Facepalm: Nearly two years after launch, it should be easy for a graphics card distributor to order Nvidia's RTX 50-series cards in bulk. In China, however, some board makers reportedly can't supply enough of them anymore. They're now steering distributors toward the RTX 3060 and RTX 3050 instead, two cards that first hit shelves back in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Chinese supply chain outlet ChannelGate first reported the shift. According to the outlet, some manufacturers have already run out of RTX 50 stock. The ones that haven't are reportedly shipping what's left in small batches at higher prices.
Essentially, rather than leave distributors with nothing to sell, makers are pointing them toward the RTX 3060 in its 12GB and 8GB versions. The RTX 3050 makes the cut as well. So do a few AMD Radeon cards, though the report doesn't name them. Even so, ChannelGate doesn't expect any of these cards to become cheaper. If anything, the outlet thinks prices on older products could creep up a little.
As for the shortage itself, ChannelGate blames a fresh wave of demand from cryptocurrency miners. China's busy online shopping season is reportedly draining stock, too. It also doesn't help that the RTX 50 lineup was already running thin, since Nvidia reportedly cut production earlier this year amid the AI-driven memory crunch.
In fact, the RTX 3060 only came out of retirement a few months ago. In July, the card landed on Newegg in the US for $329.99, the same price it launched at in 2021.
That price didn't last long, though. By August, the same MSI model had climbed to $479.99. That's about $180 more than Newegg was charging for the newer and faster RTX 5050 at the time.
Meanwhile, the RTX 3060 has also reclaimed the top spot in Valve's October Steam Hardware Survey. It now sits on 3.62% of surveyed systems, just ahead of the RTX 5070 at 3.56%. The newer card had grabbed the lead in September before dropping 2.30 points this month.
System memory flipped back, too. 16GB of RAM is once again the most common amount, found in 41.42% of systems. 32GB had overtaken it in September but now sits at 37.06%.
The October numbers don't mean gamers suddenly ditched their RTX 5070s, though. Hardware Busters traced the swing to Steam's language breakdown. Users running the client in Simplified Chinese dropped from roughly 31% of respondents in September to just under 22% in October. Valve doesn't adjust its results by region, so when fewer players from China take part, the newer midrange cards popular there slide down the charts. A similar spike in Chinese respondents briefly put the RTX 5070 on top back in February, too.