The local-inference story of the day, rolling out today: 64GB unified memory, same GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, starts at $4,999 — via partners only (Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI), no NVIDIA-branded unit this time. NVIDIA says the 64GB runs "local models such as Qwen3.8 27B, Gemma 4 26B-A4B and Nemotron 3.5 Bolt" — your exact model family, name-checked by a vendor. Claimed 1.3× on agentic Qwen3.8 27B via faster vLLM spec-decode + FlashInfer prefill. The price irony: the 64GB costs more than the original 128GB Founders Edition ($3,999); the memory shortage pushed the 128GB to $6,950. Eight 64GB units ≈ $40k for 512GB; eight 128GB = 1TB, clustered over ConnectX-7 with manual config for now. NVIDIA Sync gets 8-unit support plus a "Model Launcher" (downloads model + container, wires to OpenCode) later this month. Not a buy recommendation — but it reframes what a 64GB box is worth, which is useful context for the B70 watch.
SFFGeek — Oct 22 (GTC Berlin)
The "affordable" brand officially gave up: after January's 5–10% hikes, the next wave is expected Feb–Mar, driven by DRAM constraints and a reported ~10% TSMC supply-price pass-through for Q4 2026. AMD already raised GDDR6 kit prices for partners (Sapphire, ASUS, XFX, Vastarmor) effective Oct 1. The strategy per TechOlam is deliberate alignment with NVIDIA's inflated levels, not just cost coverage — analysts see prices not peaking until late 2027. The RX 9070 XT range already sits €816–930 in Germany. This validates your dual-A770-at-sane-prices posture twice over: you bought VRAM before the tax, and every new card is now taxed by GDDR-per-board. Nothing to do here except not buy GPUs.
TechOlam — Oct 22
GeForce VP Jeff Fisher in Taipei: production "continues," cards go to distributors — while admitting supply chains are "heavily overloaded." The rumor was that top chips are being redirected to datacenter AI (more profit); Fisher says no. The reality on the shelf: the 5090 has disappeared from NVIDIA's official US store, third-party prices are "absurd," and a Reddit photo of a 5090 box on a store shelf "causes a stir." Schrödinger's graphics card. Context: the 50 series is up ~66% YoY, the 5090 up 132% (TechTimes, Oct 12). Your standing rule — games land on slot-1, never on whatever the market is screaming about — continues to be the cheapest performance decision in the room.
iXBT.games — Oct 22
GeForce Game Ready 621.01 (Oct 21) brings Advanced Shader Delivery support across all RTX GPUs (20/30/40/50 series) + RTX Spark on Win 11 24H2+ — precompiled shader blobs delivered before you play, so no first-launch compilation hitch. First confirmed games: Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (out today). Microsoft claims MW4's initial shader prep drops "from several minutes to seconds" (vendor claim, unverified). Also lands on AMD (Adrenalin 26.6.1+) and Qualcomm; Steam and Epic support coming. The footnote that matters to you: Intel's list names Arc B570/B580 + Core Ultra (driver 32.0.101.9150+) — your A770 is Alchemist, not named. The stutter-kill doesn't reach your gaming card yet. On Linux, shader pre-caching is still the game's job, so your stack keeps playing by the old rules.
TechRepublic — Oct 21 (Microsoft announcement)
