Nvidia seems to be retreating to the comfort of smaller VRAM.
A China-based report claims Nvidia has tweaked its RTX 50-series supply plan for 2026 amid rising memory chip costs, making 8GB models suddenly look much more attractive.
In mid-2025, 8GB cards were greeted with all the warmth of a wet sock. Now, higher-capacity memory is starting to look like the expensive luxury item nobody budgeted for.
According to Board Channels, shipments of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti are being reduced. The same post claims Nvidia and its board partners are re-centring volume around the GeForce RTX 5060 and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB.
That lines up with recent availability noise, with reports from Europe and Japan pointing to tighter supply above the midrange. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 keep being cited as the ones that are hard to keep in stock.
If memory pricing continues to rise, nudging more 8GB boards out the door is a simple way to ship more units while using less VRAM per card. Allocation can still vary by region and partner, so do not treat this like gospel.
Board Channels suggests that more cost increases next quarter cannot be ruled out, which could keep price pressure running through Q2 2026. It also claims the RTX 5090 is already leading the charge on record-high pricing, and nobody is seeing the brake pedal yet.
