Nvidia had a massive presence at CES 2026, but if you were hoping for good, or any, news about the future of gaming GPUs, it was sorely lacking. As has become the case for most of the tech world, Team Green's focus was on AI.
Which makes a new leak from Tech PowerUp even more poignant, as it reported Nvidia has allegedly told vendor partners that the GeForce RTX 50-series SUPER GPUs were being delayed indefinitely.
Missing from CES
Prior to CES, it was rumored Nvidia would release the mid-cycle refresh at least by CES, if not in December. A CES 2026 release would fit since Nvidia typically launches the SUPER models 12 months after the release of the base models. The original RTX 50-series debuted at CES 2025.
However, a late September leak claimed that the cards were delayed but would at least be announced at CES 2026. It was speculated that they would still come out in the first three months of the new year.
The closest thing we got at the tech show was an extreme RTX 5090 GPU that won't even fit in most computers. That was a heavily modded version built by MSI that only 1,300 people will even get the opportunity to purchase.
From the jacket's zipper
Even in a closed-door interview with CEO Jensen Huang, he remained mum on the future of Nvidia's gaming GPUs. At one point, Huang commented that Nvidia could bring the current generation of AI technology to older CUDA cores.
“That’ll require a fair amount of engineering, but it’s also within the realm of possibility. I’ll go back and take a look at this," Huang said in response to a question about Nvidia rereleasing the RTX 3060 to combat the memory shortage.
It's possible that Nvidia is trying to transition its GPUs from the current Blackwell architecture to the new Rubin GPU architecture revealed at CES. However, we may not see that until the RTX 60 series.
AI to blame
According to the TechPowerUp leak, there are three reasons why Nvidia is delaying the SUPERs. The most obvious and easiest to blame is AI and the insatiable need for GPUs and RAM to power the data centers running various models. RAM prices are already soaring and may not improve until 2028.
Many companies like Nvidia, Micron and Samsung are leaning into the AI side of things while profits are skyrocketing for them. Which also means that VRAM prices for GPUs are also going up, a real problem for modern graphics cards that use GDDR7 VRAM.
Finally, the rumor suggests that because AMD didn't announce any new consumer GPUs for 2026, the RTX 50 series doesn't need an update since it will remain competitive with whatever is already on the market. Right now, the top AMD RDNA 4 GPU is the Radeon RX 9070 XT, which isn't getting an update.
Tom's Guide reached out to Nvidia for comment on the alleged delay and will update this article if the company responds.
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