Nvidia fixes the 8GB RAM problem with one of its GPUs—if you can pay for it

Whether you’re a gamer trying to play recent AAA titles at high resolutions and max settings or an AI enthusiast trying to run models locally, we’ve reached the point where a GPU with 8GB of video memory is a pretty limiting bottleneck. But due to ongoing memory shortages and price spikes, it’s also a bad time for GPU makers to attempt to address this issue: rumors suggest that a mid-generation “Super” refresh increasing RAM for Nvidia’s RTX 50 GPUs was quietly delayed or canceled earlier this year, at least in part due to memory costs.

One of Nvidia’s GPUs East get a RAM upgrade, according to an announcement the company buried at the bottom of a blog post about a routine Game Ready driver update. The laptop version of the GeForce RTX 5070 goes from 8GB to 12GB of GDDR7, a 50% increase that should alleviate some performance bottlenecks and generally future-proof the GPU.

Otherwise, the 12GB version of the RTX 5070 mobile is the same as the 8GB version. The RAM is still connected to the GPU with a 128-bit memory interface, and the GPU still has 4,608 CUDA cores. The mobile 5070 uses the same GB206 silicon chip as the desktop RTX 5060 instead of the larger and more powerful GB205 chip in the desktop version of the RTX 5070, meaning that despite the increase in RAM, the desktop version remains a much more powerful GPU.