Thought it was hard to get an Nvidia RTX 50-series Blackwell GPU? Things are potentially going to get even more difficult, as Nvidia has now revealed its Blackwell RTX Pro series of graphics cards. These will target both laptops and desktops, as well as standalone PCs and data center products.
We've heard from some people at GDC/GTC that Nvidia is working to improve the supply of all of its Blackwell GPUs, and some even suggested we "might" see supply finally start to catch up to demand by May/June — meaning we could see MSRP-priced models on sale and readily available. We'll believe that when we see it.
We expected the Blackwell professional announcement, and certainly Nvidia would know it was incoming and would plan for the increased production required. But we would also say the same of the RTX 50-series launches. Nvidia should have known demand would be high, and yet the supply has been woefully insufficient.
And given the choice between shipping GB202/GB203/GB205 GPUs as consumer parts with an ostensible $550~$2,000 MSRP, or shipping professional and data center parts that can cost five times as much (or more), we suspect the latter category will be served first whenever possible.
Details on the specifications and configurations (some of them, anyway) were shared after the keynote, and the higher solutions will use the same GB202 chip as the GeForce RTX 5090, but with a dramatically altered memory configuration. The top RTX Pro 6000 will also be equipped with 24Gb (3GB) GDDR7 chips, the same chips that are currently going into the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU.
24Gb chips potentially bumps the memory configuration from 32GB on a 512-bit interface to 48GB, or from 16GB on a 256-bit interface (for lower tier parts) to 24GB, and for a 192-bit interface there will be 18GB options. But that's only part of the potential upgrade.
As we've traditionally seen with professional and data center solutions, Nvidia will ship some products with memory chips in "clamshell" mode — with GDDR7 chips on both sides of the PCB. That doubles the maximum capacity for every interface width, yielding up to 96GB for GB202 and its 512-bit interface, up to 48GB for GB203 and its 256-bit interface, and up to 36GB for GB205's 192-bit interface.
And that's not some hypothetical number. Nvidia has stated that it will have a Blackwell RTX Pro GPU with 96GB of GDDR7 memory, with ECC enabled. Laptops on the other hand look like they'll stick to similar capabilities as the RTX 50-series mobile solutions, with an RTX Pro solution sporting up to 24GB — the same as the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, which uses the GB203 silicon.
At present, the four workstation models only use two of the Blackwell chips: GB202 and GB203. The RTX Pro 6000 uses a near-complete GB202, with 188 of the potential 192 SMs. It also has the full 128MB L2 cache, and the aforementioned 96GB of GDDR7 ECC memory, with 16 chips on each side of the PCB. It also has the full complement of four NVDEC/NVENC units for video encoding/decoding. Power use for the workstation and server variants is set to 600W max (the Server Edition has a configurable TDP), while the Max-Q variant clamps the power limit to 300W.
Nvidia didn't disclose clocks or theoretical TFLOPS on the other three RTX Pro GPUs, so we've just estimated 2.5GHz for now. The step-down RTX Pro 5000 still uses GB202, just trimmed down quite a lot. It has 110 SMs enabled, which is only 57% of the computational elements. It also has four of the 32-bit memory interfaces disabled, giving it a 384-bit interface. Nvidia sticks with the more readily available 16Gb (2GB) GDDR7 chips as well, with 12 on each side of the PCB yielding 48GB of total VRAM — with no mention of the L2 cache size, though we suspect it will have 96MB. Along with the other reductions, the RTX Pro 5000 has just two NVENC/NVDEC units enabled. It has a 300W TDP.
Nvidia's RTX Pro 4500 switches to the GB203 chip, the same chip found in the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti. It's also a nearly complete solution, with 82 of the potential 84 SMs enabled alongside all eight memory channels. Like the RTX Pro 5000, it uses 2GB GDDR7 modules in clamshell mode, for 32GB of total VRAM. It also features two NVENC/NVDEC units, and a power limit of just 200W — surprisingly low, considering it's otherwise similar to the RTX 5080 that has a 360W TGP.
Last up, the RTX Pro 4000 also uses the GB203 chip, with some severe trimmings in some areas. It has 70 SMs enabled, the same as the RTX 5070 Ti, but the memory interface is only 192 bits wide, the same as the RTX 5070. Nvidia sticks with the 2GB GDDR7 modules as well, which in clamshell mode gives the GPU 24GB total VRAM. Dual NVENC/NVDEC are again present, and the power limit gets slashed to just 140W.
All of the models feature a full PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, with 16-pin 12V-2x6 connectors. Nvidia had the RTX Pro 6000 variants on display, which appear to be launching first. The other RTX Pro models will presumably launch in the coming months, and it's not clear when exactly the laptop solutions will become available.
Nvidia also announced a change in branding, if you didn't notice. Where the previous professional and data center solutions were sold under various RTX names (RTX A6000/A5500/A5000/etc. for Ampere, then RTX 6000/5000/4500/etc. for Ada), the new Blackwell generation of professional and data center GPUs will use RTX Pro nomenclature.
Nvidia already listed the RTX Pro 6000/5000/4500/4000 series GPU names for desktops. For laptops, there will be RTX Pro 5000/4000/3000/2000/1000/500 models, and for data center so far there's only an RTX Pro 6000. That last will, naturally, be the full-fat model with 96GB of GDDR7 ECC memory, taking over from the Nvidia L40.
We're glad to see the change in naming, as things were becoming a bit obfuscated after Nvidia killed off its Quadro branding several generations back. Now, RTX Pro will very clearly indicate that something is different from the standard GeForce RTX lineup.
There's still the matter of those numbers, however. RTX Pro 6000 quite obviously implies a Blackwell GPU for now, but what will happen with the next generation Rubin (or whatever the codename ends up being for the non-DC parts) GPUs? This is where the Ampere RTX A6000 branding made sense, but Ada parts dropped the "A" and things became a little fuzzy. Hopefully, that's something Nvidia addresses when those future products finally arrive.
