Nvidia is no longer a PC gaming company. Get used to it

I’ve been buying Nvidia graphics cards exclusively for nearly 30 years, and I may well continue—if Nvidia will let me. But even I’ve had to make peace with the fact that Nvidia is no longer in the business of supporting PC gaming. I’m not sure it ever will be again.

I was thinking about this while listening to the latest episode of The Full Nerd, in which Adam and his fellow cohosts discuss what it means that Nvidia may soon stop selling the RTX 5090 entirely. The news comes courtesy of a Twitter (sorry, X) post from a known leaker with a decent track record, so while you should take it with a grain of salt it seems like there’s a strong possibility it will prove true.

And honestly, it doesn’t seem that surprising when you consider that the RTX 5090 launched with an MSRP of $1,999 yet regularly sold for upwards of $5,000, due in no small part to massive demand from AI-pilled coders and companies looking to take advantage of that sweet, sweet 32GB of DDR7 memory. A casual search of the major retailers this week turned up precisely zero 5090 cards available for purchase, even at that exorbitant price, and I suspect that will remain true for the foreseeable future.

It can feel heartbreaking if you’re dedicated to 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 plenty good enough for high-res, high-speed PC gaming. Heck, the same leak that suggests the RTX 5090 is done for also claims that Nvidia will launch a new model of RTX 5080 with 24GB of DDR7 memory, which should offer a noticeable 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 gaming, the better. Don’t get me wrong, Nvidia will continue to make new desktop graphics cards and talk a big game about how it values PC game players first and foremost. But the numbers have shown otherwise for some time, and that’s likely to continue for years to come.

After all, the AI-driven explosion of demand for high-end GPUs and silicon helped Nvidia become the first trillion-dollar chip company, and recent financial reports and SEC filings show the company’s revenue from data center products is now 4-5x that of its consumer hardware revenue. That’s presumably part of the reason why the company recently stopped reporting GPU sales as a discrete category entirely, instead lumping all GPU hardware sales (for both commercial and retail customers) into one category on its balance sheet alongside robotics, automotive and telecom products.

So please, for your own mental health, I’m begging you: do not give in to Jensen’s sales pitches at the next Nvidia press conference. I believe the company will keep making new graphics cards for the foreseeable future, but only to hold on to its commanding hold of the GPU market and keep up appearances while it milks the AI boom for all its worth. If AI demand collapses the way crypto seemed to crash a few years ago, maybe we’ll see Nvidia take up the mantle of being a PC gaming company once again.

But I don’t expect that will happen any time soon, and making peace with that has done wonders for the stress I feel right now as a frustrated fan of PC gaming. It’s helped me realize that I don’t need the latest and greatest hardware to have a blast gaming on my PC, and the same can be true for you. Take this time to play some games in your Steam(ing) pile of shame, get deeper into Linux gaming and explore all the other cool things you can do without an RTX 5090. Because I don’t know that high-end GPUs will be affordable for regular folks 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 in the near future.

In this week’s episode of The Full Nerd

This week your regular host Adam Patrick Murray was joined by PCWorld’s Brad Chacos and Michael Crider on episode 419 of The Full Nerd to chat about the rumored end of the GeForce RTX 5090, open-source Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives and the pending launch of RTX Spark laptops.

And of course, the trio also make time to answer your questions from the PCWorld Discord and the live chat about everything from the future of PC game streaming to the durability of flash drives. Make sure to check it out, and tune in to next week’s episode to get your questions answered on the air!

Nerd news of the week

From some fun new ideas about where to place your GPU to an elucidating new interview that reveals the PC gaming habits of one of Hollywood’s movers and shakers, here’s some fun nerd news I found around the web for you this week!

• Modder discovers unusual GPU placement that lowers hotspot temps by 19 degrees: Who knew putting the GPU up front could make such a difference in terms of cooling?
• Nvidia GPU prices spike in Japan; prices up to 41% higher than Amazon US: Photos of Nvidia GPU prices in Japan are a bit foreboding (and hopefully not a sign of things to come here in the States), with the price of mid-range 50-series GPUs spiking 25-40 percent.
• Legendary FPS level designer Richard “Levelord” Gray dies at 68: Pour one out for a real one and a legend in the early PC gaming space, a veteran game maker who worked on everything from Blood and Duke Nukem 3D to Half-Life: Opposing Force and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. RIP Levelord!
• Ben Affleck lost 3 years to Starcraft, has strong Valorant opinions, and mourns RTSes as a genre: Who knew there were regular Doom breaks during the Good Will Hunting writing process? This is a pretty interesting (and humanizing) interview with PC gaming fan Ben Affleck…but now I can’t help wondering how Matt Damon felt about his friend’s PC gaming habit.

That’s it for your Full Nerd newsletter this week! Until next week, be sure to bookmark PCWorld and keep an eye on the YouTube channel for our latest videos straight out of the PCWorld studio. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.