Nvidia halts GeForce GTX manufacturing, signaling the brand's end

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In context: Nvidia adopted the GTX brand in 2004 with the GeForce 7 series and the high-end GeForce 7800 GTX gaming card. The GTX suffix evolved into a formal branding effort with the release of the GeForce GTX 280 in 2008. In recent years, it has been used for Nvidia's more budget-friendly GPUs, often sold alongside the more powerful RTX cards.

Unnamed sources quoted on the Board Channels forums claim Nvidia has quietly discontinued the GTX 16 series of affordable gaming GPUs. The last remaining chips based on the Turing architecture have reportedly been allocated to OEM manufacturers, and Nvidia's foundries have now ceased GTX chip manufacturing altogether.

The sources suggest that the current inventory of GTX 16 GPUs is expected to sell out in the next three months. After that, neither Nvidia nor custom GPU manufacturers will be able to supply additional GTX cards to channel partners. Nvidia had already discontinued the GTX 1660 series, and the remaining GTX models available on the market include the very low-power GTX 1630 and GTX 1650 cards.

The GTX brand was initially replaced in 2018 with the release of the GeForce 20 "RTX" series. Nvidia repurposed the brand in 2019 with the GeForce GTX 16 series, utilizing the same Turing architecture as the GeForce 20 RTX cards but without the most advanced architectural features, such as Tensor and RT (ray tracing) specialized computing cores.

After the recent surge in popularity experienced by AI algorithms in the past few years, Nvidia has no plans to continue producing budget-oriented GPUs. Following the introduction of the Ampere generation in 2020 (GeForce RTX 30), the company has not presented any Ampere-based replacement for the GTX 16 series.

Once the remaining GTX 1630 and GTX 1650 cards are depleted, the company will cater to the market's lowest-performing segments with the RTX 3050 on desktops and the RTX 2050 on mobile systems.

Nvidia is expected to continue providing extended support for GTX 16 cards for a few more years, addressing security bugs and releasing updated drivers for increasingly aging PCs. However, if the latest rumors prove true, the last budget GTX GPUs may become difficult to find in a very short time frame.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102145-nvidia-halts-geforce-gtx-manufacturing-signaling-brand-end.html

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I'm surprised they won't call next gen AITX 5000 series. Zero raster improvement everything left to AI, cache and upscaling/fake frames to promote huge generational performance uplift.

 

[Disiw]

I'm surprised they won't call next gen AITX 5000 series. Zero raster improvement everything left to AI, cache and upscaling/fake frames to promote huge generational performance uplift.

Zero raster improvement? My 4090 hits ~40K in TimeSpy, which is pure raster. How does last gen fare?

 

[Lounds]

The legend 8800 GTX.

 

[fadingfool]

The legend 8800 GTX.

Stuff of dreams back in the day. I was still using my ati 9600 powered laptop when the 8800 came out in 2006.

 

[arrowflash]

The writing is on the wall that Nvidia will eventually leave the consumer gaming GPU market entirely if the AI trend continues.

Won't surprise me if RTX 5 or RTX 6 series end up being the last consumer Nvidia GPUs.

 

[Disiw]

The writing is on the wall that Nvidia will eventually leave the consumer gaming GPU market entirely if the AI trend continues.

Won't surprise me if RTX 5 or RTX 6 series end up being the last consumer Nvidia GPUs.

Haha, no they won't. Nvidia can easily control the gaming market while having full focus on AI. They are simply that far ahead at this point and Radeon 8000 series will be of no threat to Nvidia, which will launch 5090 and 5080 in Q4.

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/gr...cards-are-its-worst-selling-in-over-20-years/

AMD is leaving high-end GPU market for a reason.

... Nothing at all shows Nvidia is pulling away from Gaming. New Nvidia App / Control Panel and features keeps getting updated with new stuff coming out as well (DLSS/DLAA dlls and improvements + new RTX features like RTX HDR). Tons of games get RTX and DLSS support still, nothing changed.

Nvidia rules Gaming, AI and Enterprise right now. They are not dropping Gaming at all. They can easily keep dominating this market while having full focus on AI and Enterprise.

All those AI money will drip down into Gaming. Thats what will happen.

Nvidia leaving Gaming would be saying no to money. No business says no to money.

What I think tho, is that Nvidia will be using a cheaper process node in the future for Gaming Stuff. Seperating Gaming and Enterprise/AI output.

5090 and 5080 is going to fly off the shelves in ~6 months and supply will probably be low since it will use 3nm TSMC like the AI stuff. Thats Nvidias biggest problem right now; Production numbers, because of massive demand.

I could easily see Nvidia going Intel 18A or Samsung 2nm for RTX 6000 series, while pumping out AI cards at TSMC.

Nvidia don't need a process advantage to be able to compete in Gaming market. We saw that with RTX 3000 series. Samsung 8nm is like a TSMC 10-12nm node and Nvidia still won because of superior architecture and features.

NOW is AMDs big oppotunity to re-grab gaming dGPU marketshare, but what does AMD do? Pulls from high-end. Sigh. However I understand because AMD wants to chase those sweet AI money like Nvidia.