In what can be an unprecedented shock transfer, Nvidia could possibly be cancelling its upcoming RTX 5000 Tremendous collection of graphics playing cards, in keeping with a brand new rumor. That might imply potential playing cards, such because the RTX 5080 Tremendous and RTX 5070 Tremendous, will not arrive quickly or maybe ever, probably dashing the hopes of many avid gamers who had been holding out for these upgrades.
The Tremendous refresh of Nvidia GPUs has been a daily prevalence for the previous couple of generations of the corporate’s graphics playing cards, with the RTX 2000, 3000, and 4000 collection all launching with an preliminary lineup, then being adopted up by a Tremendous collection a yr or so later. The RTX 5000 Tremendous collection had been notably anticipated, because it was anticipated to resolve probably the most complained-about points with the present technology of playing cards, which is a scarcity of VRAM. Nonetheless, it is now claimed that this very VRAM improve might trigger the following Tremendous collection to be delayed or cancelled.
Particularly, lots of the rumored RTX 5000 Tremendous collection specs advised Nvidia can be shifting from utilizing 2Gb GDDR7 VRAM chips to 3Gb ones, enabling the corporate to easily swap out the chips and increase VRAM by 50%. So, as an illustration, within the case of the RTX 5070, it has 12GB of VRAM at the moment (a limitation we discovered held it again in some recreation exams in our RTX 5070 assessment), however the rumored RTX 5070 Tremendous would see it have 18GB. In the meantime, the RTX 5080 would transfer from 16GB to 24GB for its Tremendous variant.
Nonetheless, in keeping with a put up from common tech leaker ‘Uniko’s {Hardware}’ on X (previously Twitter), these 3Gb chips are affected by a “loopy scarcity” meaning they will not be obtainable in enough numbers for desktop graphics playing cards, and “thus the tremendous collection is cancelled.”
What’s extra, Uniko’s {Hardware} goes on to say “the present fashions are anticipated to be dearer very quickly, due to the growing value of 2gb gddr7.” Sure, not solely might the Tremendous collection be cancelled, however the present technology of playing cards could be getting much more costly.
The core motive for this hypothesis is that reminiscence calls for throughout the tech trade have skyrocketed in current months, as a result of continued huge progress of AI. Extra, and ever-larger, knowledge facilities, together with smaller, extra localized makes use of – akin to workstation GPUs – have precipitated sources to be funneled into creating merchandise for these extra profitable sectors of the trade. This merely leaves much less product obtainable to serve the much less worthwhile shopper/gaming part of the market.
We have already seen how RAM costs have greater than doubled within the final month or so, with SSD costs additionally anticipated to rise, and now VRAM can also be being affected. It is too early to inform simply how a lot of a brief or long-term provide subject this can be, particularly if the AI bubble bursts, however indicators usually in the intervening time are that AI is not imploding any time quickly.
As for whether or not this rumor is true, if Nvidia genuinely supposed to launch this lineup of playing cards late this yr, or in the beginning of subsequent yr (most rumors level to an announcement on the CES commerce present in early January), I would be stunned if it fully scrapped these plans. At this stage, some graphics playing cards are prone to have already been produced, so selecting to not launch these could possibly be pricey. In the meantime, Nvidia can merely select to announce the merchandise, then anticipate provide to catch up – what’s referred to as a paper launch – which is a state of affairs we have seen plenty of instances in recent times throughout varied sections of the trade.
Then once more, it is also potential that every one the earlier rumors weren’t true and that the Tremendous playing cards do not exist or had been by no means meant to launch so quickly – that is all conjecture for now. We have reached out to Nvidia for touch upon the state of affairs.
