While gamers beg for GPUs, Nvidia is making AI desktops

Far be it from me to tell the most valuable company on the planet what to do. But Nvidia, you do realize that your whole schtick is graphics cards, right? You know, GeForce, those chunky go-fast gadgets you’ve been selling for 25 years or so, to let people play video games? Because based on some recent news, they don’t seem to be the company’s biggest focus.

New Nvidia-designed Arm desktops

After a couple of months of graphics card launches that have been frustrating at best and a complete retail disaster at worst, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at the company’s self-branded GPU Technology Conference. Now, to set the proper tone for a bit of admittedly entitled whinging, Nvidia has rebranded the initial portion of this yearly event as an “AI conference,” so it’s hardly surprising that AI computing is the lion’s share of the two-hour keynote talk.

Even so, I can’t help but feel a little miffed that Huang fawned over new Nvidia-branded desktop computers it’ll be selling directly to the AI industry and individuals. The DGX Spark mini-PC and DGX Station desktop are based on the new Grace Blackwell AI-focused GPUs. This sort of setup was previously available only in datacenter hardware. The specs for the larger DGX Station aren’t available yet, but the Blackwell GPU in the smaller Spark (previously revealed as Project DIGITS) will be paired to a custom Arm CPU.

Nvidia

Despite being loaded with up to 128GB of memory and 4TB of storage, this thing isn’t going to make a good fit as a conventional desktop — and at a $3000 pre-order price, it wouldn’t find many buyers anyway. Nvidia is positioning both the DGX Spark and DGX Station as all-in-one solutions for running local AI models, along with a token mention of “researchers, data scientists, robotics developers, and students.” Nvidia will be partnering with Asus, Boxx, Dell, HP, Lambda, and Supermicro to manufacture and sell both desktops “later this year.”

Didn’t Nvidia use to sell graphics cards?

Again, it’s not as if it’s illegal or even distasteful to for Nvidia to branch out into other markets beyond gaming chips for PCs, or even beyond gaming entirely (remember that Nvidia powers the Nintendo Switch with Tegra mobile chips, after abandoning the smartphone market over a decade ago). And Nvidia hardware is in a lot of things you might not expect, including connected cars, medical devices, and other industrial hardware.

But as a PC gamer myself and an advocate for other gamers, I can’t help but feel a little betrayed. While retailers, AIB partners, and scalpers are eating good on the scarcity of new GeForce cards, Nvidia is preparing entirely new product lines for the AI industry. And not just the “big iron” hardware that’s made it an unstoppable juggernaut of tech over the last few years, relatively small, targetted devices for individual users.

Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry

Nvidia can make both, of course…but even a big green giant only has so much chip production capacity. I don’t have any empirical evidence to prove it, but I’m not the only one who feels like the woefully inadequate supply of new RTX 50-series graphics cards has something to do with all these new industrial chips and brand new Arm processors being made for customers with even deeper pockets. It doesn’t help that Nvidia has been evasive, if not entirely deceptive, in addressing its supply issues as RTX cards vanish from shelves the second they arrive.

Nvidia jumped from one peak to the next by riding the crypto boom right into the AI boom. And while recent developments have caused it to look more like a bubble, Nvidia stock is still more than double what it was at the beginning of 2024. The cold calculus of profit suggests that the company is far more concerned with AI, for the present if not the future, than it is with PC gaming. As my grandpa used to say, make hay while the sun shines.

Opportunities for AMD and Intel

But that focus can’t help but alienate PC gamers, and it sure doesn’t help that Nvidia seems to be making a lot of money off of that, too. It creates an opportunity for the competition. If AMD can’t make infinite money off the AI industry, it can sure sell some graphics cards, especially to the large chunk of PC gamers who can’t afford four figures for a new GPU. While Nvidia still dominates to the point of monopoly for discrete graphics, recent sales data indicates that AMD is clawing back some market share, especially in markets like Japan and Taiwan. And if AMD is making a play for the mid-range, newcomer Intel is doing the same thing for the budget space with its second generation of Arc cards.

Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry

Nvidia announcing new AI PCs isn’t necessarily at the expense of its ability to deliver gaming GPUs. But it isn’t happening in a vacuum, either…and Nvidia is failing to deliver gaming GPUs. If you’re considering an upgrade or a new purchase, maybe give the competition a try. It’s not as if Nvidia even needs a desktop GPU monopoly anymore.

And if the AI bubble bursts, and the company is no longer flush with cash…a little ego bruising might be good for it when it decides that it wants to sell graphics cards to PC gamers after all.