NVIDIA, time to retire: startup Bolt Graphics introduces the ZEUS GPU, which "will be 10 times faster than the RTX 5090"

The Sunnyvale (California) startup Bolt Graphics unveiled the ZEUS graphics architecture at CES 2026, claiming performance that could radically change the graphics card market. The company claims their accelerators surpass the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 in path tracing tasks by 2.5 to 10 times, while consuming significantly less power.

What is known

The single-chip model Zeus 1C delivers 2.5 times higher performance than the RTX 5090, consuming only 225 watts compared to NVIDIA's flagship 575 watts. The multi-chip version Zeus 4C promises up to a 10-fold increase in path tracing performance and up to a 300-fold advantage over the professional NVIDIA B200 accelerator in electromagnetic field simulation tasks.

The ZEUS architecture is built on a proprietary SIMD system controlled by a RISC-V processor, which performs both CPU and GPU command block functions simultaneously. The accelerator supports classic rasterization, ray tracing, path tracing, and precise FP64 computations, making it a versatile solution for gaming, rendering, CAD, and scientific tasks.

One of the most unusual features of ZEUS is its memory: graphics cards are equipped with at least 32GB of LPDDR5X, and also have DDR5 SODIMM slots allowing expansion up to 384GB—a record for graphics processors. The prototype supports PCIe 5.0 x16, CXL 3.0, and high-speed network interfaces 400GbE and 800GbE QSFP-DD.

Despite the impressive claims, there are no independent tests yet, all figures are based on the company's internal measurements, and the industry awaits real performance checks. But if everything matches Bolt Graphics' claims, the graphics accelerator market is about to undergo a revolution.

Source: TechPowerUp