RTX 5090 slips from US retail and Nvidia marketplace as GB202 supply shifts to AI, TechRadar reports

According to TechRadar, a leaker claimed a few days earlier that Nvidia is diverting all GB202 Blackwell chips to AI, or RTX Pro, graphics cards. GB202 is the processor used in the RTX 5090. TechRadar said the card is already difficult to buy in the US, where no major retailer has stock and third-party sellers list it at close to $10,000.

TechRadar also reported that Micro Center lists the Blackwell flagship as “not carried,” and that Nvidia has removed all mention of the RTX 5090 from its own GPU marketplace, although the card is still mentioned elsewhere on Nvidia’s site. A search for the RTX 5090 on that marketplace no longer returns the card, and the highest-end graphics card listed is now the RTX 5080. TechRadar credited Wccftech with spotting the change being flagged on Reddit.

TechRadar described those changes as about as clear an indication as possible, short of an Nvidia announcement, that the RTX 5090 has been pushed out because Nvidia needs GB202 chips where they are most profitable. RTX Pro GPUs carry a higher premium, TechRadar said. If the RTX 5090 has been scrapped, the RTX 5080 becomes Nvidia’s flagship GeForce GPU once existing RTX 5090 stock is depleted. TechRadar reported that the RTX 5080 is already around $1,800 on Newegg in the US and £1,450 on Overclockers in the UK at the lowest prices, and said the card has already seen price increases.

TechRadar pointed to a Reddit thread where one comment said, “If you want a 5080 better buy one while you can still afford one.” It also noted a separate rumor that Nvidia may release a long-speculated RTX 5080 Super with 24GB of memory, which would essentially replace the discontinued RTX 5090 and could also replace the vanilla 16GB RTX 5080. That would leave the RTX 5080 Super as the sole high-end GeForce card, well above the RTX 5070 Ti. TechRadar said an early 2027 launch would suggest the next-gen RTX 6000 family is further away than some rumors believe, with the Super card acting as a stopgap for the Blackwell range. Memory supply concerns may also affect that strategy, TechRadar said, citing predictions that the situation could worsen next year and continue into 2028.

On the software side, TechRadar said Nvidia is focusing more on DLSS and neural rendering, with DLSS 5 out and frame generation receiving a significant boost. TechRadar argued that the investment shows Nvidia is not abandoning gaming GPUs entirely, but also said the combination of hardware moves and software focus suggests a slowdown in gaming GPU development.