Over the last few months, Nvidia has let the RAM crisis stampede over its revered RTX 50-series graphics cards. Now, it’s finally offering a little more bang for your buck on lower-end GPUs, though—unfortunately—only for laptops. It’s a small start to tackling the industry-spanning problems that have made PC gaming way too expensive.
Nvidia, still the most valuable company in the world thanks to its AI training chips, shared new plans for versions of the mobile version of its GeForce RTX 5070. The discrete GPU originally had 8GB of VRAM. This limitation hinders the GPU’s ability to support higher resolutions in games, like 1440p or 4K. In a blog post, Nvidia said it’s introducing a 12GB VRAM configuration of the RTX 5070. It’s enough to push a lower-end gaming laptop harder than you currently can on devices like the Razer Blade 14.
Here’s the full statement:
“Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs remains strong, and memory supply is constrained. In order to maximize memory availability, we are releasing the GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU 12GB configuration with 24Gb G7 memory. This gives our partners access to an additional pool of memory to complement the 16Gb G7 supply that currently ships with most GeForce GPUs. The 12GB configuration will exist alongside the current 8GB configuration and allows our partners to bring a broader range of GeForce RTX 5070 laptops to consumers.”
The extra memory is built on 24Gb GDDR7 memory modules. In February, the semiconductor company Micron released this variety of memory modules to offer speedy, high-bandwidth RAM for GPUs. Nvidia did not mention anything about its desktop-level GPUs, though we can hope Nvidia may offer better versions of the RTX 5070 graphics cards, even if we still have no word on a beefed-up RTX 5070 Super.
The RTX 5070 has suffered under price hikes, though it hasn’t been hit nearly as hard as 4K-ready GPUs like the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, or RTX 5090. Gaming laptops have also become much more expensive as a result. By focusing on the lower end, Nvidia can ignore the plight of the graphics cards with 16GB or 24GB of VRAM and still offer some better options for entry-level consumers.
Despite fueling the rise of AI, Nvidia and all its AIB (add-in board) partners have suffered due to memory demand from AI data center projects. The GPU maker’s RTX 5060 Ti with its 16GB of VRAM sells for around $500, just a little more than its suggested retail price of $430. That’s good enough for 1440p resolution. Nvidia’s cheapest 4K-ready card, the RTX 5070 Ti, now costs closer to $1,000 in most online stores, $250 more than its original suggested price. Something has to give, and Nvidia needs to offer more choices for gamers across laptops and desktops alike.
