The graphics card industry—like the broader PC space, mobile, and pretty much anything that relies upon memory chips—is having a bad time. It looks like cards with high amounts of video RAM and relatively low prices are getting hard to find, though Nvidia and its partners are offering reassurances. Zotac, a Singapore-based add-in board manufacturer, is less optimistic.
On the official Zotac store for Korea, an alarming message to customers was posted concerning price increases. “The current situation is extremely serious—serious enough to raise concerns about the very survival of graphics card manufacturers and distributors going forward,” according to one translator who posted on Twitter/X (spotted by PC Gamer). Google machine translation worded it slightly differently: “The current situation is serious enough to worry about the existence of graphics card manufacturers and distributors in the future.”
The representative went on to say that “stable supply going forward may no longer be feasible. […] Not only has the price of the RTX 5090 increased sharply, but the price hike for the 5060 is also substantial.”
Consumer-level graphics cards, especially high-performance models with lots of video memory, are being hit with a double whammy. “AI” data center construction is gobbling up all the memory chip output in the market, causing RAM prices to skyrocket and affecting GPU production as well. Meanwhile, GPUs are also one of the most efficient ways to run “AI” compute functions, so Nvidia and its OEM partners appear to be prioritizing high-profit industrial graphics cards over consumer models.
Earlier this month, an Asus representative was quoted as saying that the company had canceled production of the RTX 5070 Ti, which is considered the best bang-for-your-buck in the series with its powerful GPU and 16GB of video RAM. Asus quickly walked back that statement, but the 5070 Ti, 5060 Ti 16GB, and 5090 remain incredibly hard to find, with scalpers charging as much as double retail prices. Nvidia has reportedly prioritized the 5080 (with 16GB of memory like the 5070 Ti, but 30% more expensive with its slightly faster processor, memory bandwidth, and more CUDA cores), but even that card is expected to rise in price.
Add-in board producers like Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI will probably be able to weather this kind of storm as they have other product lines to rely on. But Zotac is a far smaller company, originally spun off from V-Tech back in the 90s. It sells only graphics cards, mini PCs, and a relatively small range of industrial workstations, plus the Zone handheld. All of these products will need to account for more expensive memory. The company’s alarming concerns over the “survival” or “existence” of smaller manufacturers is not overblown.
Author: Michael Crider
Source: PCWorld
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
