VerTecX21 Upgrades Vulcanus

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Cork, Ireland. 10 Dec 2025. VerTecX21 announced today that Vulcanus, the current primary system, has received a GPU upgrade 20 months after Tritonis’ GPU was upgraded in April 2023 and just 10 months after Vulcanus itself came online. Speaking at a press conference, VerTecX21 Director Ciarán Creedon revealed that the upgrade has already taken place, testing was complete and Vulcanus has returned to service.

“As we close out our phenomenal 25th Anniversary, VerTecX21's Primary System Vulcanus has been upgraded,” announced Creedon. "More specifically we have replaced the  MSI Nvidia RTX4070Ti with an MSI Nvidia RTX5080," Creedon paused and drank from his whiskey tumbler until the gasps and murmurs had settled. "Now as we did a similar operation in 2023, this is not unprecedented, but we do acknowledge that unusually, the nature of this upgrade was not as a result of a significant planning cycle. This is instead due to fast moving market forces and trends conspiring against us and finally forced our hand."

“We previously announced that we were confident that it was not yet necessary to perform a GPU upgrade in February of this year. In fact, it actually still holds true today, we did not actually need to upgrade at the present time but we also cannot afford to ignore the gathering storm which threatens all of us,” explained Creedon “Which is why we’ve chosen this drastic decision now”.

“The global uptick in establishing Artificial Intelligence infrastructure is enticing manufacturers to cater silicon, specifically that which is used used for memory, to that more profitable sector which unfortunately will leave organisations like ours which rely on small quantities both system SDRAM and GPU HBM to function at a disadvantage. The global market has already responded with regards to RAM prices. To illustrate this I can reveal that the 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000MHz RAM procured for the Vulcanus project in Feb 2025 was €111.78; today that exact RAM kit is €443.44; a 297% increase!” Creedon paused for paramedics to remove a journalist who had just fainted.

“We have analysed industry projections, reports, rumours and even facts to conclude that there may be no better time than right now to perform a GPU upgrade for the foreseeable future. Much like in February when we green-lit Project: Vulcanus ahead of time to circumvent the threat of a looming trade war, we concluded that the purchase of an MSI RTX5080 Expert OC GPU was the best move we could make now to safeguard against graphical obsolescence for the longest period of time as we enter a period of potentially very bleak uncertainty,” said the director.

“In light of the current crisis, our proactive decisions in February still proved financially wise despite the original driver - the global trade war not significantly affecting our business; but I’m supremely confident our latest decision will prove that VerTecX21 is one of the most dynamic and astute organisations with a supreme vision to handle challenges for the next 25 years of operation!” Creedon concluded to rapturous applause.

Creedon then directed the attendees to observe some benchmark results "As you will see from the data we have achieved real-world performance gains of 50% which is 10% above industry projections. Synthetic Ray Tracing performance is up by 65%. Stress testing did not push GPU temps above 70C."

After the applause, Mr. Creedon allowed some time for questions:

Q1: Can you detail how this change affects the VerTecX21 Primary System upgrade plan and perhaps into the future?

A1: We don’t tend to have plans set in stone, only ballpark parts of the year where we may consider projects. As late as April 2023, Tritonis was expected to function as Primary with the i7 12700K and the RTX4070Ti until late 2025/early 2026. At the time we predicted an upgrade to a 16th Gen Intel and an RTX5070Ti - not knowing Intel would have its CPU failure issues in 2024 and also not knowing that Nvidia would continue with releasing the 70Ti class alongside the 70 class instead of a year in between as was the precedent set previously. By February this year Vulcanus was already the Primary and thus had already affected that projected theory. After that and until even as recent as late November a GPU upgrade wasn’t to be considered until either a Super refresh of the RTX5070Ti in mid-2026 proved worth it or far more likely - a predicted 6000-series GPU in 2027. After this upgrade we have absolutely no plan, or even a working theory, we’re only sure that the RTX5080 is the best option we could implement now with the information we have.

Q2: Can you elaborate on the nature of the market forces regarding RAM that influenced your decision to upgrade now?

A2: Certainly, the price increases seen in RAM will assuredly affect many new GPUs manufactured next year, meaning the base price of existing models manufactured now will increase. Additionally, any new models will most certainly reflect HBM costs back to the consumer from day one. Considering that the amount of VRAM on GPUs increases with each generation, the price would also reflect this factor. Furthermore it’s rumoured that Nvidia will cease to include VRAM modules when supplying GPU components to its manufacturing partners. It’s possible in light of this that AMD could do the same. This means that GPU manufacturers such as Asus and MSI will have to source modules from memory manufacturers themselves at a higher cost than the bulk volume discount Nvidia was afforded. Naturally this cost will be absorbed entirely by the consumer. Less certain but clearly possible is due to all this that the expected releases of refreshed or new GPU models may see a significant lengthening of their previously projected or traditional release cadence. There’s other negative factors but nothing positive to offset them. There's no good news, not even a light at the end of the tunnel now.

Q3: The procurement of  XX70-class cards for the previous two generations was based on the fact that they’d likely be replaced within 18 months to 2 years. Was the RTX5070Ti considered at all for an upgrade as part of the natural cycle?

A3: When the RTX4070Ti was purchased in 2023 it had a 40% performance uplift over the RTX3070Ti as well as 4GB more VRAM for the same cost. We were assuming that a potential upgrade could be an RTX5070Ti which if released in 2026 would return to a traditional release cadence after the release of the non-Ti variant with another 4GB VRAM and another 40% uplift. However as part of their efforts to obfuscate performance between models and push artificially generated frames as real performance in the 50-series, Nvidia released the RTX57070Ti alongside the RTX5070 in 2025. While the RTX5070Ti did have another 4GB of VRAM, it had a performance increase of only 20% over the previous generation for the same price and thus was never considered as an upgrade path. The RTX5080 was the GPU to offer the 40% performance increase but as it was a whole 50%+ more than the cost of the RTX4070Ti, it was similarly dismissed. When the upgrade decision was forced, the RTX5070Ti had dropped in price to 80% of the RTX4070Ti to deliver a 20% performance increase. The RTX5080’s price dropped to 20% more than the RTX4070Ti for 40% more performance and so was deemed to be the better of the two options. As we benchmarked our GTX5080 at 50% more performance our decision has proven to be more sound.

Q4: Does the purchase of the 80-class GPU mean as it did for the purchase of the GTX980Ti in 2015, that it may need to be in situ for an extended period?

A4: For now we are assuming so and that is partly the reasoning. There is no expectation whatsoever right now that a reasonably priced RTX5070Ti Super will launch in 2026 or that a presumed RTX6070Ti GPU will be launching in 2027. So we need to be sure we are graphically viable for as long as we can to wait out the storm and even prepare for the possibility that there will be no further GPU upgrade for Vulcanus for its lifecycle as Primary system which is currently scheduled to end in 2029.

Links: New Vulcanus benchmarks