One problem that plagued the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series after launch was the lack of supply. Customers have seen empty store shelves in places like Microcenter and Best Buy, and the dreaded ‘Out of Stock' notification for online stores. While it has recovered in the past couple of months or so, consumers could be hit by more shortages.

There is a rising tide of feeling amongst PC gaming enthusiasts that Nvidia is turning away from the PC gaming consumer market and towards the more profitable market in AI accelerator chips (though Nvidia’s CEO still says they love GeForce). Some people have expressed the fear that this new focus on enterprise-level AI chips will strip resources from the PC GPU division towards making more AI chips. This new leak appears to suggest that these fears are justified.

Focus turns to AI chip production

Tech blogger Harukaze5719 on Twitter/X reposted an entry from fellow tech blogger and industry analyst Gazlog. This blog post noted that though the price and availability of many RTX 50 series GPUs have now begun to stabilize, future developments could make these graphics cards even harder to find.

According to the Gazlog blog post, Nvidia plans to cut back production of the GeForce RTX 50 series in the near future. This comes from information leaked to Hakusando in China, which has allegedly been told to cease production of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5060.

The blog goes on to explain that Hakusando has plans to begin production on the GB300 Nvidia chip, which is designed for ‘next-generation AI GPUs'. Production on this chip is scheduled to begin after May, with full-scale mass production by the end of 2025.

This suggests that production lines currently dedicated to producing GB202 and GB206 will instead be moved over to producing GB200 and GB300 AI chips. This could, in turn, affect the global supply of RTX 50 series graphics cards, which could force prices to soar once again.

Of course, until an official announcement is made, this remains speculation and should be taken with a grain of salt.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.