Information gathered from forum Board Channels claims that Nvidia’s 16-series GPUs will be discontinued shortly. This could mark the end of Nvidia’s GTX branding.
Most of the recent news coming out of Nvidia has been related to the supposedly upcoming Super refresh of its 40 series of graphics cards, or its ongoing battle to create chips that overcome USA-to-China export regulations. Now word has emerged that some of its older models of GPUs are being axed.
As reported by VideoCardz, the information comes via Board Channels, a forum used by Nvidia’s hardware partners. These reports indicate that the final orders for the GTX 16 series will be completed in December, and no further orders will be taken from the first quarter of 2024. The GTX 1660 Super has already been discontinued, but this will mark the end for the GTX 1650 and GTX 1630 GPUs as well, ending the entire line of 16 series cards. The GTX 1630 series was only announced in June of 2022, and if the reports are true, the card will only have a lifespan of one and a half years.
The end of Turing GPU architecture
The 16 series was created using the Turing architecture, similar to the 20 series of GPUs. Nvidia’s strategy at that time was to split the product line between the premium RTX 20 series and the more budget-friendly GTX 16 series.
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If news of the discontinuation of the 16 series is accurate, this will leave the RTX 3050 as the lowest-specced card in Nvidia’s entire product range, and that card retails at a price of $230. This will leave a gap in the super budget range, as Nvidia will now have no current cards in the sub-$200 price bracket once the supply of GTX 1650 and 1630 cards has been depleted.
This could mark the end of the GTX branding altogether – moving forward, every Nvidia GPU will also feature RT cores.