Rumors have circulated that Nvidia has halted production of its flagship RTX 5090 graphics card, with speculation suggesting the GB202 silicon may be repurposed for data center GPUs. However, Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of Nvidia's GeForce business unit, has refuted these claims.
"The supply chain (capacity) is indeed somewhat constrained, but Nvidia is doing everything it can to get the product on the market," Fisher stated, as reported by 4Gamers. "Although there are other variants of the RTX 5090 (chip), production has not been discontinued, and Nvidia will continue to ship, which is very important."
Despite these assurances, the RTX 5090 has become notably absent from Nvidia's official US marketplace. The card has also reached near-unobtainable status through other channels, with listings typically featuring exorbitant prices from third-party sellers. This scarcity has led to the card being removed from tracking on PC Gamer's best GPU deals page.
This situation presents a perplexing scenario. While a senior Nvidia official confirms production is ongoing, the physical availability of the finished GPUs seems to have vanished. The disappearance from Nvidia's own store, coupled with the general difficulty in finding stock, raises questions about the card's true market presence. Adding to the mystery, reports indicate that two pallets of RTX 5090s, valued at $470,000, have gone missing from a Brazilian airport, suggesting that at least some units are indeed in circulation, albeit through unusual circumstances.
The scarcity has become so pronounced that individual sightings of the RTX 5090 on retail shelves are now noteworthy events, drawing attention on platforms like Reddit and fueling further speculation about its availability. This elusive nature, even with executive confirmation of continued production, makes the RTX 5090 akin to a "Schrödinger's graphics card" – simultaneously existing and not existing for the average consumer.
This uncertainty surrounding the RTX 5090 comes as rumors persist about other potential graphics card releases, such as a 24GB RTX 5080 Super. However, with the broader GPU market facing constraints, including an ongoing memory supply crisis, the availability of high-end graphics cards in the latter half of 2026 remains a significant concern.