Nvidia Is Reportedly Slashing RTX 50 Series Production, Because We Can’t Have Nice Things
If you were hoping that 2026 would be the year PC gaming finally became affordable again, I have some absolutely terrible news for you.
We are barely done dealing with the scalper nightmares of the past few years, and now it looks like we are heading straight back into the shortage trenches. According to a new report, Nvidia is planning to cut its production capacity for the GeForce RTX 50 series by a staggering amount in the first half of 2026. I am not talking about a small adjustment here, we are looking at a potential 30-40% drop in supply.
The Great VRAM Robbery
As spotted by the folks at Benchlife, the culprit this time isn't crypto miners or a shipping boat stuck in a canal. It’s memory. Apparently, the industry is facing a shortage of the new GDDR7 memory that powers these next-gen cards.
But here is where it gets cynical. Nvidia isn't just cutting everything equally. The report claims they are specifically targeting the "sweet spot" cards: the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and the RTX 5070 Ti.
Why these two? Because they use a lot of VRAM but don't cost as much as the flagship models. From a business perspective, it makes sense. If you have a limited bucket of GDDR7 chips, you are going to glue them onto the expensive RTX 5080s or the insanely profitable workstation PRO cards, not the mid-range GPU that normal people actually buy.
A Bad Time To Be A PC Gamer
This is essentially Nvidia prioritizing their margins over your ability to play games at decent settings. The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is arguably the most important card in the lineup because it actually has enough VRAM to run modern textures without crying. By choking the supply of these specific models, Nvidia is effectively forcing you to either downgrade to a stuttery 8GB card or sell a kidney to buy a 5080.
It is a classic upsell tactic disguised as a supply chain issue. With DDR5 and NAND prices already climbing, 2026 is shaping up to be a brutal year for anyone looking to build a PC. My advice? If you see a card at MSRP, grab it. It might be the last one you see for a while.