- Nvidia commented on GPU supply woes in a Q&A at CES 2026
- CEO Jensen Huang admitted that bringing back older GeForce GPUs could be a possible solution
- However, a more likely avenue could be to make new AI tech (elements of DLSS) available to older graphics cards
Nvidia might consider bringing back some older GPUs as part of a strategy to deal with the current supply and pricing pressures around graphics cards – and another possibility is to bring frame-rate-boosting tech (DLSS and the features therein) to more past-gen models.
Tom’s Hardware questioned the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, directly during a Q&A session at CES 2026.
Our sister site noted the current situation around spiking gaming GPU prices – and supply and production woes, bound up with the rising cost of video RAM – then asked Huang: “Do you think that maybe spinning up production on some of the older generation GPUs, on older process nodes where there might be more available production capacity, would help that, or maybe also increasing the supply of GPUs with lower amounts of DRAM? Are there steps that could be taken, or any specific color you could give us on that?”
Huang replied: “Yeah, possibly, and we could possibly, depending on which generation, we could also bring the latest-generation AI technology to the previous-generation GPUs, and that will 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. It’s a good idea.”
So, there are two parts to this answer. First, the CEO acknowledges it’s a possibility that older models could be resurrected as a stopgap to fill the current holes in GPU supply that are causing price rises.
Second, the other potential route for Nvidia is to use the “latest-generation AI technology” with older ranges of GeForce graphics cards. And by that, Huang presumably means the exclusive features for RTX 5000 GPUs, as seen with some pieces of the frame-rate-boosting puzzle that is DLSS 4 (which just got a bump to DLSS 4.5 at CES 2026).
Analysis: vague and cagey
This is a cagey answer, of course, and you can almost hear the cogs whirring in the background of Huang’s mind as to exactly how to couch his response.
Given the tentative phrasing, it feels more like the idea of firing up production lines to make old GPUs that were previously discontinued is a remote possibility, frankly. And that a more likely sticking plaster is to bring DLSS features to more GPUs in an effort to regain some popularity with the gaming public, who are again getting the short end of the graphics card pricing stick thanks to external circumstances beyond their control (the AI boom in this case).
Still, this is at least an admission that the concept of older Nvidia GPUs returning to the fray hasn’t been completely ruled out, in theory.
Regarding helping out older GeForce boards on the software side, we’ve already seen some movement on that score, with DLSS 4.5, which has just been revealed as mentioned, providing a 2nd-generation transformer model to older RTX GPUs. That new transformer model is fully compatible with RTX 4000 as well as RTX 5000 graphics cards, but it works with RTX 3000 and 2000 GPUs to a lesser extent. (Although in the latter case, early testing shows it’s considerably less performant to the tune of a 20% drop – but that still represents a boost, even if it’s a more modest uplift).
And that highlights the central catch with making cutting-edge AI-powered features available to older Nvidia GPUs. Namely that it’s a lot of work – or as Huang puts it, such efforts “require a fair amount of engineering” – to get that kind of functionality working okay on past-gen graphics cards so it provides a notable boost (and no additional wrinkles).
Still, there’s certainly been hope from some quarters that frame generation could eventually come to RTX 3000 models (and Multi Frame Generation might be made available outside of RTX 5000 GPUs), but hardware limitations could prove too much of a blocker to overcome.
Nvidia is at least making some positive noises about potential solutions for now, but it all remains rather vague. Meanwhile, the prices of Nvidia GPUs are climbing the walls and going through the roof – much like the collective temper of PC gamers – with an RTX 5090 flagship hitting frankly ridiculous levels (mirroring system RAM). Other models like the RTX 5080 are being hit hard too, and rumors abound regarding further supply woes to make this situation worse.
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