Herausforderung an die NVIDIA RTX 5090: Ein junges GPU - Unternehmen hat eine Monster - Grafikkarte mit 13 - facher Pfadverfolgungsleistung entwickelt.
Is there finally a competitor to NVIDIA and AMD?
An obscure chip startup, Bolt Graphics, has released astonishing data in its latest test:
Its first GPU module, Zeus 4C, achieved a performance 13 times that of the RTX 5090 in the path tracing scenario.
Many netizens are skeptical of this astonishing data. However, if it's true, Bolt may be close to being acquired.
So, is Bolt's new graphics card any good?
Not a Gaming Graphics Card
For gamers who care about graphics cards, Bolt may disappoint you.
Although, as Bolt Graphics claims, the Zeus GPU outperforms the RTX 5090 in path tracing.
For example, as mentioned at the beginning, when processing 4K resolution at 120 frames per second in path tracing tasks, the performance of the Zeus 4C is 13 times that of the RTX 5090.
However, this alone doesn't make it an excellent gaming graphics card. In the product documentation of Zeus, we found:
Although the two models of the Zeus GPU (2c26 - 064 and 2c26 - 128) have advantages in board power and cache, in floating - point operations (FP64 / FP32 / FP16 vector tflops), the performance of the Zeus GPU is far inferior to that of the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090.
In addition, the LPDDR5X used in the Zeus GPU is memory designed for mobile phones and thin - and - light laptops. Although it has low power consumption but poor bandwidth, it is not suitable for high - intensity graphic rendering.
Compared with the GDDR7 used in the RTX 5090 (memory specially designed for high - performance graphics processing (GPU), with high bandwidth and low latency), its bandwidth is more than 3 times lower. This means slow texture loading, high latency, unstable frame rates, and stuttering in games.
It can be said that in gaming scenarios, the Zeus GPU series will lag far behind the RTX 5090 and may not even reach the level of the RTX 3060 in some scenarios.
So, what can the Zeus GPU do?
Focusing on Rendering
If we dig deeper into the information about Bolt Graphics, we'll find that low - power, high - precision graphic rendering (rather than gaming/AI performance) is the main focus of this hardware company.
According to the graphics card market survey released by Bolt Graphics, scenarios that are costly and require high - precision graphic rendering, such as movie visual effects, game rendering, and high - performance computing (HPC), are Bolt's main areas of focus. (Note: Here, high - performance computing is not limited to AI operations but mainly refers to simulation and modeling fields such as fluid simulation and optical simulation.)
Among them, path tracing is the main technical selling point of Bolt Graphics.
Simply put, path tracing simulates the interaction between light and the scene or environment to provide realistic reflection, shadow, and other effects. It is mainly used to create realistic rendered images and is widely applied in industries such as film production, architecture, game development, product design, and advertising.
In complex tasks that require a large amount of computing resources, such as path tracing, FP64 high - performance computing (HPC), and electromagnetic (EM) simulation, the Zeus GPU performs strongly and far outperforms other graphics cards on the market.
At the same time, this is also reflected in the architecture of the Zeus GPU: Compared with the default FP32 (single - precision floating - point numbers) in gaming and deep - learning scenarios, the floating - point vector computing core of the Zeus GPU supports FP64 (double - precision floating - point) operations, making it more suitable for fields that require higher details and textures, such as movie special effects and high - precision simulations.
Looking at the entire Zeus GPU series, the Zeus 1c26 - 32 is similar to AMD's chiplet architecture, consisting of a "compute die" + an "IO die" (responsible for PCIe interfaces, networks, etc.).
The Zeus 2c26 - 64/2c26 - 128 adds an additional Zeus computing core on the basis of the 1c26 - 32.
The Zeus 4c26 - 256 integrates 4 Zeus computing cores + 4 I/O cores.
In addition, to make up for the lack of memory bandwidth, the Zeus series also provides 2/4/8 SODIMM slots (laptop memory slots) respectively.
So, rather than calling Bolt Graphics a gaming/AI hardware company, it's more appropriate to call it a hardware design company.
Questions Remain about Testing, Application, and Price
If we compare the graphics card market to a card table, there have only been two long - standing players: NVIDIA and AMD.
Bolt's emergence seems to be a niche breakthrough for specific scenarios.
However, Bolt is facing the typical chaos of a startup and is still far from being truly ready.
On the one hand, Bolt has not disclosed any information about its benchmark tests, nor how it simulates hardware performance and compares it with the GPUs of AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.
On the other hand, the developer kit for the Zeus GPU is expected to be launched in 2026, and mass production will start in 2027. The real test data remains to be seen.
As for the price of the graphics card?
One word: Wait.
Reference Links:
[1]https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/gpu-startups-cherry-picked-path-tracing-test-shows-13x-edge-over-nvidias-rtx-5090-bolt-graphics-zeus-4c-impresses-but-key-performance-questions-remain
[2]https://bolt.graphics/
[3]https://bolt.graphics/overview-of-the-gpu-market/
[4]https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1mhbryx/bolt_graphics_zeus_gpu_makes_bold_claim_of/
[5]https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/can-a-graphics-card-be-2-5x-faster-than-an-rtx-5090-in-path-tracing-and-use-80-percent-less-power-bolt-graphics-claims-its-zeus-gpu-powered-does-just-that/
[6]https://www.techpowerup.com/339561/bolt-graphics-zeus-gpu-dev-kits-arrive-2026-for-gaming-hpc-and-cad
This article is from the WeChat official account "QbitAI" (ID: QbitAI), author: henry. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.