r/Games • u/SharkyIzrod • 4d ago

Industry News Nvidia reportedly ends GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card production

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nvidia-reportedly-ends-geforce-rtx-5090-graphics-card-production
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u/Scorpius289 4d ago

Implying they'll even make a 6090 anymore. And even if they do, it's unlikely to be any cheaper than the current 5090, unless the AI bubble pops in the meantime.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/theholylancer 4d ago

ehhhh the workstation RTX 6000 pro has 96 GB of vram from 32

if the consumer one has 48 GB of vram, I assume that means the workstation model of the 6090 is going to have 128 or something GBs of vram

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u/Zalvren 4d ago

I mean 32GB seems perfectly fine for a customer card. I have 24GB (4090) and never run into VRAM problems while playing in 5K2K (above 4K)

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago

The thing about the "AI bubble" popping is that it wouldn't mean AI goes away. The dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, but the internet didn't disappear. Just because "Pets.com" shuttered (along with countless other websites) didn't mean demand for internet services evaporated. You might be right that an AI bubble bursting could dramatically reduce investment in data centers and PC hardware, but it's also possible that the companies surviving the crash would simply acquire their competitors' assets and continue expanding. A collapse in speculative investment doesn't necessarily translate into cheaper consumer GPUs.

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u/flybypost 4d ago

the companies surviving the crash would simply acquire their competitors' assets and continue expanding.

Even Google, who essentially get "free money" via its ad business, is borrowing money to pay for this AI frenzy. I don't know how Oracle is going to pay all it has promised until now, and MS also put a lot of its exiting free cash into this (haven't read up on their finances too much).

If the bubble bursts and the big players buy up the shrivelled corpses of all the right now extremely valued AI startups for pennies, then they will probably calm down their own spending significantly. They can't keep spending at that rate without the equivalent upside. And they also need money to buy the next billion dollar unicorn startup :/

Even now, they'd need to sell AI subscriptions with excessively huge profit margins to every single human on earth or something ridiculous like that to justify their spending and what that means to their future dividends and share price. Every paying user is maybe barely profitable for any given AI company right now.

There's just no way this can work in the long term without some sort of magic miraculously making everything freakishly cheap. Venture Capital money that had no "reasonable" outlet (after cryptocurrencies and NFTs) for a few years (and actual debt) is the only thing keeping the bubble from popping.

Half of the RAM/disk apocalypse happened because all those companies combined promised to buy products way into the future at a stupidly high price point because they don't want to be seen as giving up on the AI race.

That's also one of the reason AI companies want to go public (they are at the limit of what VC money and debt can buy them). They need the money to pay for some of the data centres their own buying spree made so expensive and hope to keep the hype train going.

Funnily enough the one company who looks like it will be getting away without major damage is Apple. They never invested into AI to such a degree and their attempts failed so miserably that they are renting AI capacity from Google and essentially integrating Google's AI offerings as a bonus feature on their devices at a comparably cheap price point.

If/when the AI bubble pops their worst fumble will be the ads that over-promised AI features and that got them sued and that they might be paying a bit too much to access Google's AI capacity for a little while.

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago

To be clear, my argument wasn't that this is definitively what will happen, but that it could happen. There are too many variables we can't accurately predict right now, including enterprise adoption, industrial applications, and the broader commercialization of AI. Any of these could significantly increase demand for AI computing infrastructure, even if the speculative investment bubble collapses. A collapse in valuations doesn't necessarily mean a corresponding collapse in demand for the underlying technology.

With that said, I don't necessarily disagree that current AI infrastructure spending is unsustainable, but that's not really the distinction I'm making. A financial correction doesn't mean demand for AI computing disappears. The companies that survive could acquire distressed infrastructure and continue expanding, even if the pace of new hardware purchases slows.

And that's really my point. You're assuming that an AI investment crash would necessarily translate into cheaper consumer GPUs. It might ease supply constraints, but that's not the same as NVIDIA suddenly having the incentive, or competitive pressure, to substantially lower GeForce prices.

The dot-com crash didn't end demand for internet infrastructure. It changed who owned it and how investment was allocated. I don't see why we should assume an AI correction would automatically restore consumer GPU pricing to pre-boom levels.

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u/flybypost 4d ago

You're assuming that an AI investment crash would necessarily translate into cheaper consumer GPUs.

I'm saying that I don't think they will be spending at the same rate as they are now (or even expanding) because from all the numbers we can see to date it seems unsustainable. At some point there's simply no nest egg, no debt, and no venture capital to keep going like this. I don't see it expanding based on the rate we are now in this hype cycle where the big players are all now finally under some pressure to show that those investments were worth is.

These companies are buying up RAM, storage, and chips years in advance. Why would they keep buying at "right now hype rates" if the hype were to crash?

Plus, AI adoption in the wider corporate world seems to be driven more by mandate from above to use it than it actually offering all the benefits AI companies are proclaiming with new usage records every month being now driven more by AI that was shoehorned into every app as a feature (mails, internet search overviews,…) and accidental usage and this pumping up the numbers than intentional usage of AI tools.

With AI hype or AI pessimism, this seems to be the average result (and that's from a company that heavily bought into the idea of AI) and reality of these tools:

https://fortune.com/2026/09/17/shopify-tobias-lutke-ai-slop-grenades/

The tech leaders who once hailed AI use as the key to unlocking every employee’s full potential are now changing their tune.

This includes Shopify cofounder and CEO Tobias Lütke. He told employees last year that using AI is “a baseline expectation,” and they should first prove they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more resources. He’s now saying Shopify employees are producing unexamined emails and code with AI and not taking responsibility for the sloppy output.

“We call those ‘slop grenades’ that people toss at each other,” he said during an interview on The Knowledge Project podcast on Tuesday. “That’s definitely a bad thing.”

I do think that while at some point things will calm down because right now semi-conductor production is extremely heavily skewed towards data centre usage it won't mean cheaper hardware for us. Even if the AI bubble were to pop right now it would take time to adapt more towards end user hardware (and they all went heavily for the big data centre profit margin). It wouldn't be worth hoping for cheaper hardware soon even if we were to celebrate the bankruptcy of all AI companies tomorrow.

In my opinion the survivors wouldn't be expanding, mainly because all those tech companies were so cash-flow positive and bunkering money for years now that they'd have to first adjust to the new reality they bought into over the last few years after the hype has crashed around them.

The dot-com crash didn't end demand for internet infrastructure. It changed who owned it and how investment was allocated. I don't see why we should assume an AI correction would automatically restore consumer GPU pricing to pre-boom levels.

But the dot-com crash did lead to a reevaluation of how much to invest in/spend on online businesses. Investors didn't just keep throwing incredible amounts of money after any company with an online presence. Things consolidated and spending shrunk to a more reasonable rate.

Similar here, after things calm down a bunch of companies would keep "AI as a feature" (either their own or leased from somebody else) but there'd be no reason to keep investing hundreds of billions into that one feature just to stay competitive like they do now.

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago edited 4d ago

I think I'm a little bit more bullish on the potential utility for AI in that I think where it's going to get the most usage, it's not even currently being implemented. For example, the medical potential for developing cancer vaccines is huge. And to be clear, I'm not saying this is right around the corner or we should expect to see this within the next five years, but if that were to happen, that would dramatically shift the trajectory and perception of AI development.

I think the difference between you and me is that you're looking at the current climate and saying, "I don't think this is sustainable," assuming everything remains exactly as it is right now. I wouldn't disagree with you, and that's why I agreed with you about valuations being massively overpriced, but I'm thinking that the true "killer app" of AI doesn't even exist right now.

In 2000-2002 when the dot-com bubble burst, the internet, as it existed then, was nowhere near fully realized as the expansive omnitool it is today. Video sharing did not exist so streaming was not part of the equation. Social media was in its infancy. And broad adoption for things like banking, retail sales, etc. didn't really exist in those days

That's essentially where AI is right now. It's basically the internet circa ~1999-2000. The version of AI that exists right now is a very early model of what it will eventually become. And by the way, just to be clear, I could be totally wrong about this, and AI doesn't really produce any meaningful utility outside of generic data management/acquisition, LLMs, video/music/image generation, and basic coding. If that's where AI is in 5-10 years, then I'm in complete agreement with you.

My point is that the reason why the valuations are as high as they are is because everyone is betting on who is going to build that next evolution killer app with AI. Of course that's going to inflate valuations, and of course that bubble will inevitably pop. But that's very different from saying that AI structurally is going to implode, and I think we just need to be clear about that.

EDIT: Oh, and BTW, as an aside, yes, I agree the incredibly aggressive implementation on behalf of corporate entities is very much not sustainable. My generic criticism of most business owners is that a lot of them aren't doing comprehensive analyzes on AI implementation. Most of it is just "must have shiny new thing" and/or trend-chasing. Your average CEO does not moonlight as an economist on the side. LOL!

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u/flybypost 4d ago

the medical potential for developing cancer vaccines is huge.

I agree on that but think that'd benefit much more from personalised vaccines via mRNA therapy, not AI. In the future AI seems to have a potentially very interesting upside when it comes guessing protein folding variations which has its own barely touched importance for literally everything, from medicine/health to manufacturing (bio-plastics with yet unknown properties,…) and everything in between.

In 2000-2002 when the dot-com bubble burst, the internet, as it existed then, was nowhere near fully realized as the expansive omnitool it is today.

But investment got much smaller and the internet got big not because everybody had a SUN workstations but via the humble LAMP stack on much more generic hardware (this is Google's first server built into a custom Lego brick chassis). If AI were to have a similar trajectory it would become massively cheaper too which would also mean cheaper end user hardware and not the hardware bottlenecks we have now.

I agree with you that there might be some really good use for AI but the frenzy around AI right now (lack money, hardware FOMO of the big companies who buy everything,…) isn't sustainable and when the dust settles I don't see the survivors spending like they do now. And if/when the hardware becomes significantly more capable it will "naturally" mean an easing off the pressure that exists now in all matters (hardware capabilities and cost).

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago

Definitely not an expert on medicine, but from what I've heard regarding mRNA vaccines, the issue is that the RNA mutates randomly, so a vaccine that works for one patient wouldn't necessarily work for another patient. What AI would do is create bespoke vaccines based on the specific RNA makeup of the patient. It's something that would prove far too onerous for existing systems to do at scale, which is one of the reasons the medical community is excited about the prospect of AI in medicine. That being said, I watched a doctor explain this in a YouTube video, so don't take this as gospel by any means. LOL!

I think the "natural easing off" is also likely, BTW. But that's going to be more "long-term."

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u/flybypost 3d ago

so a vaccine that works for one patient wouldn't necessarily work for another patient.

That's what mRNA vaccines are about. delivering bespoken molecule that looks like the target so the immune system can attack it.

There can probably never be a universal cancer vaccine that works for everybody without personalisation. Cancer is technically just the effect of a bunch of cells that are multiplying uncontrollably and not stopping. The reason for that can vary so much that there's no single solution which makes targetting it difficult (besides in primitive ways like cutting it out).

That's also why after chemo (which is essentially poisoning the body at the tumour site and betting on all the cancer cells to die before the patient does, and why it can't just be done forever) they have to keep looking if the tumour returns (if it hasn't been fully killed off and starts multiplying again until it can be recognised again).

There are already significant advances when it comes to personalised cancer vaccines without any AI involved. CRISPR and mRNA therapies have been helping on that front a lot.

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u/Maelstrom52 3d ago

You might know more about this than me (it seems likely), but here is the video (time-stamped) that I was referring to and it seemed very compelling to me. I bookmarked it at the point where he starts describing where AI comes into the equation, but you can watch the whole thing if you want:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eQL0nwjZOs&t=568s

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u/theqmann 3d ago

At some point, all this hardware being bought and installed is going to be idle long enough (not making money selling the FLOPS for dollars to AI companies) that someone will want to recoup their investment and start selling off hardware. Selling off used hardware will drive prices down as supply starts going up. The dollars from reselling hardware are starting to look mighty appealing vs the prospect of hoping AI replaces the workforce and they recoup their investment that way.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 4d ago

The idea is right now everyone is throwing all the money at GPUs so its a sellers market. Demand far outstrip supply and the demand has deep pockets.

Eventually either the bubble will pop or enough new entrants into the market trying to snag that AI money will drop prices by greatly reducing demand.

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago

I'm not going to necessarily disagree with you, but you're making a few leaps that can't be definitively inferred even in the event of a bubble popping. Just because a speculation market drops precipitously doesn't necessarily mean demand goes away or that asset transfer doesn't create comparable demand from surviving AI companies. It's absolutely plausible and even likely in some cases that it will reduce immediate demand in the short term, but that could be a minor blip. That's exactly what happened in the wake of the dot-com bubble bursting: there was an immediate reduction in investment into web services, but that picked up only a few years later. For example, Amazon's major growth spurt occurs in 2005, which is after the dot-com bubble burst.

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u/residentgiant 4d ago

A big difference is that the infrastructure that was built during the dotcom bubble that ended up not being necessary at the time ("dark fiber") was still usable years later when the demand for bandwidth finally caught up.

That's probably not going to be the case with all of the GPUs being bought for use in data centers, while Nvidia is touting cutting edge advancements every year.

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u/Maelstrom52 4d ago

That actually is a really good counterpoint because even if you keep the data centers intact, it's unlikely that hardware development is going to meaningfully have improved from now until then. But what I would say is that that might reduce the cost of RAM and current generation GPUs, but if the interest in AI development is reinvigorated, like what happened with the internet, I don't see the demand on the industry side for PC hardware going down, so I don't know if that really helps us in the long run.

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u/Bankaz 4d ago edited 4d ago

Different from the dot-com bubble, generative AI literally can't pay for itself. The costs of GenAI are waaay too high to justify its use. We're still on the "let's absorb massive debt to hook people in so we can profit later" stage of corporate strategy, but there's no signs of profitability not even in the long run.

The Internet still had profitable uses after the dot-com bubble.

Edit: typo

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u/theqmann 3d ago

Depends on what bubble you look at. Self driving cars, the last bubble, went basically nowhere, with only Tesla and Google having any stake left in the game. All those billions spent by the industry basically gone away.

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u/JoeZocktGames 4d ago

AMD will just chime in and take over the gaming card market if Nvidia does this which I doubt they will. Gaming might be a small percentage of their business but let's not forget that gaming is one of the best advertising opportunities for their AI crap. I doubt that they will develop all this DLSS5 crap then ditch gaming.

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u/qwerty145454 4d ago

Gaming is so insignificant to Nvidia they shut down its dedicated department and stopped reporting gaming revenue separately, it's now bundled into "other" and makes up a tiny fraction of their income.

They don't need gaming to advertise anything, they're selling their AI cards to large corporations to do training, not people who give a shit about DLSS. If anything DLSS is probably the remnants of their gaming division's desperate attempts to gain some favour with senior management by pushing AI.

I wouldn't expect AMD to come to the rescue either, they are going all in on AI too. They see that's where the money is.

It's no coincidence that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been going on for a year+ about consumers owning a PC being an outdated concept and everything will be done by AI in the cloud or whatever (incl. gaming) and users just own terminals. Their long term plan is one where you and I do not own gaming graphics cards.

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u/Nalivai 4d ago

It's 2031, my ai agent just reported to me that it had a productive gaming session, playing 4 hours of a game that my other ai agent generated. I now owe 2903 space dollars to Esteemed World President Sam Altman for it. It automatically got added to my debt. I don't care, I am running behind my delivery quota and factory worker takes too long to load my backpack with labubus to deliver. If I miss my quota, my ai boss will take my mouth privilege again, and I really must scream next month, so I can't have that.

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u/Oakcamp 4d ago

Didn't drink enough verification cans during that story

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u/Nalivai 4d ago

Verification cans are from different, more utopian world, where corporation were willing to give meat units something to drink. You don't get your verification cans, the water is a commodity that data centers need more than you.

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u/dewhashish 4d ago

nvidia should rename themselves to nvidiAI because of how much they're pushing it.

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u/meneldal2 4d ago

There is what they say to people pumping the stock and what they know they need to care about if the bubble pops.

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u/Aristox 4d ago

Sounds like a pretty good deal for everyone. As long as we can still mod games. I'd hate to trade the bonus of being able to install mods for the convenience of being able to stream them to my phone/tablet at max settings. I'm sure they'll work something out tho

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u/Jnaythus 4d ago

AMD is also in the AI space. Once upon a time ATI (now AMD) really stuck it to Nvidia with the RAdeon 9700 Pro doubling performance in programmable shaders to Nvidia's GeForce 4. Nvidia was caught in their complacency and their FX series response was probably the worst thing they ever made. Now, Nvidia has fleshed out a space (a bit of a walled garden) where they own the tech and AMD can really only be second-rate unless Nvidia quits the market altogether. But with AMD in the AI space, they may find themselves leaning the same way as Nvidia. I have no ability to predict what's coming, but my pessimism is definitely buckled in.

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u/aSooker 4d ago

AMD doesn't even have a card that competes with the 4090 yet.

And all their efforts are also on AI.

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u/lpmiller 4d ago

there is no hero to save us right now. Things are what they are.

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u/HellsNels 4d ago

Probably Chinese GPUs and RAM but they’ll never be allowed to sell them in the West.

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u/MiddleConscious5951 4d ago edited 4d ago

lmao my dudes we cannot continue to hope that AMD is going to continue existing purely to act as a price anchor for the nvidia GPUs you actually want to buy.

Especially not when AMD's own earning reports also show their datacenter revenues skyrocketing

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u/Iess-Risk-9358 4d ago

AMD will just chime in and take over the gaming card market if Nvidia does this which I doubt they will.

They don't have that option. It's the VRAM that's making the cards so expensive.

AMD doesn't manufacture VRAM; they're at the mercy of the memory cartel, just like everyone is.

And China can't make a dent in that market; only Korea and the USA is capable of making DDR7.

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u/phatboi23 4d ago

AMD will just chime in

ass load of VRAM like back in the day and no real support again like back in the day?

they even have the VRAM where they gonna get it from?

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u/a34fsdb 4d ago

With it also being way better and inflation if its below 4-5k I might get one