nVidia is currently in spin control. Link: https://www.theverge.com/news/618748/nvidia-admits-the-rtx-5080-is-affecte NVIDIA's Response Below: “Upon further investigation, we’ve identified that an early production build of GeForce RTX 5080 GPUs were also affected by the same issue*.* Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement*,” Nvidia GeForce global PR director Ben Berraondo tells The Verge.* In response to The Verge’s questions, Berraondo adds that “no other Nvidia GPUs have been affected” — we specifically asked about the upcoming RTX 5070, and he says it’s not affected either. Nor should any cards be affected that were produced more recently: “The production anomaly has been corrected,” he says. In case you’re wondering, he also told us that Nvidia was not aware of these issues before it launched these GPUs. Here's NVIDIA's Full Amended Statement: We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D, RTX 5080, and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected. [Channeling WXYZ] Tom's take on this. That's the last official statement from nVidia but there are field reports that some cards are missing 8 ROPS, not 1, and we also have field reports that retail are being asked to return entire runs of RTX 50 laptops. If there were one or two reports of laptop returns, it would be a lot easier to dismiss this rumor. GPUs are a religion. It's been clear since late December that RDNA 4 is going to significantly close the gap between AMD and nVidia. Saying so online makes an enemy out of every nVidia GPU owner. They declared the 5000 series superior to RDNA 4 before RDNA 4 was ever tested. So... somebody is lying. In this case, I think nearly everyone is lying. nVidia has a problem. That's a fact. nVidia has a recall and they have also said they are going to sue the people who have said there is a recall because there is no recall. I suspect this is going to be one of those events that hindsight will show could have been easily handled with a few thousand replacement parts. From there, they could carry on and it would be quickly forgotten. I believe their entrenchment in a lie will make things much worse. Lastly, the 5000 series has some problems but it is still an extremely impressive product. Most of the problems will be fixed over time, like every other GPU release. Some of the problems will be fixed with the 6000 series and that is said to be sooner than later (maybe late 2025 with another paper launch). nVidia has a shot at spinning this because they have delivered so few parts to consumers. The 5000 series was the least substantive paper launch we've seen in 25 years so we are going to see if they can put this genie back in the bottle. If they could spin up production and flood the market with correctly configured parts, that would help but that's going to cut into their AI production which is their bread and butter. We are about to see what nVidia is made of: take care of customers to preserve corporate image or go for maximum profit and keep all wafer production for AI parts.
For me, the key to analyzing nVidia is to consider how the company would be valued if it lost dominance in the high end GPU space. What if they swapped market positions with AMD and ended up with 25~50% market share? Short term - Essentially no difference. They are better off selling AI parts and they are wafer constrained so their GPU market share could go to zero with no change to corporate valuation. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they walked away from GPUs entirely after Rubin (project after Blackwell). Medium term - The GPU impact to medium term will vary with AI demand. If AI demand continues to be strong, GPUs will not only be irrelevant, they will hold nVidia back from selling higher margin AI parts. Long term - The long term future (3 years out) belongs to integrated graphics and AMD. The only way nVidia will be able to compete in the gaming space is if they can produce a compelling APU. Blocking nVidia from purchasing ARM in 2022 removed nVidia's ability to compete with AMD for console market share. I still think it might be possible for nVidia to produce a GPU chiplet and sell that to an APU complex integrator but I consider it a fact that blocking nVidia from buying ARM in 2020~2022 was a terrible decision that will hurt the world on the long term. Here's an interesting question. What if nVidia continues to dominate the high-end gaming GPU space? I believe nVidia's dominance of GPUs will come at short and medium term cost. The more GPUs they make, the less AI parts they can make. Long term, TSMC should be able to ramp up and produce sufficient parts for all market segments but these things take time.
This all makes perfect sense. Like you, I have arrived at the same conclusion. Much to the extreme dismay of gamers, Nvidia is following their fiduciary responsibility: make as much money as possible. The fact that the entire world is dependent on TSMC is just mind blowing. The U.S. doesn't blink an eye dropping a few trillion to blow up the Middle East for absolutely no gain, but using that money instead to catch up to TSMC and be more globally competitive?
Good lord, Rubin and Rubin Ultra look like absolute beasts! Nvidia announces Rubin GPUs in 2026, Rubin Ultra in 2027, Feynman also added to roadmap https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...gpus-in-2026-rubin-ultra-in-2027-feynam-after
After seeing the robot demo, the price here is justified and this will look like a good dip buying opportunity.
There is no way tariffs hit the chip sector here, AI needs to be the most likely sector that will be pushed, and they need chips. I dont have any dry powder, but if I did I would not mind buying some panic here.
For what it's worth, I do not believe nVidia is the future. I'm not predicting they will go out of business tomorrow. I just think they've lost a whole lot of mind share in GPU and their dominance in AI is not as strong as it may seem. They are limited by TSMC capacity, AMD is ramping quickly, and Intel is just dumb enough to stop working on everything that matters and bet their future on AI. Everyone with an NPU will be Hell bent on global domination. nVidia used to dominate but I believe those days are over, based on nVidia internal corporate culture. Again, I'm not saying Intel will go all in on AI, just that I wouldn't put it past them.
Bold words indeed. I will give you that it was inevitable that competition would begin to really rally around taking down the king, but I am not convinced it is that case - at least not yet. I am seeing reports about 1-bit AI models on CPUs and using lesser hardware on DeepSeek-esque models. The moat is not as deep and wide as it once was, and I think the Rubin rollout and orders will be a big tell. I also think you are very right about execution and corporate culture, at least as it is right now. For all we know, Jensen might be raging and on a redemption rampage due to Blackwell and its woes. He's that kind of CEO. Again, Rubin is the key for me. As for my investing strategy, I will compare NVDA to VUG. As long as it outperforms VUG in one year increments, I will keep fully invested. If another company emerges as the next Nvidia, I'll jump on that, but until then, all it has to do is outperform VUG. Can't ask for more than that.
Quite a bit of Blackwell product (RTX 50X0 series) volume is well up in the channel. It just started this week. I wonder if this means AI demand has been satisfied.
It sounds like xAI's Colossus GPUs have been fulfilled. That's probably why there is more nVidia product in the channel.
Word from the channel is that nVidia midrange GPUs are not selling out at MSRP. Wild, if true. AMD GPUs are selling out above MSRP.
Too little VRAM, too much FU to gamers. Nvidia deserves the bad PR this generation. Blackwell has not been a good launch in either consumer or datacenter realms.
