In the United Kingdom, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB graphics card now costs more than the RTX 5070 12 GB, despite the latter being a higher-end model with better performance.
The PC component market is going through a huge price change driven by the strong demand for memory in the artificial intelligence industry. This crisis has created an unusual situation in Nvidia‘s graphics card lineup.
Memory Price Crisis Pushes RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Above the Faster RTX 5070 in the UK
British stores such as Overclockers UK and Scan Computers clearly show this price difference, which makes little sense. At Overclockers UK, the cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, the ASUS Dual OC, costs £578.99, while the RTX 5070 ASUS Dual OC is available for £569.99. Surprisingly, the 8 GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti costs £359.99, more than £200 less than the 16 GB model and far from its original launch price of £399.
The reason for this difference is the huge increase in GDDR and DDR5 memory costs. For example, 32 GB DDR5 RAM kits that cost around £80 last year are now selling for around £350 in the United Kingdom, an increase of more than 300%. Since graphics cards with 16 GB of VRAM require higher-capacity memory chips, their production costs have increased much more.
In this situation, buying an RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB makes little practical sense for gamers. Although it provides 4 GB more VRAM than the 12 GB RTX 5070, the latter offers better performance. As long as large AI companies continue to take up much of the world’s memory production, PC builders and gaming enthusiasts will continue to face the consequences through constant price increases.
