The Game Awards served up some tasty reveal trailers this day just past, and the internet is ablaze with discussion surrounding the first looks at several upcoming games from some big hitters. We've got a comprehensive list of all the Game Awards 2024 reveal trailers for your perusal, but I think it's fair to say that none have caused more excitement than our first (cinematic) look at The Witcher 4.
Eagle-eyed hardware enthusiasts, however (and we are most certainly they), will have noticed that the trailer starts off with a line of explainer text, confirming that the trailer was "pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5 on an unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU".
Well then. That'd be one of those mysterious 50-series graphics cards I reckon, although which one is unclear. The hardware community at large (including ourselves, natch) is expecting the next-generation Nvidia cards to be revealed at CES 2025 in Las Vegas this coming January, and the hype is tangible as the expected date looms ever closer.
Currently we're assuming the top-end RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are likely to be revealed at this year's show, and potentially the RTX 5070, too, if rumours are to be believed. Speaking of rumours, the most recent RTX 5090 leak has spoken in hushed tones of an immensely powerful, 21,760-core, 600 W TGP monster—worthy of both ultra-demanding games at 4K and the silver sword, I reckon.
All that being said, pre-rendering a trailer on a new GPU... doesn't really mean much. Technically, you could pre-render a spectacular looking trailer on a very slow card, as you've got all the time in the world to let it crunch out individual frames at whatever speed it can manage, before stitching them all together in a 60 fps blaze for the eventual video. Hence the whole "pre" bit of "pre-rendering".
Still, this is the first trailer to my knowledge to mention an "unannounced GeForce GPU", so it's got everyone talking. Personally, I'll reserve my excitement for some real-time footage of something running on a 50-series, or a gameplay reveal trailer for The Witcher 4. Which I have to say, looks rather good even in cinematic form, doesn't it?
A quick check of my Steam account reveals I spent 182 happy hours in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and I'm sure I'll clock up something similar in the new one. Hopefully I don't need an RTX 50-series card to run it, but being a major Unreal Engine 5 release, I'm imagining it'll probably have some pretty hefty hardware requirements regardless. Hang on, RX 7800 XT. You got this, buddy.
