A new video from Hardware Unboxed has just been released claiming that the Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti is effectively end of life from here on out. It cites conversations it’s had with retailers and AIBs about the cards post-CES where both basically say that the RTX 5070 Ti cards that are out on the shelves right now are your lot. That’s it. Supply dead. No more coming.
Asus has apparently been explicit about this, stating to HUB that it has placed Asus RTX 5070 Ti cards into end-of-life (EoL) status due to the catastrophically low supply. “This model is currently facing a supply shortage and as such they have placed the model into end-of-life status.”
Other manufacturers have been less to-the-point about it, while still noting they have pretty much zero supply of the RTX 5070 Ti. For what it’s worth, this seems to be news to the Asus contacts I’ve spoken to, who certainly do not have a specific note about the card’s EoL status from HQ in Taiwan right now.
But of course, of course it’s all about the memory crisis, where AI infrastructure demands have put huge strain on the supply of memory for data centres and has subsequently had a huge impact on the prices of not just DRAM, but also NAND for SSDs, and crucially here VRAM for graphics cards.
(Image credit: Future)
And it makes absolute sense for the RTX 5070 Ti to be one of the tragic casualties of the RAMpocalypse on the GPU side. For one thing, it’s sporting 16 GB of expensive GDDR7 memory, but the main reason is that it’s using the same GB203 GPU that goes into the RTX 5080 card.
That has the same memory footprint, but right now is retailing for well over $1,200 at its cheapest. While you’re going to struggle to get one of the few RTX 5070 Ti cards still out in retail for under $800 today, that’s a big fiscal delta that retailers, AIBs, and yes, Nvidia, are all going to want to cash in on. So yeah, in a time of constrained supply you’d always want to push all your available resources towards your pricier prospect.
And hell, with the RTX 5080 going so far above its MSRP why wouldn’t you otherwise buy an RTX 5070 Ti? In my own testing, the card overclocks like a champ (yes, it’s a thing again) and without putting any undue strain on either the cooling or the power demands you can easily get within a single digit percentage performance difference between it and the RTX 5080.
It’s the smart choice for gamers, which is why it would be the smart choice for retailers/manufacturers to kill.
Although not explicitly stated as being EoL, the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB version is also said to be unlikely to see more production going forward, at least not with the memory prices being what they are. That leaves us with a bunch of 8 GB graphics cards for the rest of 2025 from Nvidia, with the 12 GB RTX 5070 potentially remaining as the only vaguely ‘proper’ mid-range GeForce GPU that is in any way attainable. At $540 that still doesn’t feel great, though.
What of AMD in all this? After all, three of its four RDNA 4 cards come with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, so is it feeling the pinch, too? Reportedly, there is no such concerns around end-of-life status for either the RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT cards, and with a ton of stock around for the 16 GB RX 9060 XT that doesn’t seem to be an issue.
But, while AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have really clawed into the market share of the previously dominant player in Intel, the Radeon GPUs have barely made any inroads into Nvidia’s position at the head of the graphics card table. Retailers don’t shift the same numbers of AMD GPUs as it does Nvidia, and so there is still relatively decent stock for the RDNA 4 cards.
That would be great if the opportunity to spike prices wasn’t being taken on their behalf, too, but that vaguely illusory $599 MSRP for the RX 9070 XT now translates into $700 at best. Still, the excellent AMD GPU will be completely unchallenged at that price point if/when the RTX 5070 Ti disappears from the shelves.
Though whether AMD would be able to keep up with a run on its 16 GB cards in terms of manufacturing, sating suddenly higher demand, will only be something we’ll know should it come to pass. But with gamers potentially eschewing the only 8 GB options on offer from Nvidia, I can see a lot of people being mighty tempted by what RDNA 4 can offer.
I’ve reached out to various AIBs to see if I can corroborate what HUB is suggesting myself and will update once I get any responses.
