Nvidia is reportedly planning to reduce the production of its GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards by 30 to 40 percent in the first half of 2026 due to a continuing global RAM shortage. The initial models affected are said to be the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GDDR7, as memory constraints have particularly impacted GDDR6 and GDDR7 variants. While Nvidia has not officially confirmed these production adjustments, suppliers have reportedly been instructed to scale down output, potentially leading to limited availability of consumer-focused GPUs while prioritizing higher-margin and enterprise-level products.
The shortage of high-performance memory is largely driven by increased demand from AI data centers, which require more GDDR7 and VRAM than standard consumer GPUs. This shift in memory allocation may also impact smartphone manufacturers considering 16GB RAM variants in upcoming devices. Nvidia’s RTX 50 series, based on the Blackwell chipset, includes mid-tier GPUs like the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5070 Ti, as well as higher-end models including the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090. As AI applications and enterprise computing grow, chipmakers are increasingly prioritizing memory supply for data centers, leaving consumer GPUs potentially limited in 2026