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Nvidia’s RTX 40-series is coming to an end

By Monica J. White Published November 12, 2024

Three RTX 4080 cards sitting on a pink background. — Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Out with the old, in with the new. According to Board Channels, Nvidia has now halted production for nearly all of its best graphics cards as it shifts focus to the RTX 50-series. Only one GPU remains in production, and some of the cards that are the most in demand are no longer being produced.

Nvidia hasn’t officially announced that it’s sunsetting the RTX 40-series, but we’ve been hearing more and more reports that imply that might be the case. The RTX 4090 was among the first cards to go out of production, and the discontinuation appears to have immediately affected the markets. Nvidia’s behemoth flagship was hard to come by at the best of times, and now, as no more new units are being produced, it’s safe to assume that this situation won’t improve. The cheapest RTX 4090 I could find on Amazon costs nearly $2,000, but you can still snag one for .

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The RTX 4090 was an oddity within the RTX 40-series, selling above its recommended list price (MSRP) for most of its tenure, so it’s not exactly strange to see it selling for $2,000. However, this situation might now slowly begin to affect the rest of the lineup, as Board Channels (shared by VideoCardz) reports that most of the other Ada Lovelace chips are now discontinued, too.

The RTX 4070 Super on a pink background. — Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

The AD102, AD103, AD104, and AD106 chips are reportedly no longer being produced. The only outlier is the AD107, which is a budget GPU found in cards like the RTX 4050 or the RTX 4060, as well as its laptop version. It makes sense that this one would remain available, given that it might be a while before Nvidia launches the mainstream laptop GPUs for the RTX 50-series.

What does this mean if you’re interested in buying a GPU? Right now, not much. Even if Nvidia did discontinue the majority of the RTX 40-series, these cards are still available to buy. But as time goes on, stock levels will dwindle, and buying them new will become pricier. The exact same thing has happened to the RTX 30-series, making those GPUs not worth buying when new.

Most sources now claim that Nvidia will launch the RTX 50-series in January 2025, with the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 being available that same month.

Monica J. White

Former Computing Writer

Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…

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Computing

You can now buy eight RTX 5090s for over $50,000

Comino Grando server.

It's true that we're all waiting for the release of Nvidia's best graphics cards, but ... not like this. The RTX 5090 made a surprise appearance in a GPU server made by Comino, a company that deals with data center design and construction. Although still unannounced by Nvidia, the GPU can now be preordered directly from the manufacturer, but not by itself -- and at a whopping price of around $5,000 per GPU.

Just to clarify: No, Nvidia's RTX 50-series is still not here, and as of yet, Nvidia hasn't even confirmed that there will be an RTX 5090 at all. However, Comino opened up preorders for its next-gen Grando Server equipped with either six or eight RTX 5090 GPUs. This is worrying news for gamers because the RTX 5090 was always meant to be a consumer card. Still, the reality is that the RTX 4090 remained in high demand throughout its tenure because of its AI capabilities, and the RTX 5090 is only going to be even better in that regard.

Computing

Nvidia may have found a new way to bypass GPU export restrictions

The RTX 4090 graphics card sitting on a table with a dark green background.

Chinese gamers are expected to have limited access to Nvidia's best graphics card due to strict export restrictions. However, Nvidia may have found a way around it without cutting down its flagship GPU. A new leak suggests that the RTX 5090D will have the same hardware specifications as the worldwide version, and the solution lies in firmware adjustments.

As a quick refresher, the "D" in RTX 5090D stands for "Dragon." It marks GPUs made by Nvidia to bypass the export restrictions imposed by the U.S. on China, which limit the sale of high-performance graphics processors. We first saw it appear in the RTX 4090D as a remedy for the fact that the base RTX 4090 exceeds the performance thresholds set by these regulations.

Computing

Nvidia CEO in 1997: ‘We need to kill Intel’

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at GTC

Those headline above includes strong words from the maker of the best graphics cards you can buy, and they have extra significance considering where Nvidia sits today in relation to Intel. But in 1997, things were a bit different. The quote comes from the upcoming book The Nvidia Way, written by columnist Tae Kim, and was shared as part of an excerpt ahead of the book's release next month.

The words from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang came as part of an all-hands meeting at the company in 1997 following the launch of the RIVA 128. This was prior to the release of the GeForce 256, when Nvidia finally coined the term "GPU," and it was a precarious time for the new company. Shortly following the release of the RIVA 128, Intel launched its own i740, which came with an 8MB frame buffer. The RIVA 128 came with only a 4MB frame buffer.