Is it because AMD doesn’t like Christmas? Or did too many gamers buy discounted GPUs during Black Friday? Not on this occasion, it seems. Instead, increasing RAM prices mean that AMD graphics cards could be about to get more expensive, as rumors are swirling that the GPU maker is increasing the cost of chips to its suppliers. That’s a cost that is likely to filter down to end users, increasing AMD graphics card prices in the not-too-distant future.
The news of AMD increasing the price of its best graphics card options comes only days after other rumors suggested the company is also increasing the price of its CPUs. This means any major AMD upgrade could soon be notably more expensive.
This new AMD graphics card price rumor comes from Boardchannels. A user on the Chinese discussion board posted a claim that “AMD has officially announced a price increase for its graphics cards,” going on to say that several cards with both 8GB and 16GB VRAM allocations will be affected by the price change.
Specifically, they claim AMD has added $20 to the cost of 8GB cards and $40 to 16GB cards. Like Nvidia, AMD sells its GPUs and VRAM together, so its board partners (the likes of ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, and Sapphire) only have to worry about designing and sourcing parts for the rest of the PCB and cooler. This means it’s on AMD to pass on the extra cost of RAM.
The poster goes on to say that this price increase is specifically related to memory price increases and that AMD “has notified its partners of a second price increase across its entire product line,” though it’s unclear if this second increase has already taken place or will arrive on top of the above increases. There were rumors a few weeks ago of a price increase for AMD GPUs having already happened, and that another one was on the way, so this line could be in reference to that. Regardless, they claim it will add a further 10% to the cost of AMD GPUs.
Also claimed in this post is that no new AMD products “will be launched throughout 2027.” This is a particularly odd claim as, even with the lead time for some manufacturing, the entirety of 2027 is a long way off. It’s also not clear if this means new GPUs will arrive next year and 2027 won’t see a further upgrade, or if the suggestion is that there won’t be any new AMD graphics cards from now until the end of 2027.
After all, it’s far from unprecedented for a round of new graphics cards to not arrive for 18 months, say, and so technically a whole calendar year can fall within that time period. Ultimately, I’d be very surprised if there were no new graphics card launches from AMD for over two years from now, as that would be three years since the launch of its most recent product line, which would be unprecedented.
Regardless, along with huge DRAM price increases, it’s looking like PC upgrades could be about to get a lot more expensive in the coming months. Maybe the Steam Machine potentially costing around $1,000 isn’t such bad pricing after all.
All of the above is still just rumors, though, with AMD not having publicly confirmed any of this information. So, while you may want to be on the hunt for CPU and GPU bargains sooner rather than later, take all this speculation with a pinch of salt.