The end of an era: Nvidia definitively draws a line under its GeForce GTX

After almost 5 years of good and loyal service for their oldest versions, the GeForce GTX 16xx is no longer manufactured by Nvidia. The end of an era: this prefix has been worn by the Chameleon brand for over a decade among the general public.

The graphics card landscape is constantly evolving, and a recent announcement from Nvidia marks a significant turning point. After dominating the mid-range market for years, the company has officially confirmed that it will no longer produce new GeForce GTX graphics cards. This decision signifies the definitive end of an era and paves the way for the continued dominance of the newer GeForce RTX series.

We learned last December that Nvidia was starting to plan an end of production for its GeForce GTX 16xx graphics cards, somewhere in the first quarter of 2024. At the beginning of March, it seems that the firm has taken action, having removed this range from its general public catalog, and suspended all deliveries concerning it – at least according to a specialized site.

“According to Nvidia's GPU roadmap, the GTX 16 series was completely discontinued in Q1 2024. Currently, all remaining GPU stocks have been allocated to AIC manufacturers until their stocks are exhausted ”, we learn from the Board Channels Forums, cited by WCCFTech.

"In other words, Nvidia has officially stopped production of GTX 16 GPUs, declaring the historic mission to discontinue GTX 1660S, 1660, 1650, and 1630 graphics cards. In the future, neither Nvidia nor major AIC manufacturers will provide GTX 16 GPUs to distribution partners. It is estimated that the remaining stock of GTX 16 cards on the market will be consumed over the next 1-3 months,” it reads further.

Nvidia France explains that it has not yet formalized the end of life of the GTX 16xx... but it is a safe bet that this will be confirmed shortly. The absence of Tensor Core on these chips is very handicapping in 2024 anyway.

A brand dedicated to history books…

GeForce GTX?

Launched one after the other in 2019 (except the GTX 1630, launched in 2022, and the GTX 1650 Ti, released in 2020), the GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660, GTX 1650, GTX 1660 SUPER, GTX 1650 SUPER therefore seem well and truly pushed towards the release. With their abandonment, it is also the “GTX” brand, used in its final form since 2008 by Nvidia, which will disappear from the brand’s catalog. There will then only be RTX models left… the first iterations of which (RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti) were introduced to the market in 2018, six years ago.

As a reminder, the acronym “GTX” was used for the first time as a suffix with the GeForce 7800 GTX, in 2005. It was only in 2008, with the GeForce 200, that the GTX suffix became a prefix, and that the range adopted its definitive nomenclature. The one it will maintain until the launch of the GTX 16xx, introduced at the entry and mid-range in addition to the first RTX 2000 “Turing”, of which they shared part of the architecture.

That said, the great era of the GeForce GTX was already over: it had more or less ended with the gradual abandonment of the “Pascal” chips (GTX 1000), launched in 2016 and abandoned two years later.

Here are the 8 GeForce GTX families that have been launched, and whose place will soon be in the history books:

• GTX 200: Tesla

• GTX 400: Fermi

• GTX 500: Fermi Refresh

• GTX 600: Kepler

• GTX 700: Kepler Refresh

• GTX 900: Maxwell

• GTX 10xx: Pascal

• GTX 16xx: Turing