Nvidia just threw PC gamers a curveball. The company's highly anticipated RTX 50-series Super refresh, expected at CES 2026 in January, won't be happening anytime soon. According to The Information, Nvidia managers made the call in December to delay the new cards and slash production of existing RTX 50-series GPUs - cards already sold out at most retailers. The reason? A global RAM shortage that's forcing the chipmaker to pick sides, and AI is winning by a landslide.
Nvidia is making a calculated bet, and gamers are getting the short end. The company's decision to scrap its RTX 50-series Super refresh isn't just a minor delay - it's a strategic pivot that reveals where the silicon giant sees its future. When managers huddled in December to assess the ongoing RAM shortage, the choice became clear: feed the AI beast or keep gamers happy. They chose AI.
The timing stings. Nvidia's RTX 50-series cards have been flying off shelves since launch, with retailers struggling to keep them in stock. Now, according to The Information's reporting, the company is actually slashing production of those same cards. It's a head-scratching move until you look at the numbers.
Nvidia's Q3 2026 earnings tell the story in stark terms. Data center revenue - driven almost entirely by AI chips powering everything from ChatGPT to enterprise machine learning - brought in $51.2 billion. That's out of $57 billion total. Gaming revenue did grow 30% year-over-year, but it's become a rounding error in Nvidia's financial picture. When you're printing money from AI accelerators, gaming GPUs start looking like a distraction.
The global RAM shortage is the immediate catalyst, but it's exposing a deeper shift in Nvidia's priorities. High-bandwidth memory - the specialized RAM used in both gaming GPUs and AI accelerators - is in critically short supply. With production capacity maxed out and demand through the roof, Nvidia has to choose which products get the limited components. AI chips, which command premium prices and feed into multi-billion-dollar data center contracts, are winning that internal battle every time.
