How true is it that in early 2026 nvidia will be lowering production of 50 series cards by 30%-40% because of how scarce memory is becoming ....
*if* it's true imo they'll gut the middle of the stack and all you've have is something like the 8GB 5060, the 16GB 5080 and the 5090... and nothing in between
They'll start releasing 4Gb cards again The only way to get a 5080/5090 will be to rent it via Geforce now
They're gutting the 60ti/70ti to use the memory on the more expensive cards from what I've read. Gotta squeeze out every penny https://www.dexerto.com/entertainme...roduction-by-up-to-40-in-2026-report-3295481/
Break out the 1030s again! On the Workstation side of things i can see anything below, and possibly including, the RTX Pro 4000/4500 tier being hard to come by, they'll want all the memory for the 72GB 5000 and 96GB 6000 cards
Heaven forbid games companies will have to start optimising games so they don't gobble up VRAM. Fully expect to see Nvidia release 8Gb cards with DLSS++SuperTiUltra so you can run 8K games upscaled from 144p and it'll Justbeasgoodhonest
Slight tangent ahoy - I’m on a bit of a roll with these today… TL;DW - it’s textures. Well… textures and dialogue, but generally higher quality audio in modern games doesn’t affect VRAM usage. And FWIW, personally I’m not sure “blame” lies solely with developers. Outside of a small number of companies, no one writes their own game engine any more. They use Unity, Unreal Engine, A.N. Other Engine, etc, and often the people tasked with building the game have zero say in the matter - they just have to make it work in whatever way they can… and hope they escape the quarterly firing of staff when their bosses need to make the earnings report look good… But I will say that Unreal Engine 5 can die in a fire, and that compelling game design & gameplay will trump pretty visuals every single time. Sometimes it’s possible to have great design & gameplay and pretty visuals in the same game (see: CP2077 & Forbidden West, among others), but the former does not inherently require the latter.
Pfft, trust you to come in here with your sensible explanation. I agree though, CP and FW were standouts for me, gameplay and story. I do agree story is the main driver but I just can't get on with even a great story if it looks like jank. I would sacrifice some visuals for story though. Definitely.
The gameworlds now are so fantastic I can't even comprehend how they fit it all in such little VRAM, I know there lots of fancy streaming and compression of assets but it's impressive stuff
For me, it doesn’t even have to have a “story” or “plot”. A tight, well-designed game with great mechanics can be fun in its own right. The example that immediately springs to mind is Super Hexagon. Admittedly it’s from a while back, but it’s ridiculously hard, ridiculously addictive, and ridiculously fun. And currently less than the price of a can of coke .
I've a signed physical copy of Micro Hexagon, which somehow squeezes that, music and all, onto a C64. It's ace! EDIT: Here 'tis:
Optimisation has always been what you do only when 'throw more hardware at it' becomes too expensive/impractical...
Now, Gareth… I know you’re a busy man, but I need to have a quiet word with you for a moment, if that’s ok. You have to stop sending me down rabbit-holes like this, ok? But yes, you’re right, that is abso-freaking-lutely brilliant! Gameplay video link - not gonna embed this one, ‘cos it comes with a seriously strong photosensitivity warning!
Before you resurface, have a look at C64anabalt - an equally impressive demake of Canabalt. I haven't got a physical version of that - though I did put it on an Easy Flash - but it comes on the bundled USB stick with the C64 Ultimate.
I fully expect the low end cards to have the most budget bin sketchy VRAM nvidia or AIBs can get their hand on, leaving us with cards that barely last out their warranty periods. kills 2 stones with one bird... they get to keep their margins up, and oh what a shame, there aren't many used previous gen cards about when the new stuff drops bc they mostly all died on account of how many corners were cut to keep the price down/margins up. ...or am i being too cynical?
I reckon there may well not be an RTX 6060 released at all. Lets just say the ram to put on a 6060 drives the price up by £200 over normal, it would completely kill the market for the card because that would be like a 75% premium. On the other hand £400 extra for the ram on a hypothetical RTX6090 may well only be a 15% premium. And lets face it, people will swallow a 15% price hike on a top of the line product, but a 75% premium on a bargain basement piece of junk? They would just rot on store shelves.
