Nvidia's CEO says bringing new AI tech to older generation GPUs is 'within the realm of possibility'

With the memory crisis being, well, a crisis, and the potential of the RTX 3060 making a comeback, the temporary solution may be further optimising older generation graphics cards. Nvidia's Jensen Huang thinks that's "a good idea".

In a Q&A attended by Tom's Hardware, Huang was asked if spinning up production on older GPUs on older process nodes could be a way of combating supply instabilities and the price demands that come with it.

Huang says that is a possibility, and "we could also bring the latest generation AI technology to the previous generation GPUs, and that will require a fair amount of engineering, but it's also within the realm of possibility. I'll go back and take a look at this. It's a good idea."

AI technology here refers to techniques like DLSS, which renders games at a lower resolution and upscales them with the help of AI. It also refers to frame generation, which uses AI image generation and interpolation to create new 'fake' frames in between 'real' rendered ones.

When the RTX 50 series launched, it came with MFG (Multi Frame Generation), which adds three frames for every one 'real' frame. Just this week, it was announced that figure will go all the way up to 6x—five fake frames for every one real one—but MFG is currently only available on RTX 50-series GPUs.

Huang's comment is interesting as Nvidia's AI performance bumps are linked to specific hardware in the cards. For instance, MFG uses things hardware Flip Metering, which helps with frame pacing. This is only present in Blackwell GPUs. When Huang says bringing newer tech to older cards would need engineering, it's unclear if he's suggesting that engineers can work around hardware limitations, and which ones Nvidia could potentially work around.

Ironically, given the memory shortage is largely caused by huge demand from the AI industry, the problem and temporary solution are both AI-driven.

As pointed out by Tom's Hardware, this answer from Huang is rather non-committal. It's not as small as 'we'll look into it' but definitely not as big as 'we'll do that'. However, it does show the idea is on Nvidia's radar.

The fact that Huang is even discussing this idea is a testament to how dire PC hardware is looking right now. PC Gaming has never been super cheap, and even good budget rigs will cost you a pretty penny, but things are set to look worse, not better. The RTX 3060 launched five years ago and was a budget-to-mid-range pick even then.

A small silver lining to stock issues and potential workarounds that may come with it is that you have even less of a reason to upgrade if you've been rocking a 30-series card since its launch. If Nvidia does, in fact, make older cards work with the latest AI techniques, you could see a performance bump without having to swap out any parts. That silver lining is a small one in the very dark cloud that is PC gaming right now.