Report: Nvidia has ended production of its top Turing RTX cards

Rumor mill: It’s no secret that Nvidia’s Ampere-based, consumer graphics cards are launching later this year, but what does that mean for its current crop of RTX cards? According to a new report, the company is discontinuing some of its high-end Turing products: the RTX 2070, 2070 Super, 2080 Super, and 2080 Ti.

The claim, which comes from Chinese publication IThome (via Tom’s Hardware), does carry some weight. Mass production of the Ampere cards is expected to begin next month, with some of the products rumored to launch in September. Nvidia will likely want to discontinue its current top models as the RTX 30xxx series replaces them.

A leak last month revealed some of the upcoming Ampere cards’ alleged specs, which you can see below. All three launch products are said to be based on the GA 102 GPU and use GDDR6X memory. We’ve also heard that these high-end cards might use Samsung’s 8nm fab process, rather than TSMC’s 7nm alternative.

IThome also claims that the price of top Turing cards will see an increase, as Nvidia allegedly suggested the hike to its partners. This recommendation was reportedly prompted by a renewed rise in demand from miners—something that brings back bad memories for PC gamers—and insufficient production capacity from TSMC.

Nvidia will want buyers to choose its new, more expensive flagships over the last generation, of course, so it might start withdrawing the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti from market soon. IThome predicts the RTX 3080 and 3080 Ti will be announced on September 17, so we could discover the largest US chipmaker’s plans in just over two months.