Finding an RTX 5090 at a reasonable price has been difficult for a while now, and the situation may not improve anytime soon. A new report claims Nvidia is facing enormous demand for its professional RTX Pro 5500, potentially giving the company another reason to prioritize professional GPUs for servers over its flagship consumer graphics card.

According to Reuters, Chinese technology giants ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have collectively ordered more than 3 million RTX Pro 5500 GPUs, with the orders estimated to be worth around $35 billion. Other customers in China have reportedly placed large orders as well, pushing total demand beyond 6 million units.

Pro cards and the RTX 5090 share the same GPU chip

The problem is that Nvidia reportedly can’t produce anywhere near that many RTX Pro 5500 cards within a short period. One report suggests Nvidia can produce around 3 million units annually, while the company has reportedly warned partners that they may initially receive only around 5% to 10% of the quantities they requested.

That demand could have consequences for the RTX 5090 because both products are based on Nvidia’s GB202 GPU. The RTX Pro 5500 is an especially attractive product for server farms and AI workloads, offering 84GB of GDDR7 ECC memory and 21,760 CUDA cores. With each RTX Pro 5500 reportedly selling for around $11,400, Nvidia has a strong reason to direct available GB202 chips toward professional cards rather than consumer GPUs.

There have already been rumors that the RTX 5090 could be approaching discontinuation, and while Nvidia has now publicly denied that notion, the latest reports are unlikely to ease those concerns. It further suggests the GB202 chips from those cards could potentially be repurposed for RTX Pro 5500 production, although Nvidia hasn’t officially confirmed this.

The huge Chinese orders come as Nvidia faces restrictions on selling some of its more powerful AI accelerators in the country. This has reportedly made the RTX Pro 5500 a particularly important alternative for Chinese companies that still want access to Nvidia hardware and its CUDA software ecosystem.

Memory supply could create another problem. Each RTX Pro 5500 comes with 84GB of GDDR7, meaning millions of units would require an enormous amount of memory at a time when the wider industry is already dealing with tight supply and higher component costs. There have also been rumors of an RTX 5080 with 24GB VRAM to essentially replace the 32GB RTX 5090.

About the Author

Abdul Haddi

Abdul is a tech writer and Editor for PC Guide, specializing in all things tech, gaming, and hardware.