Budget GPU shortages expected to worsen through late 2026, PC Partner warns

PC Partner — one of the world's largest graphics card manufacturers — warned that budget GPU shortages will get worse through the second half of 2026, according to TweakTown. The company supplies cards for AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel across multiple brands, so this isn't a single-vendor hiccup.

The crunch hits hardest in the sub-$300 segment: cards like the RTX 5050, RX 9060, and Arc B580. PC Partner cited component supply issues and allocation shifts toward higher-margin SKUs as the main causes. Translation: if you were banking on a cheap upgrade later this year, you might be stuck with inflated prices or out-of-stock pages.

This is the opposite of what most people expected. Budget cards were supposed to be the safe haven while flagship GPUs stayed supply-constrained. Now both ends of the stack are squeezed. If you're eyeing a 1080p card, buying sooner beats waiting for a sale that won't come.

Check our GPU recommendations to see which cards are still in stock and whether stepping up one tier makes sense before availability craters.