Chinese tech resources report that a shortage of Micron GDDR6X video memory poses a risk of scarcity for the NVIDIA RTX 4070 and other popular graphics cards. NVIDIA might release versions equipped with slower GDDR6 memory.
The RTX 4070, 4080, and 4090 graphics cards, along with all Super variants, utilize high-speed GDDR6X memory, which is exclusive to Micron. Given NVIDIA's dominance in the discrete graphics card market and reliance on a single company for supply, even minor disruptions can significantly impact their production.
All RTX 4070 12 GB variants use Micron GDDR6X memory with a speed of 21 Gbps. If powered by Samsung's faster GDDR6 instead, which has a total memory bandwidth of 504 GB/s, the RTX 4070 would have 480 GB/s — a decrease of just 5%. Moreover, GDDR6 is widely supplied by several manufacturers, potentially making it less expensive.
However, it’s hard to make a direct comparison, as the price of Micron GDDR6X is currently unknown. Since the RTX 4070 uses six VRAM chips, even a modest drop in GDDR6 price by a few dollars per module could translate to a price reduction of $30 or more. Nonetheless, GPU suppliers still need to decide on discounting. If users become aware that the graphics card contains less powerful memory, a slight discount would make sense.
The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT serves as an alternative to the NVIDIA RTX 4070, using GDDR6 memory with a speed of 19.5 Gbps, but features a significantly wider memory bus (256-bit compared to 192-bit). Its performance is quite comparable to that of its rival.
Source: PC Gamer
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