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And honestly, it doesn’t seem all that surprising considering the RTX 5090 launched with an MSRP of $1,999, but was regularly selling for over $5,000, due in large part to massive demand from AI encoders and companies looking to take advantage of that sweet, sweet 32GB of DDR7 memory. A casual search of major retailers this week turned up exactly zero 5090 cards available for purchase, even at that exorbitant price, and I suspect that will remain the case for the foreseeable future.
It may be heartbreaking if you’re into the hardcore DIY PC gaming lifestyle, but you can take solace in the fact that the GeForce RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 are still widely available and good enough for high-resolution, high-speed PC gaming. Heck, the same leak that suggests the RTX 5090 is finished also claims that Nvidia will release a new RTX 5080 model with 24GB of DDR7 memory, which should offer a notable improvement over the current 16GB RTX 5080 cards.
But I have to say, the sooner you make peace with the fact that Nvidia is no longer in the business of supporting PC games, the better. Don’t get me wrong, Nvidia will continue to make new desktop graphics cards and will talk a lot about how it values PC gamers first and foremost. But figures have shown otherwise for some time now, and this is likely to continue for years to come.
After all, the AI-driven explosion in demand for high-end GPUs and silicon helped Nvidia become the first trillion-dollar chip company, and recent financial reports and SEC filings show that the company’s revenue from data center products is now 4 to 5 times larger than its revenue from consumer hardware. That’s probably part of the reason the company recently stopped reporting GPU sales entirely as a discrete category, rather than grouping them together. all Sales of GPU hardware (for both commercial and retail customers) in a category on its balance sheet along with robotics, automotive and telecommunications products.
So, for your own sanity, I’m begging you: don’t give in to Jensen’s sales pitch at Nvidia’s next press conference. I think the company will continue to make new graphics cards for the foreseeable future, but only to maintain its dominance in the GPU market and keep up appearances while taking full advantage of the rise of AI. If demand for AI collapses the way cryptocurrencies seemed to collapse a few years ago, perhaps we will see Nvidia take on the mantle of being a PC gaming company once again.
But I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon, and making peace with that has done wonders for the stress I’m feeling right now as a frustrated PC gaming fan. It’s helped me realize that I don’t need the latest and greatest hardware to have fun gaming on my PC, and the same can apply to you. Take this time to play some games on your Steam pile of shame, delve into Linux gaming, and explore all the other cool things you can do. without an RTX 5090. Because I don’t know if high-end GPUs will be affordable for regular people like you and me in the next few years, if ever, and I don’t think I’ll be buying an Nvidia GPU any time soon.
