Nvidia may be killing some of its most popular GPUs | Digital Trends

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 lines may no longer be in production. Nvidia could be ending production of its two most popular graphics cards, according to WCCFTech and sources in the Asia Pacific manufacturing industry.

This comes as a bit of a shock, considering both of these cards are among the most popular GPUs in the world. According to a Steam hardware survey from this past October, the GeForce RTX 2060 is the second most-used card in the world, with a 6% market share (the GTX 1060 is number one). The GTX 1660 is the eighth most popular, with a nearly 3% share.

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super review — Dan Baker/Digital Trends

But it is not only the RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 that Nvidia is canceling. It’s their entire lines.

The RTX 2060 launched only three years ago, in June 2019. A year later, they updated the card with the RTX 2060 Super, and only last year, in the summer of 2021, the RTX 2060 got a further upgrade with a 12GB version. All three cards are no longer in production.

The same is true for the GTX 1660, which also launched in 2019 and saw updates to a SUPER model and the famous 1660 Ti model. This was undoubtedly a budget card compared to the 2060, but it still offered decent performance.

We reached out to Nvidia to find out if they will continue to support these cards and for how long. After all, there are things like drivers and warranties to keep updated. We haven’t heard back yet.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s newest 40-series GPUs continued to suffer pricing issues, production delays, and sometimes melt. Nobody had them yet when Steam did their survey, so we have no idea how many are out in the wild right now, but at prices of more than $1,500, we don’t expect to see many.

One of the primary reasons for the cancellation of these two lines has to do with the crypto mining crisis of 2020 to 2021. Miners were buying up GPUs like they were going out of style, and then China surprised everyone by suddenly banning the practice. Thousands of these more affordable RTX 2060 and 1660 units flooded back onto the market as miners dumped their hardware. The recent crypto crash hasn’t helped.

Now, Nvidia is left with plenty of unused stock and is competing against itself in the used GPU market. Its modern and expensive 40-series GPUs may not be moving as fast as Nvidia had hoped. There really is no point for the company to continue to produce these older units.

Last year’s RTX 3060, on the other hand, is a fantastic GPU and was the fourth most popular graphics card on the market, according to Steam. It had a 5.74% market share, putting it slightly behind the 2060. For anyone looking for a good Nvidia card without spending all their money, this could be the perfect option for you.