Market conditions are growing untenable for graphics card manufacturers and distributors, according to a recent communication from Zotac Korea. The brand professes that, as ongoing component shortages worsen, the “very survival” of board partners and beyond is at stake.
In a post on its official store, Zotac Korea highlights a perfect storm of problems that are “serious enough to raise concerns about the very survival of graphics card manufacturers and distributors going forward.” Constrained memory supply is chief among these issues, in addition to a recent reduction in GPU supply volumes. Zotac doesn’t go into detail on either factor, but both echo alleged reports of Nvidia raising VRAM costs and making cutbacks to GeForce production.
The brand also expects several models to become unavailable for a prolonged period of time. This sounds awfully similar to Asus’ recent (later retracted) announcement that the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB are effectively end-of-life through virtue of unavailability.
Curiously, Zotac also claims that a stable supply of all GPUs, save those produced by Samsung, may no longer be feasible. The GeForce RTX 30 series was the last GPU family that the South Korean tech giant and Nvidia made together. Will 2026 see an RTX 3060 resurrection? Anything is possible at this stage.
Full post translate:
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Hello, this is ZOTAC Korea.Recently, we announced a 2% reward points policy.
We sincerely apologize for having to make another announcement regarding reward points after only one month.
The current situation is extremely serious—serious… pic.twitter.com/Z2ZwIrbzjy
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) January 27, 2026
As if all the above weren’t enough, the company also calls out cost increases that affect both the RTX 5090 and RTX 5060. I presume there are fluctuations across the entire lineup, particularly if the alleged OPP program is indeed over, but Zotac only specified those two models, describing their prices as “unreasonable.”
While these claims exclusively concern Nvidia, with whom Zotac has an exclusive business relationship, both AMD and Intel are also having to contend with these market forces. The former claims it’s doing all it can to keep AMD GPU prices at MSRP, which may have come at the expense of Radeon RX 9070 supply. Meanwhile, Intel seems to be prioritising the enterprise market with rumoured Arc B70 & B65 Pro cards, leaving consumers to continue wondering if the Arc B770 will ever materialise.
In any case, now is a terrible time for the consumer graphics card market. Having survived the boom-bust periods brought on by cryptocurrency and the pandemic, the effects of AI investment feel all too familiar and yet somehow worse than anything I can remember. Should Zotac’s claims prove as serious as it claims, I worry we may see more regrettable EVGA-style exits from the market.
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