DF Direct Q+A: Has RTX 5090 Actually Been Discontinued? GTA 6 PS5/Pro Differences?

Richard Leadbetter (0:02)

Hello there, welcome to the latest edition of the DF Direct Q&A show, and business as usual, you've got questions, and we allegedly, purportedly, may have some answers, or at least some insights. Joining me to deliver some of those insights, first of all, John Lidderman, hello.

John Linneman (0:17)

Top of the morning to you, Rich.

Richard Leadbetter (0:19)

Thank you.

John Linneman (0:21)

Good to see you and your reading on Sevens there.

Richard Leadbetter (0:24)

Yeah.

John Linneman (0:24)

As always.

Richard Leadbetter (0:27)

Of course, Oliver Mackenzie, hi there.

Oliver Mackenzie (0:29)

Hey Rich, pleasure as always. Should be a fun one. Let's get right to it.

Richard Leadbetter (0:34)

Absolutely. We're going to start off with a news topic of sorts, although there is a question attached to it, and it's a news topic which we actually discussed in DF Direct Weekly number 286 Not that you'd know because we dropped the section, which is weird, isn't it? The reason why is that we were discussing the apparent discontinuation of the RTX 5090, the ramifications of that for gamers specifically. The reason we dropped the segment is because after we taped it, Nvidia actually came out during a press event in Taiwan to basically say that RTX 5090 has not been discontinued, despite the sort of mountain of evidence that began with reports from an influencer, actually no, a leaker, let's get this right, Megasize GPU, who was basically saying that Nvidia had stopped allocating the GB202 die for GeForce RTX 5090 cards, including the China D variant. And it was said that those dies would be repurposed to the RTX Pro line. Just to give you some idea of the prices there, in the UK, I believe the cheapest GB202 product there is about 16,000 pounds. So it kind of makes sense from a commercial perspective to divert those dies across to the Pro market, but obviously the gamer market misses out on that. However, obviously, things have changed. Nvidia has flat out denied that the 5090 has been discontinued. They're just citing that there are supply issues at the moment. Some of the evidence in favor of the discontinuation was the fact that the 5090 no longer appeared on Nvidia's own marketplace. I would say to counter that, however, it is on the UK version of the marketplace, and you can buy an Rtx 5090 right now in the UK. Next day delivery indeed. Problem is it costs £6,000, £6,000.

Just a few days earlier, prior to these reports, it was about £4,200. The whole situation is getting out of control at the moment.

Further adding to the controversy was the fact that Nvidia itself did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the discontinuation of the 5090 until that Rtx Spark event that happened at the end of last week. Oliver, I'm going to come to you on this one because this is a tricky one, right? I mean, where do we start on this? Because if a graphics card in the UK has a £1,800 MSRP, that's for the Founders Edition, let's call it around £2,000. That's pretty much what third-party cards started at.

And the fact that it now costs £6,200.

From the gamer's perspective, it is effectively a product that no longer exists. Right. To all but like millionaires and billionaires, the kind of people who would actually be okay spending £6,000 on a graphics card. But at the same time, I mean, why continue to make it if that is the case? If there is this huge, strong AI market, why shouldn't the dyes go to the RTX Pro line? Why is Nvidia continuing it even?

Oliver Mackenzie (4:05)

I mean, that's a question. That's a big question. It's a question that could probably be applied broadly to most of Nvidia's gaming efforts, at least you'd think because a lot of that capacity could be better served in some sense or another. Maybe not those specific lines, but just in an overall allocative sense.

That way money better spent towards the AI market. But Nvidia seems to want to continue to hold a foothold in the gaming market. GeForce is very important to Nvidia, and that would certainly be one way they could go here.

But it seems to be the way they're not choosing to go with this particular card, at least at the moment. Now, I'm not really sure what to make of this whole situation because it could just be the case that 5090 cards are getting snapped up because people are buying 5090s for AI work. Indeed, I know a few people who have done this, who have built 5090-based servers for local inference that do put meaningful demands, I would think, on the supply of GeForce 5090s that are in the market for consumers as well, driving up the price. It could also be, you know, Nvidia, I guess, has not confirmed or denied the extent to which they might be moving maybe more GBT02 supply towards professional products, towards the RTX Pro 6000 GPU, which, like you said, reaches $16,000 at the moment. That is a card with much more VRAM, but it also sells for a much higher price. And certainly Nvidia is capturing the entirety of that price, right? It's not going through some third party, which may be jacking up the price further relative to what Nvidia is getting on that end. So I'm not really quite sure to make the situation. Maybe there's a mix of both factors. Maybe it's more one factor than the other factor.