxes’ PC port of Insomniac’s Spider-Man sequel (no surprise there…) and the new driver. There was a similar case with God of War: Ragnarok at launch before a patch, which resulted in users’ games crashing during the first encounter with Thor.

Image of user highlighting driver issues

(Image credit: Nvidia forums)

What’s the solution for now?

If you’re lucky, you may not have run into these issues even with the latest driver installed – but it may be safest to roll back drivers for now, or at the very least wait for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and other affected games to receive another patch. I must stress that the BSoDs mostly occurred when trying to enable Frame Generation within the new PC port, so other games might be safe from this issue.

Even when reverting to the previous driver, you’ll still likely face the occasional crash in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (despite a recent hotfix released to address this). Fortunately, my system hasn’t been exposed to the litany of issues some others have mentioned – but considering how much has been documented by some troubled users, I’d say you should wait until Team Green releases a new driver, especially since not all games can take advantage of the new DLSS 4 Override feature yet.

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Datafy promises to slash massive EBS overprovisioning costs

AWS EBS – Elastic Block Storage – customers usually massively over-provision cloud storage capacity and pay way more than they should. Capacity utilisation on EBS is between 10% and 30%, according to Datafy, a startup that claims it can slash AWS customers’ EBS bills by adding greater granularity to their cloud block storage deployments.

According to Gurdip Kalley, head of business development at Datafy, the core issue with AWS EBS is that it is effectively a form of direct-attached storage (DAS) but in the cloud, and that differs from other AWS block storage such as FSX which can be one-to-many. And so, because of this, customer devops engineers invariably over-provision capacity because it’s very difficult to predict usage, especially in Kubernetes deployments.

“EBS is elastic, but it’s not that elastic,” said Kalley. “So, customers pay up front for capacity, just like you do for mobile phone storage and you pay whether you use it or not.”

According to Kalley, EBS eclipses all other AWS cloud storage services in terms of revenue, with a Datafy-estimated $10bn of income. “It’s popular because it’s the easiest way to lift-and-shift storage for EC2 and EKS applications,” he said.

But there’s a problem in terms of scaling. To scale up is easy, said Kalley, but to scale down is far less so. What you have to do is to create a new, smaller volume, move the data, then break all connections with the application and the old volume and connect to the new volume, he said, adding: “Customers have said it’s basically a migration, and they’ll do this once or twice, but not after that.”

What Datafy does is deploy an agent in all instances of customer AWS compute. Here, it determines the size of volumes and replaces single larger volumes with a number of smaller ones.

This is where Datafy’s smarts reside – in its virtualisation of many volumes to make them appear as one, and so allow easier scaling as multiple volumes are added and subtracted to right-size capacity.

Kalley said there are no “non-AWS concepts” introduced to the running of Datafy agents and supra-agent intelligence. “Customer data is copied from the original volume to the Datafy volume [actually volumes, in the plural],” he said. “Now, the original can be deleted and the customer will now save money. We can grow capacity in real time as needed, with shrinking taking place to ensure the least possible disruption.”

Pricing is based on capacity managed and comes in at 20% of AWS capacity managed. If that seems a steep percentage, it’s because Datafy is confident the customer will pay a lot less than it did for over-provisioned AWS EBS storage.

For example, if you were spending $100 per month and now spend $40 per month – which assumes a previous utilisation rate of 40% – the cost of Datafy would be 20% of the latter figure and a total of $48. And you only pay if you make savings.

Datafy is available on the AWS marketplace, starting in Q1 2025.

Later in 2025, Datafy will expand its capabilities to Azure and Google Coud Platform block storage.

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Nvidia RTX 5090 seemingly has a spanner thrown in the works by new graphics driver, but we should be very careful around reports of ‘bricked’ GPUs

  • Nvidia’s RTX 5090 has run into trouble with the latest graphics driver
  • There are numerous reports that GPUs are no longer being recognized by PCs after the driver has been installed
  • The problem could be wrapped up in PCIe 5.0 compatibility

Nvidia’s new graphics driver, which brings in support for the RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs, has been causing problems with games crashing – and on top of that, now there are reports from some Blackwell flagship graphics card owners that they’re encountering some serious difficulties.

We should clarify right off the bat that the specter of cable melting that famously hit the RTX 4090 is not a thing with the RTX 5090, despite some rumors that were recently circulating. Those reports totally got the wrong end of the stick (or the power connector, rather).

These fresh bugbears seemingly affecting the RTX 5090 are mostly about the GPU failing to work (not being recognized by the PC), additionally with a claim that two of these Nvidia graphics cards have been bricked (posted on Goofish). Apparently, part of the issue here is a ‘very small probability’ of internal components ‘burning’ although the translation may well be an issue here, I should note. Furthermore, we should be very cautious around those particular anecdotal reports at this stage (I’ll come back to that shortly).

As VideoCardz flagged up, these issues have apparently hit some RTX 5090 buyers, and also those who’ve purchased an RTX 5090 D over in Asia (the variant of the flagship made for that region).

While almost all of these reports have surfaced in Asia – popping up on the likes of Chiphell, Baidu, and Bilibili, as Wccftech noticed – and involve graphics card makers such as Manli or Colorful, there are two reported issues on Reddit from owners of an Asus RTX 5090 (the original poster, and a follow-up claim in that thread).

It’s worth noting that RTX 5080 graphics cards aren’t affected by these apparent issues.

Upset young man plays computer games at home.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Analysis: PCIe compatibility woes?

What’s going on here? Well, that’s a tricky one to unpick, and for now, we have to give Nvidia the benefit of the doubt, at least regarding the tales of RTX 5090 graphics cards being fried somehow – take that with a whole heap of seasoning.

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However, the problems with the new graphics driver causing the RTX 5090 to not be recognized by the system certainly seem very real. Indeed, this problem was observed in some reviews of the flagship, and it’s something that could be wrapped up in PCIe 5.0 compatibility.

The solution for some, as noted in the Reddit thread with the Asus RTX 5090, is to head to the BIOS and drop down to PCIe 4.0 instead. Yes, that’ll mean a slight performance loss, but it’s not that big a drop (and it’ll only be temporary hopefully, as when things are ironed out, you’ll be able to switch back).

This drop to-PCIe-4.0 plan isn’t helping everyone, though, and the trick didn’t work for the RTX 5090 owned by the original poster on Reddit. They’ve had to send their board back to Nvidia, with Team Green now investigating the problem, we’re told.

This remains one to keep a close eye on, then, for the time being. Of course, with there being very few RTX 5090 graphics cards out there – due to seriously limited stock – any issues aren’t likely to be that widely reported, anyway.

We’ve reached out to Nvidia to see if the company can shed some light on this matter, and will update this story with any response.

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