Nvidia has seen consumer confidence falter as problems with the RTX 50 series piled up following launch, from black screens to missing ROPs. Thankfully, Nvidia does have a weapon remaining in its arsenal that could turn the tables and make customers excited to buy a GeForce GPU again. All it needs is a product refresh.

The Super name is usually attached to mid-generation revisions of existing graphics cards. These usually support updated specifications and support for whatever new software and firmware tricks that Nvidia has up its sleeve. The advantage of a Super GPU is that it is building on existing technology that has (in theory) already had all the bugs and kinks worked out. So, Nvidia can use this known quantity to further push the performance of the existing architecture.

VRAM should be an important part of the RTX 50 Super refresh

The elephant in the room in this case is VRAM. Nvidia has faced a great deal of criticism for its stingy approach to VRAM on RTX 50 series cards. This is particularly true of the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB model, which at least one review proclaimed to be ‘already obsolete'. Nvidia has explained before that optimizing price-to-performance comes first with these cheaper models, however.

Nvidia has said that the memory allocation was due to the low availability of 3GB modules and the memory bus width of the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 cards, which limited available configurations to 8GB or 16 GB. Team Green, however, insists that 8GB is perfectly adequate for DLSS, which somewhat misses the point in some consumers’ eyes.

It has become clear that this excuse isn't flying with consumers, who are largely ignoring the 8GB models.

In order to win back consumer trust, Nvidia should make sure the Super refresh has some significant performance upgrades over the ‘vanilla’ versions. More VRAM is one of the easiest ways to accomplish that. Leaks have shown that the RTX 5080 Super could pack as much as 24GB of VRAM. This is a good start, but it is further down the product stack where the problem lies.

A look at the Steam hardware survey will tell you that -60 suffix cards are the most popular amongst consumers. This is the market Nvidia should be going the extra mile in, in the form of a GPU that offers at least 10GB of VRAM, if not more. For comparison, the budget Intel Arc B570 offers 10GB, while the Arc B580 clocks in with 12GB at an MSRP of $249.

A mature product, with enough VRAM for future proofing and solid software, driver, and firmware support. It shouldn't be too much of an ask. And just like last gen’s Super cards, we hope the prices aren’t increased in any way, though tariffs may prove to be a factor here.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.