ASUS has found itself in the spotlight again, and in a not-so-favourable one at that, after one of its staff allegedly told the Australian Techtuber, Hardware Unboxed, that it had halted the production of its GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB models. Supposedly, the PC brand says that it has effectively shifted both SKUs into “end of life” status, which also means that both models have been discontinued.
Hardware Unboxed says in its video that, in addition to shifting both SKUs into end of life status, it also no longer plans on producing said card in the foreseeable future. Rumours of such a scenario happening had already been floating about online, but it says that this marks the first time that an NVIDIA AIB partner seemingly “confirmed” the situation. For that matter, Hardware Unboxed said that other AIB partners that they reached out to for an RTX 5070 Ti 16GB round up, but none of them had any supply of the card.
ASUS And NVIDIA Respond
In the wake of Hardware Unboxed’s video, NVIDIA released a short press statement to Hardwareluxx, stating that “Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximise memory availability.”
Almost immediately after that, ASUS jumped in with its own press statement as well, stating that neither its RTX 5070 Ti or 5060 Ti 16GB GPUs had been designated as end-of-life (EOL), and that it had no plans on discontinuing said GPUs.
“We would like to clarify recent reports regarding the ASUS GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB. Certain media may have received incomplete information from an ASUS PR representative regarding these products.
The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB have not been discontinued or designated as end-of-life (EOL). ASUS has no plans to stop selling these models.
Current fluctuations in supply for both products are primarily due to memory supply constraints, which have temporarily affected production output and restocking cycles. As a result, availability may appear limited in certain markets, but this should not be interpreted as a production halt or product retirement.
ASUS will continue to support the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and is working closely with partners to stabilise supply as conditions improve.”
Why’s This Drama Happening?
We’re already sounding like a broken record at this point, but Hardware Unboxed’s story likely came about due to the surge and boom of the current AI craze. The shortage in supply for memory chips, coupled with skyrocketing prices, has created a perfect storm of an extremely scarce supply and demand chain for the consumer market.
Tech companies that are investing in or are already invested in AI are purchasing memory in bulk. En masse. For memory manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, these translate to bigger profit margins, more so than if it were to sell their products to a consumer market.
You don’t have to look far to see the direct effects of the memory shortage – memory kits that cost as much as an RTX 5070 or a standard PS5 console. Want a 256GB DDR5-6000 memory kit? That’ll cost you the same, if not more than, an RTX 5090. Hell, even thieves in South Korea clearly know the value of it; they abandon other components in their quest to loot the component.
So…No More 16GB Versions?
Well, no. Both ASUS and NVIDIA have clearly come out to debunk this news, and even if it were true, discontinuing an SKU, and a current one at that, so very early in a GPU’s lifecycle, would be suicide, both from a marketing and a financial standpoint. The RTX 5070 Ti, specifically, is arguably the high-end gaming sweet spot for many gamers, with the same amount of graphics memory and performance as the RTX 5080, and for considerably less money.
Likewise, the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB offers more VRAM headroom, albeit at a lower performance than the RTX 5070 Ti. Price-wise, it’s a average difference of RM800 between it and its 8GB counterpart, and RM2,300 between it and the 5070 Ti.
Out of an abundance of caution, we also reached out to a couple of local distributors and retailers to see if they were affected. They told us that this doesn’t seem to be the case with Malaysia, and they’ve not heard anything from the GPU brands they service.
(Source: Hardware Unboxed, HardwareLUXX)
