The business logic might be that this is a way to try to keep the companies manufacturing gaming graphics cards at least remotely satisfied with being NVIDIA’s partners. Historically, if you’ve been a manufacturer of NVIDIA cards, you’ve been able to release a new lineup of cards every two years, and then a minor refresh in the off-years (new box design, minor tweaks to the cards themselves). This model has now broken down; the interim models (50xx SUPER), which were supposed to arrive in early 2026, were canceled, and things are somewhat in limbo regarding the 60 series—it’s clear they aren’t coming in early 2027 as they should have under the 2-year cycle.
Rumors have it that, in principle, the consumer dies would be ready in time for a mid-next-year launch—meaning only 1–2 quarters behind the original schedule—but due to the market situation (mainly the price of VRAM), it’s very uncertain when they will ultimately be pushed out. AMD hasn’t applied any pressure so far, meaning the competitive landscape isn’t forcing any moves, and in NVIDIA’s books, gaming GPUs have become a rounding error. At the same time, NVIDIA can manufacture and sell as many 50-series dies as they bother to produce, and they still sell well above MSRP.
The problem is that the card manufacturers (AIBs) are dissatisfied. They have staff geared up to push new models to market on annual cycles, and now things have ground to a halt. They had already invested a fair amount of time and effort into the 50xx SUPER cards before that was canceled, and they are likely already doing some work on the next generation without any clear picture of when mass production will actually start.
Perhaps it’s now clear that we won’t see the 60 series before late 2027 at the earliest, and with the 5080 24GB model, NVIDIA is throwing card manufacturers a small “bone” to keep things ticking along at some level—releasing one or two refresh models (a “5070 16GB” also appears to still be an option on the table) conveniently a year behind the original schedule. This keeps the partnership alive, even though it’s very realistic that we’ll still be waiting a long time for a genuinely new lineup.