A second wave of price hikes, this time affecting retail customers, is expected to add at least 10% to the cost of Radeon GPUs as AI demand starves the market of memory. Memory Shortage Could Push AMD to Increase Graphics Card Prices by 10%.
Amid an escalating memory supply crunch, AMD is reportedly preparing broad price hikes across its Radeon product stack. If accurate, the move helps offset rising component costs but will also lead to higher retail prices for end users.
UDN reports that AMD has notified its AIB partners, including Asus, Gigabyte, and PowerColor, about an upcoming price increase across its product range. The rise is expected to be at least 10%, which will lead to higher GPU prices for consumers.
This is the second recent price change from AMD. The earlier adjustment applied only to industry customers, leaving retail prices untouched. The new increase, however, is expected to carry through to end-market pricing and affect consumers.
The Root of the Crisis
As noted earlier, the main factor behind this problem is a significant memory shortage driven by rapid growth in AI demand. Recent agreements between AI companies and data-center developers have led to a push to build gigawatts of new capacity within a short timeframe.
AI data centers require large amounts of DRAM to support the computational demands of modern GPU-based AI models. This high demand has led to increased competition for memory supply, reducing availability for consumer graphics cards and raising prices for components such as GDDR memory.
A Domino Effect Across the Industry
AMD isn’t the only company affected. According to the report, Nvidia is also facing challenges, and the ongoing memory shortage may have led to delays or potential cancellation of the RTX 5000 Super series. With GDDR7 costs rising quickly, releasing more memory-intensive models would require pricing them significantly higher, which could prompt consumer pushback.
The situation has become so strained that AMD and Nvidia are reportedly considering reducing production, or even discontinuing, certain low- and mid-range GPUs. In these segments, memory represents a large share of total component costs, and rising prices are pushing them toward being economically impractical.
A Painful Reality for Gamers
This hits especially hard for gamers who’ve been waiting for GPU prices to calm down. AMD already caught heat when the RX 9070 XT dropped with a $600 MSRP that almost no one could actually find in stores. They said they encouraged partners to stick to the listed price, and only lately have some cards gotten close. If prices go up another 10%, those MSRP deals are pretty much gone.
For consumers preparing to build or upgrade a PC, it appears that any relief from high GPU prices may be short-lived. With AI-related demand continuing to grow, the memory shortage is likely to influence the PC hardware market in the near future.
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