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The tech industry is facing some headwinds. Manufacturers, sellers, and consumers are more concerned than ever about prices and stock as a global trade war upends the supply chain.
But, even as we face these challenges, many companies continue to innovate in ways that surprise and delight us. It’s time to celebrate those who move the ball forward, even in tough times.
That’s why, as we do at this time of year, we present to you the 2025 Tom’s Hardware Innovation Awards: a set of products that set or expand the standard for others. This year’s list includes laptops with rollable screens, the fastest-ever consumer GPU, and a 3D printer that doubles as a laser cutter, among many others.
Nvidia RTX 5090
The Nvidia Blackwell RTX 50-series launch has been both incredibly exciting and horribly disappointing, and nowhere is that more apparent than with the halo GeForce RTX 5090. It comes with all the Blackwell architectural enhancements, which admittedly can feel more than a bit overhyped — looking specifically at Multi Frame Generation (MFG). But the GB202 chip at the heart of the 5090 offers clear generational improvements.
It comes packing 170 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), a 33% increase from the prior generation RTX 4090’s 128 SMs. It also comes with a 512-bit memory interface and 32GB of VRAM, another 33% increase. Except that memory is now 28 Gbps GDDR7 instead of 21 Gbps GDDR6X memory, which means the net improvement in memory bandwidth is an impressive 78%. To help the GPU reach its full performance potential, the power limit also got a big 28% bump to 575W.
That’s all good for performance, but the 5090 isn’t without controversy. Deja vu: All that power, through the 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector, has again resulted in some melting adapters. As frustrating and concerning as that might be, the real problem has been a lack of availability and skyrocketing retail prices. Ostensibly carrying a $1,999 starting MSRP, retail cards have routinely been selling for closer to twice that much. Still, it’s the dream GPU that gamers would love to own, assuming they could afford it and find it in stock.
—Jarred Walton