Retail stock is vanishing, board partners reportedly cannot reorder key chips and factories are repurposing cards for AI, fuelling speculation over the future of Nvidia’s flagship gaming GPU.
The dispute over whether Nvidia has ended production of its GeForce RTX 5090 has sharpened as retail stock has dried up and supply-chain signals point to a tighter pipeline. Wccftech reported on 27 October that Nvidia has denied the flagship gaming card has been discontinued, insisting it is still shipping product even as the wider channel struggles to secure supply. At the same time, buyers in many markets are finding the card difficult to locate through normal retail routes, with multiple stores showing it as out of stock.
According to comments shared by German overclocker Der8auer, one unnamed Nvidia board partner says it has not received a formal notice that the RTX 5090 has been discontinued, but it can no longer place orders for the GB202 chip package paired with 32GB of GDDR7 memory. The same partner reportedly said it is unclear whether fresh orders will ever be accepted again, even though reorders had previously been possible during earlier shortages. That detail has added to speculation that Nvidia may be rationing limited GB202 output for higher-margin products such as RTX PRO workstation cards and AI hardware.
Wccftech also cited an unnamed cooler supplier as saying two add-in board makers had already cut orders for RTX 5090 heatsinks in the first quarter of 2027, while no orders had been placed for the second quarter. Separately, Tom’s Hardware has reported that rising GDDR7 costs and broader wafer-price pressure have already pushed RTX 50-series pricing higher in some regions, with Nvidia passing more of those costs on to board partners. Nvidia has said shipment costs for the RTX 5090 and 5090 D v2 have risen because of expensive memory, even though the official recommended price has not changed.
The shortage is feeding a larger secondary market. Tom’s Hardware reported that Chinese factories are stripping brand-new RTX 5090 cards for AI and data-centre use, removing the GPU and GDDR7 memory and mounting them on compact blower-style boards better suited to server racks. Elsewhere, PC Gamer reported that two pallets of RTX 5090 cards belonging to Brazilian distributor Oderço disappeared at Guarulhos International Airport, with one card later appearing on a second-hand marketplace for the equivalent of about $6,400. IT之家 noted that retail pricing has become volatile, with some RTX 5090 listings in China rising from about 15,000 to 16,000 yuan at launch to as much as 55,000 to 60,000 yuan.
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