Everyday users have started buying GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB graphics cards en masse to run artificial intelligence locally, a shift that already threatens to drain retail stock of the model. The report, published by GameGPU on November 8, describes a clear change in demand: NVIDIA's entry-level card, designed for gaming, has become a tool for running language models because of its balance between price and VRAM capacity.
Two cards to add up VRAM
The driver is the shortage of video memory as open-source generative models demand more and more of it. With flagship cards costing thousands of dollars, enthusiasts combine the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB with other cards, such as the 12GB RTX 5070, reaching 28GB of VRAM to run the quantized Qwen3.8-Flash-Next IQ3_S model. Even so, two cards are not enough for context windows of 128,000 tokens or more, and many users already install two or more RTX 5060 Ti cards in a single PC, planning a third via an M.2 slot with an external OCuLink interface.
With the Strata software optimization in version 0.2.10, which streams part of the KV cache to 64GB of system RAM, it was possible to open a 256,000-token context window and process about 246 input tokens on two cards without installing a third. There is a trade-off: storing data in system RAM reduces performance during the pre-computation stage compared with physical VRAM, which is why users prefer to buy more cards.
Sky-high prices and shortage risk
The backdrop is the memory crunch hitting the whole GPU market: the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB launched in April 2025 with a $429 MSRP, but it was already selling well above that — on November 2, the cheapest in-stock unit on NVIDIA's marketplace cost $799.99, according to Local AI Master. NVIDIA says demand for GeForce GPUs remains strong and memory supply is constrained. Experts cited by GameGPU expect the shortage to reach the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB soon — a market expectation, not an established fact.
Image credit: GameGPU.
Sources: GameGPU; Local AI Master; InsiderLLM.
Transparency: this article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence, cross-checking public posts on X and sources from the internet. Please consult the original sources to verify the information.
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