NVIDIA has decided to significantly reduce the supply of the GeForce RTX 5000 series starting from late July 2026. Behind this is the prioritization of production lines driven by explosive AI demand, as well as a severe shortage of next-generation GDDR7 memory.

A shocking figure with shipment volumes down to 40%

It has been reported that NVIDIA’s consumer graphics division plans to reduce the supply of the GeForce RTX 50 series by 30% to 40% year-on-year in the first half of 2026. This reduction goes beyond a temporary supply-demand adjustment, with some noting that GPU allocations to manufacturing partners have already dropped by 15% to 20%. Specific supply restrictions include the mid-to-high-end GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and the 16GB video memory RTX 5060 Ti, both of which are rapidly disappearing from the market.

While supply is being squeezed, the specs demanded by the latest game titles continue to improve, and the market supply-demand balance is completely collapsing. Due to unprecedented shortages, many retailers have “uncertain stock availability,” and it has become common for stocks to sell out only by pre-order. Please refer to the diagram below. 。 For DIY PC users and those considering upgrades, the latter half of 2026 will face a very tough market environment.

Accelerating abnormal spikes in in-store prices

Supply shortages are immediately pushed back to in-store prices. NVIDIA’s flagship model, the RTX 5090, surged from around 450,000 yen at the end of 2025 to 600,000 yen by February 2026. Some premium models have been reported to be traded for over 800,000 yen, effectively undermining the concept of price. Even for the mid-range RTX 5080, the average price exceeds the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of about 198,800 yen, which is the norm, resulting in an abnormal situation where products that have been on sale for some time are sold above their retail price.

According to TechSpot’s analysis, the average price of the entire RTX 50 series rose by about 19% in just three months, from November 2025 to February 2026. As a result, models that can be purchased on a budget of $1,000 (about 160,000 yen) are downgraded to products with performance one generation below. The trend of yen depreciation and wholesale price hikes by major manufacturers are also combined, and it is predicted that a further wave of price increases will hit consumers through the latter half of 2026.

Structural factors causing supply shortages: AI shift and technical barriers

Priority allocation to high-margin AI data centers

The fundamental cause of the supply shortage is NVIDIA’s complete shift in its business model from “gamer-oriented” to “AI data center-based.” For NVIDIA, gaming GPUs priced at tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yen have low profit margins, while AI accelerators like the H100 and B200 are extremely profitable products, trading in the hundreds of millions to tens of millions of yen each.

Due to the global AI boom, demand for AI infrastructure from cloud providers and model development companies remains explosive. In its management decisions about which to allocate limited production space in TSMC’s advanced processes, NVIDIA prioritizes commercial products with high profit margins. As a result, the absolute number of gaming chips has decreased, and production below the mid-range segment is being postponed, creating a structural situation of “gamer disregard.” Please refer to the diagram below. 。

A serious battle for next-generation GDDR7 memory

An even more serious bottleneck than the GPU chip itself is the shortage of the next-generation video memory “GDDR7” used in the RTX 50 series. GDDR7 boasts bandwidth far exceeding traditional standards, but its production lines are currently being squeezed by DRAM manufacturing for AI servers. Major vendor factories such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron prioritize wafer allocation for more profitable memory for AI infrastructure (such as HBM), limiting GDDR7 supply capacity.

This memory shortage is also directly affecting prices, with GDDR7 prices reportedly rising to about three times compared to 2025. Additionally, major memory brand Micron (Crucial) has hinted at withdrawing from the consumer market, indicating that the entire supply chain is shifting toward the AI boom. As a result, securing high-density chips to manufacture new models with increased VRAM (such as the SUPER series) has become extremely technically and economically challenging, causing significant delays in the product roadmap itself.

The Light and Shadow of Market Dominance: 94% Share and Legal Encirclement

A monopoly situation created by lack of competitors

NVIDIA’s dominance in the current graphics card market has reached an astonishing level. According to data from Q4 2025, NVIDIA’s discrete desktop GPU market share has reached 94%, effectively monopolizing the market. Meanwhile, AMD’s share has dropped to 5%, a historic low even including the era of its predecessor, ATI.

AMD’s Radeon RX 9000 series adopted strategies such as intentionally adopting the older GDDR6 standard to avoid memory shortages, but it has not broken NVIDIA’s dominance in ray tracing performance and AI complementary technologies (such as DLSS 4.5). As competitors failed to gain support from their target audience and the “NVIDIA-dominated” trend accelerated, NVIDIA maintains a bullish stance by tightening supply and maintaining prices without losing market share. It can be said that the collapse of this competitive principle has created the leeway for NVIDIA to rush to launch new products. Please refer to the diagram below. 。

Ripples of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Investigation

This overwhelming monopoly is drawing the attention of regulatory authorities. In September 2024, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a mandatory investigation into NVIDIA on suspicion of antitrust violations and sent a subpoena. The focus is on whether NVIDIA is engaging in anti-competitive practices by bundling its own hardware with its software environment, CUDA, which has become the AI development standard, in order to block supply from other companies.

With many AI development companies unable to continue their operations without NVIDIA products, there is scrutiny to whether there have been preferential treatment of specific customers in supply or pricing, or making switching to competing products difficult. There is also the possibility of corrective orders from authorities, and this legal risk could cast a significant shadow over NVIDIA’s future management strategy and product supply structure.

Outlook to 2027: SUPER Delay and User Countermeasures

Rumors of a SUPER Series Freeze and the 2026 Gap

The mid-range savior that many users had been hoping for, the RTX 5000 SUPER series, is now said to be virtually frozen or indefinitely postponed. Initially, there were expectations that a refreshed version with increased VRAM would be released in 2026, but procurement of the key 3GB GDDR7 module has been hindered by the AI boom, leaving no prospect for commercialization.

The most widely accepted prediction at this point is that the SUPER series will be announced no earlier than around CES 2027, in January 2027. There is little prospect of new desktop hardware from NVIDIA during 2026, making it increasingly likely to be a “blank year” for the custom PC market. Competitor AMD is also expected to launch the next-generation “RDNA 5” architecture in late 2027 or later, so a stagnation period without dramatic performance improvements or price competition is expected to continue.

Future Developments and Focus: Criteria for Smart Investment Decisions

Looking ahead to the latter half of 2026, the GPU market is expected to remain in an extremely harsh situation, with “no inventory available even if you pay a lot of money.” The strategy of waiting for price drops carries significant risk, especially considering current production cuts of 30-40%, and during the wait, inventory of current models will disappear, likely leading to further price increases of tens of thousands of yen.

For users who need GPUs right now, the recommendation is to secure the RTX 5070 with at least 12GB of VRAM and relatively stable stock, or the 16GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti at “pre-increase” prices. On the other hand, among those who find it difficult to allocate over 200,000 yen in a PC budget, there is a growing trend to consider console consoles such as the PS5 Pro, the “Switch 2” (tentative name), which is expected to have backward compatibility, or finished BTO PCs as alternatives. In the coming years, we will continue to see an era where “strategic purchasing” is required to secure limited supply slots, rather than competing over hardware performance.

Reference Page

• 【Justice Department to Send Subpoenas to Nvidia in Antitrust Investigation】https://www.justice.gov/

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