Stop us if you’ve heard this story before: The AI boom is driving overwhelming demand for memory products, straining the production of PC parts that incorporate memory, like graphics cards. This week, the shortage led to a flurry of updates from Asus and Nvidia, after a small PR mix-up.
If you heard that Nvidia is putting the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB on end-of-life (EOl) status, the good news is that they are still in production. Unfortunately, “Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained,” Nvidia told Hardware Unboxed, adding, “We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability.”
Asus also weighed in on the matter, as it appears to have been involved in the communication blip.
“We would like to clarify recent reports regarding the Asus GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB,” Asus wrote in a statement. “Certain media may have received incomplete information from an Asus PR representative regarding these products.”
ASUS Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7
Credit: Asus
The statement points directly to memory supply issues as the culprit for “Current fluctuations in supply” and limited card availability, but notes that the cards aren’t EOL.
“Asus has no plans to stop selling these models,” the statement reads.
There’s no doubt that low memory stock is causing headaches for GPU makers. Rumors suggest that AMD won’t release GPUs until 2027, and Nvidia is delaying its RTX 6000 series, though AMD’s strategy appears to involve more than just memory pricing. Because Nvidia is king of the GPU hill, AMD may be waiting for the RTX 6000 series to drop before setting prices for its own chips.
PC makers have begun raising prices on their systems amid the ongoing memory shortage. And game console makers find themselves in the same position. Both Microsoft and Sony could wind up delaying the next generations of their Xbox and PlayStation consoles if the memory shortage continues. Microsoft raised the price of its Xbox Series X, and it’s rumored that the console could see another price hike to account for the memory scarcity issue.
Obviously, memory isn’t the only resource AI data centers are gobbling up. Powering all that hardware requires massive amounts of power, and cooling it consumes a lot of water. Microsoft recently released its plan for protecting communities near the data centers it builds, which is a step in the right direction. Still, as the AI boom continues, so do the growing pains.