Nvidia’s new RTX GPU reveal was… a paragraph in a driver release
Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- PCWorld reports that Nvidia’s only new mainstream GPU this year is a minor RTX 5070 laptop variant with 12GB of GDDR7 memory, quietly announced in a driver update.
- This subtle upgrade reflects Nvidia’s move toward profitable AI and data center products, leaving the consumer GPU market largely stagnant.
- Laptops powered by the new 12GB RTX 5070 are expected to cost upwards of $1,500, while AMD and Intel also offer few new mainstream GPU options.
It’s the end of April. If we lived in less chaotic times, we might be testing a new Super variant of an Nvidia graphics card right now, or seeing if we can fit it into an upgrade budget. Alas, it’s 2026, there are no new cards, and you’re more likely to find an oil well than a cheap GPU. In fact, the only new Nvidia card this calendar year was just announced as not being included in a driver update.
The card in question is a slightly updated variant of the RTX 5070 laptop GPU, this time with 12GB of GDDR7 memory instead of 8GB. This news comes in the form of a single paragraph in an announcement post for the latest game-ready driver, in which some tweaks for the re-release of a Conan Survival creators from eight years ago were more in the news. Please try to contain your enthusiasm.
The new variant of the 5070 uses 24GB memory modules, which can come from Samsung or Micron. These will serve as “an additional memory pool to complement the 16GB G7 offering that currently ships with most GeForce GPUs.” To translate a bit of this supplier talk: some new manufacturing options could alleviate the supply crisis caused by the giant production black hole that is the “AI” market. It’s strange that Nvidia’s first decision was to go for a mid-range product, rather than offering more options in the desperate low-end or trying to push towards the more profitable high-end.
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But the RTX 5070 is considered a lame duck in this generation of GPUs – almost everyone is opting for the cheaper 5060 option or the 5070 Ti with 16GB of memory. And that goes for the desktop card which already has 12GB, while the laptop variant is significantly behind with 8GB. This small bump could offer a more affordable middle step. “Affordable” is of course a relative term, as the cheapest laptop I can find with the current 8GB 5070 card starts at around $1,300. That means you won’t find a 12GB variant below $1,500, probably closer to $2,000 when these laptops hit the market in a few weeks or months.
Rumors were circulating that Nvidia was going to introduce Super variants of the RTX 50 series in 2026, like it did for the 40 series in 2024. That didn’t happen, and it looks like the entire line might be canceled because Nvidia is counting absolutely insane profits from selling data center and workstation GPUs. But to give Nvidia pause, AMD hasn’t announced anything new for the Radeon lineup since August of last year, and Intel’s third generation of mainstream Arc cards may well be gone.
