NVIDIA RTX 4070 expects a memory shortage — but video cards may become cheaper

Chinese technical resources report that the shortage of Micron GDDR6X video memory threatens to cause a shortage of NVIDIA RTX 4070 and other popular graphics cards. NVIDIA may release versions with slower GDDR6.

RTX 4070, 4080, and 4090 graphics cards, as well as all Super variants use high-speed GDDR6X memory, which is exclusive to Micron. Since Nvidia dominates the discrete graphics card market and is dependent on a single company in the supply chain, even small disruptions are enough to hurt their production.

All RTX 4070 variants feature 12GB Micron GDDR6X at 21 GT/s. With Samsung’s fastest GDDR6 memory, instead of 504 GB/s of total memory bandwidth, the RTX 4070 would have 480 GB/s — a drop of only 5%. Moreover, GDDR6 is mass-produced by all manufacturers, so its price should be lower.

However, it’s hard to compare: the price of GDDR6X from Micron is unknown. Since the RTX 4070 uses six VRAM chips, even if GDDR6 is only a few dollars cheaper per module, it potentially means a price that is $30 or more lower. Even so, video card vendors have yet to decide on a discount. If users are aware that a video card has less efficient memory, a small discount would be justified.

The alternative to the NVIDIA RTX 4070, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, uses GDDR6 at 19.5 MT/s, but has a much wider memory bus (256-bit vs. 192-bit). Its performance is not much different from its competitor.

Source: PC Gamer