Why Did Nvidia Discontinue Its GTX Graphics Cards? – SlashGear

The GTX series was Nvidia’s main graphics card branding since 2008, and it delivered some of the most iconic graphics cards of all time during its run. From the bang-for-buck (and controversial) GTX 970 to the almighty 1080 Ti, this was the product line that put Nvidia at the top of the gaming GPU market. But that era effectively ended in 2018, when NVIDIA introduced the first RTX 20-series cards and shifted the GeForce lineup toward its new rendering model built around ray tracing and AI-accelerated features.

Unlike their predecessors, RTX GPUs feature dedicated RT cores for real-time ray tracing and Tensor cores to power AI-based upscaling like DLSS. Even the final GTX cards — the 16-series — which had the same Turing architecture as the first RTX 20-series cards, didn’t have RT or Tensor cores needed for hardware-based ray-tracing or benefit from DLSS. Rather than evolve the GTX brand, Nvidia kept the 16-series around as budget options and positioned RTX as the future of its GPU…