Nvidia gaming GPUs an afterthought as AI generates mountains of cash — RTX 50-series shortages mentioned, not explained

Nvidia
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia announced its fourth-quarter earnings last night, hitting a record full-year revenue of $130.5 billion — a 114% year-over-year increase owing to the high demand for its AI chips. But despite its massive sales growth, many gamers and enthusiasts feel they’re being ignored, especially as the company only mentioned the RTX 50-series shortage but did not explain why it was happening nor say how it was dealing with the problem.

Nvidia Revenue by Segment

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Team Green’s bread and butter used to be gaming GPUs, with the segment making up most of its sales until 2022. However, the launch of ChatGPT made artificial intelligence more accessible to the public, and many tech companies started spending billions of dollars to buy the hardware needed to train these models — such as the data center GPUs that Nvidia makes. Because of this massive demand, the company soon became the world’s most valuable by market capitalization.

Nvidia’s data center business grew from $10.61 billion in December 2021, which accounted for 39.43% of its revenue, to a whopping $115.19 billion some three years later, making up 88.27% of sales. In comparison, its gaming GPU business shrunk to $11.35 billion and 8.7% from $12.46 billion and 46.31% of the revenue share in the same time frame.

Nvidia Revenue by Segment Percentage

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Given that the company is hitting these record numbers, especially in the data center side of its business, it doesn’t quite make sense why we’re experiencing several problems with the RTX 50-series GPUs. Aside from the lack of supply, with one retailer saying that it could take up to 16 weeks to fulfill pre-orders, there’s also the melting power connector issue making a comeback with the RTX 5090, missing ROPs, and even BSOD and black screen issues (which, thankfully, have just been addressed with a driver update).

While it’s understandable that its AI business is where the money is at right now, it’s just frustrating to many people why Nvidia could not prepare for the massive demand that its RTX 50-series GPUs had upon launch. The chip shortages during the launch of the RTX 30-series and RTX 40-series GPUs were explained by the global supply chain crisis brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. But with silicon supply chains relatively stable right now, one cannot help but wonder why Nvidia isn’t just making enough chips for the consumer side of its business.

At the very least, it should have anticipated and manufactured enough chips to avoid the shortage that we’re experiencing now — which it can definitely afford to do. After all, if there’s an abundance of RTX 50 series GPUs, then we don’t have to resort to lining up for hours (if not days) at retailers, joining lotteries just to get the opportunity to spend money, or dealing with scalpers that are selling its products for twice or even thrice the MSRP.

It’s great that Nvidia is flush with so much cash right now from its data center business that it could afford to spend more on research and development. However, it’s disappointing millions of its core fan base because many feel that the company no longer prioritizes PC gamers, especially with the botched launch of the RTX 50-series.

Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

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  • Kentmos
    And bear in mind: If it hasn't been for gamers and game devs, they wouldn't be at this level in the first place! The fact that nVidia now priorities AI instead of the group of people that brought them here in the first place, shows an heartbreaking illojalality towards the prime baseline of income through all theese years! Very sad to see, and very disappointing although I understand why they go where the money goes. But the stench of greed is overwhelming! 😟
    Reply
  • Neilbob
    I'm sure Nvidia are, at this point, only providing these (rather lackadaisical attempts at) gaming GPUs as an act of tokenism, just so they can still say they are a 'gaming company'. They know there's still an excess of people willing to drag themselves over hot coals in order to acquire them at about 3x the rate of inflation compared to 10 years ago.

    If it wasn't for that, they'd be only too happy to divert even the shavings off the edge of the silicon wafer towards Auugh Aaayyye. Those shavings would probably still net them more dosh than a full-fledged xx90.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Kentmos said:
    And bear in mind: If it hasn't been for gamers and game devs, they wouldn't be at this level in the first place!
    I'd offer a counterpoint to this: the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 wouldn't be so powerful, if not for AI (i.e. the demand created by it). I know the pricing aspect is harsh, but those gamers who can afford the cost of entry are really getting a bit of a lift from the AI market, here. And that's without even considering DLSS, but just talking about raw compute power and memory bandwidth.

    In particular, the RTX 4090 really broke away from historic trends in GPU performance. The main reason why the RTX 5090 isn't a bigger upgrade is partly because of that, but also because demand for 3 nm-class nodes is too high for them to build an even more powerful GPU on it, right now.
    One neat thing about that graph is how, if you fit a line to the Nvidia points, it looks like the RX 7900 XTX would've intersected it.

    Neilbob said:
    I'm sure Nvidia are, at this point, only providing these (rather lackadaisical attempts at) gaming GPUs as an act of tokenism, just so they can still say they are a 'gaming company'.
    Um, I think perhaps a bigger part of it is that they sell workstation and server GPUs that use the same chips as some of the larger consumer GPUs. Those are typically used for AI inferencing, at least in server deployments.

    If such big gaming GPUs continue to dovetail with Nvidia's strategy for inferencing hardware, then I'd expect the 5090's successor to be another big jump. We'll see.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Kentmos said:
    And bear in mind: If it hasn't been for gamers and game devs, they wouldn't be at this level in the first place! The fact that nVidia now priorities AI instead of the group of people that brought them here in the first place, shows an heartbreaking illojalality towards the prime baseline of income through all theese years! Very sad to see, and very disappointing although I understand why they go where the money goes. But the stench of greed is overwhelming! 😟
    Current NVidia shareholders are not sleeping on mattresses of cash because of gamers. Before AI, the stock price was languishing under $150 after peaking over $300 during the etherum mining boom. Keep in mind that the current $120 price is a result of a 10x split last June which my other values don't reflect.
    Reply
  • Neilbob
    bit_user said:
    Um, I think perhaps a bigger part of it is that they sell workstation and server GPUs that use the same chips as some of the bigger consumer GPUs. Those are typically used for inferencing, at least in server deployments.

    If such big gaming GPUs continue to dovetail with Nvidia's strategy for inferencing hardware, then I'd expect the 5090's successor to be another big jump. We'll see.
    Bleh! Don't go saying things that contain logic, common sense or positive outlooks. Let me just be happy here in my Cynical Old Man Couch, in my Cynical Old Man Corner, just how I like it! 👨‍🦳
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Kentmos said:
    And bear in mind: If it hasn't been for gamers and game devs, they wouldn't be at this level in the first place! The fact that nVidia now priorities AI instead of the group of people that brought them here in the first place, shows an heartbreaking illojalality towards the prime baseline of income through all theese years! Very sad to see, and very disappointing although I understand why they go where the money goes. But the stench of greed is overwhelming! 😟
    Think about it this way.
    Now Nvidia has a ton of cash to put into research and development for both AI and gaming.
    Despite how many may feel, Gaming and AI can coexist together, not in spite of the other but because of the other due to both of them sharing the same resources and technologies.
    This may not be beneficial for gamers in the short term, but it definitely is in the long term!

    Some of you may cry, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!
    -Lord Jensen Huang
    Reply
  • Gururu
    Such a short-term growth spurt. Is the anticipated turn around for data center hardware going to keep them sustainable?
    Reply
  • SomeoneElse23
    Remember, public corporations exist for one reason: to "increase shareholder value".

    Everything else takes a secondary role.
    Reply
  • A Stoner
    SomeoneElse23 said:
    Remember, public corporations exist for one reason: to "increase shareholder value".

    Everything else takes a secondary role.
    That is what is should be. Unfortunately, lately, that has not always been the case.
    Reply
  • JTWrenn
    I am just waiting for the robotics side to take off. It is the next step after the ai infrastructure is built. Going mobile with that AI....and killing us all.
    Reply