Nvidia is reportedly halting the production of its current graphics cards to prepare for the release of the RTX 5000. Especially gamers looking to buy a new GPU should wait for the release in spring 2025.
According to the British magazine PCGamer, Nvidia has reportedly ceased almost all production of its current RTX 4000 graphics cards. Only one chip, the AD107, is said to still be in production, which is used in entry-level GPUs and mobile devices such as laptops.
According to various sources, such as Videocardsz, Nvidia is currently shifting all production to the next generation, RTX 5000. It is said:
Nvidia has completely shut down the AD106 production line, with all capacity allocated to the RTX 50 production lines. Only a single AD107 line is being temporarily maintained. As a result, the RTX 40 series has entered its last quarter of release, with production and delivery of mid to high-end RTX 40 GPUs being gradually phased out.
Why is this happening? When a manufacturer wraps up its production, it usually means that it is already starting the production of the next generation. Nevertheless, the manner is surprising, as one would typically expect Nvidia to first halt the production of the two fastest models (RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Super) before replacing them.
This has been the case in the past: Nvidia launched the RTX 3080 and 3090 and then released the rest several months later. Particularly for the budget models, one had to wait at least half a year.
Affordable RTX 5000 graphics cards could be coming as early as March or April 2025
What does this mean for me? It is said that Nvidia plans to unveil its latest generation in January 2025 at CES in Las Vegas. If Nvidia has indeed halted almost all production, with only a few entry-level graphics cards remaining, this means a very compressed schedule for the RTX 5000 series:
- The RTX 5090, the fastest model, is expected to hit the market just a few weeks after CES 2025. That would be January 2025.
- The RTX 5080 / 5070 would then follow in February or March.
- RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti possibly following in March or April 2025.
This means: If you want to buy a more affordable next-generation graphics card and are not interested in a speculative RTX 5090 for 3,000 euros, then this could happen as early as March 2025.
Why should you wait to buy? Generally, especially with Nvidia, it is worthwhile to wait for the next generation when purchasing a GPU – particularly when the launch is not far off.
On the one hand, with the switch to the next generation, you often get a significant performance increase and usually pay only a few euros more. On the other hand, especially Nvidia has the bad habit of introducing new features exclusively for new models: During the update to 3.0, only models from the current RTX 4000 series could exclusively benefit from the added features. DLSS 3.5, on the other hand, was also offered for older GPUs.
Processors can currently be purchased mainly from AMD and Intel. However, reports suggest that Nvidia also seems interested in the CPU market. So far, they have mainly been selling graphics cards and doing so very successfully: As if Intel does not have enough problems, Nvidia may be poised to enter the PC processor market
