ASUS reportedly planning to decrease RTX 5070 Ti supply in favor of the RTX 5080

We recently covered a rumor that NVIDIA might be bringing back the RTX 3060 12GB, and it looks like more changes are afoot in the graphics card business. The ongoing memory shortages have impacted every aspect of the PC hardware industry, and the GPU business is no exception. Now, it looks like ASUS is pivoting away from its RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards toward its bigger brother, the RTX 5080.

According to industry sources quoted by Channel Gate, ASUS is planning to reallocate its GPU supply, prioritizing the RTX 5080 over the RTX 5070 Ti, thereby limiting the supply of the latter. The move is apparently a consequence of the current market conditions, with the global DRAM shortage in full swing. While NVIDIA remains firm that the supply of all RTX 50-series GPUs is stable, it seems ASUS has its own plans.

The current timeline for implementing this strategy is Q2 2026, but that is, of course, subject to change. The report claims that ASUS will focus on selling only a few mainstream RTX 5070 Ti models, but that the focus will eventually shift to the RTX 5080. The mainstream models in question might refer to low-end or mid-range variants such as the Dual and PRIME, while the high-end ROG Strix models are likely to be limited in production.

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The key factor behind this decision is VRAM allocation, which is all the more important in the current climate. Both the RTX 5070 Ti and the RTX 5080 have 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Therefore, in a situation where GDDR7 supply is tight, the priority goes to the higher-end (and higher-profit) RTX 5080 graphics card.

There is also mention of an RTX 5080 Master EVO card, although little is known about the variant as of right now. It might be part of ASUS's new marketing strategy to push the RTX 5080 to consumers while simultaneously removing RTX 5070 Ti advertising. Of course, ASUS has not formally confirmed or denied these rumors as of the time of writing, so take it with a grain of salt.