It’s bad news all around for PC gamers looking to upgrade to an RTX 50 GPU, as NVIDIA will potentially be decreasing its supply of cards by nearly half in the coming year. This could very well lead to increased prices of currently available GPUs, as well as any newly produced GPUs in the RTX 50 series that hit shelves in 2026.
NVIDIA has not confirmed this supply decrease just yet. However, a few different reports state that NVIDIA’s decision to decrease the supply is due to rising costs of memory. Companies like Micron have recently announced their decision to exit the consumer memory market in favor of supplying RAM for AI servers. Meanwhile, Samsung and SK Hynix remain two of the only large memory manufacturers left thatwill still be producing RAM for consumers.
This has led to increased RAM prices, which will likely result in higher prices of tech products that contain RAM, such as smartphones and computers. Naturally, this would impact GPUs as well, as they contain RAM. NVIDIA’s decision to reduce the production of GPUs in the coming year is reportedly a move to offset those increased costs, and more specifically, because data center clients are grabbing a lot of the hardware .
NVIDIA RTX 50 GPU supply reduction will mostly impact lower-end card models
According to the reports, the reduced GPU supply will mostly target cards that are on the lower end of NVIDIA’s offerings. Specifically, the RTX 5060 Ti and the RTX 5070 Ti. As noted by PC Gamer, these are the most affordable RTX 50 GPUs from NVIDIA that come with 12GB of VRAM. Lowering the supply is going to make them less available to the wider PC gaming market. It could also potentially lead to increased prices of what’s left, as retailers and resellers might look to capitalize on the lower supply while demand remains the same. Although NVIDIA is said to be trying to avoid raising prices.
Even if prices don’t increase for these GPUs, there will eventually be little to no stock left, and those looking to upgrade will be left with two choices. Either wait for more stock (that might never come), or pony up the dough for a much more expensive GPU like the RTX 5080 or RTX 5090. RAM shortages are also expected to carry beyond 2026, so this move from NVIDIA may impact the next generation of its GPUs.
