Nvidia has reportedly ceased selling its GB202 graphics processors for consumer-grade GeForce RTX 5090-series add-in-boards (AIBs), including 'D' variants for the Chinese market, according to a leaked notice from an unknown factory cited by @hongxing2020, who tends to have insights into the graphics card market. Another prominent leaker @Zed__Wang confirmed the report and said that from now on the GB202 silicon will be exclusively used on data center and professional graphics cards.

"According to a notification from the factory, Nvidia will no longer manufacture any RTX 5090 models, including the D variants," a message cited by @hongxing2020 reads. "Going forward, the highest-end GeForce graphics card will be the RTX 5080 24GB, while the RTX 5080 16GB version will be discontinued. Please spread the word."

This is, of course, an unverified claim and not an official Nvidia announcement. We asked Nvidia for a comment, though the company has yet to respond. Typically, Nvidia does not comment on rumors.

While the information is strictly unofficial for now, the alleged decision would make considerable economic sense for Nvidia, as the company can sell GB202 processors on data center and professional graphics cards that cost substantially more than the GeForce RTX 5090. In fact, Nvidia's recently introduced RTX Pro 5500 features the same number of CUDA cores — 21,760 — as the GeForce RTX 5090, but comes with 84GB of GDDR7 memory instead of 32GB and targets considerably more lucrative professional visualization (ProViz) and AI applications. Meanwhile, the fully-fledged RTX 6000 Pro with 24,064 CUDA cores and 96 GB of memory can easily sell for $15,000.

By discontinuing GB202-based GeForce products, Nvidia could prevent its relatively inexpensive consumer graphics cards from competing with its own professional accelerators in the lucrative AI sector. Essentially, the company is redirecting its limited semiconductor manufacturing allocation toward higher-margin products without necessarily sacrificing its position in the gaming market, as neither the GeForce RTX 5080 nor RTX 5090 have direct rivals.

Even if Nvidia has indeed discontinued shipments of GB202 processors for consumer graphics cards, GeForce RTX 5090 boards are unlikely to disappear from the market overnight. Nvidia's add-in-board partners, distributors, and retailers likely have inventories of GPUs and finished graphics cards that could sustain availability for some time. However, if Nvidia no longer supplies GB202 processors for GeForce products, the availability of RTX 5090 cards will inevitably decline, which will affect prices of these AIBs.

Meanwhile, Nvidia could be preparing to refresh its GeForce RTX 50-series lineup. The company has long been rumored to be developing GeForce RTX 50 Super graphics cards, including an RTX 5080 Super with 24GB of GDDR7 memory, although their introduction has reportedly been postponed due to memory supply constraints. The rumored GeForce RTX 5080 24GB could therefore represent a revival of these plans, and with no more GeForce RTX 5090 32GB on the market, the new product will have better memory supply.

Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.

Nvidia is also developing its next-generation Rubin-based GeForce RTX 60-series GPUs, but recent rumors suggest that these products will not arrive until late 2027, or even 2028. Consequently, if the reports about the discontinuation of the GeForce RTX 5090 are accurate, Nvidia could leave the enthusiast gaming market without a GB202-class flagship for a considerable period, so if you are in the market for the absolute best graphics card, now is the time to get it.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

-

So will the discontinued card no longer continue to be featured in game performance reviews, or will it at least come with a *discontinued asterisk?Reply

If so my lowly $599 9070XT is moving up the ranks in those charts.

Imagine what a 6090 could sell for if it is highly suspected that it is a limited production run only.

-

These are the actions that an AI-centric company would take.Reply

Nvidia 20 years ago would not have done this to gamers. I would consider posting a picture of Linus with the finger since he is specifically talking about Nvidia at that point, but, with respect for the moderators - no.

On the flip side does anybody see the silver lining? Now you won't have melting 5090s anymore.

-

Maybe the game developers should ask the AI to help them make games that are coded more efficiently. They seem to think that they can just let the video card magically solve all their problems. They have for a long time posted so called in game footage using stuff like 5090 that nobody could afford. Now what recommend video cards that no longer exist if you want to use the top settings.Reply

-

Reply

What, devs learning the lost art of game optimization instead of using higher specs as a crutch?bill001g said:Maybe the game developers should ask the AI to help them make games that are coded more efficiently. They seem to think that they can just let the video card magically solve all their problems. They have for a long time posted so called in game footage using stuff like 5090 that nobody could afford. Now what recommend video cards that no longer exist if you want to use the top settings.

NEVER!

-

Translating this rumor into plain English: recent advances in Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures have shown that a single good old RTX 3090 on a PC with 128–256 GB of RAM can handle your AI workloads locally, delivering 30 tokens per second during generation and 60 tokens per second for prompt processing on very competitive AI models with top 5 intelligence ratings — jeopardizing the profits of the entire AI industry. The RTX 5090 almost doubles these numbers. Two 5090 literally put all on haltReply