Will graphics memory face another price hike? Nvidia reportedly raises GPU package prices across the board
The consumer graphics card market, which has just had a quiet half year amid the "AI price hike", is facing a new storm. According to hardware media BenchLife, NVIDIA has issued another price increase notice for GPU packages (GPU + video memory chips) to downstream graphics card manufacturers. The core reason is still the continued rise in storage prices. It is reported that this price increase involves both GDDR7 video memory and the previous generation GDDR6 video memory.
The consumer graphics card market, which has just had a quiet half year amid the "AI price hike", is facing a new storm. According to hardware media BenchLife, NVIDIA has issued another price increase notice for GPU packages (GPU + video memory chips) to downstream graphics card manufacturers. The core reason is still the continued rise in storage prices. It is reported that this price increase involves both GDDR7 video memory and the previous generation GDDR6 video memory. This means that in addition to most 50-series graphics cards using the Blackwell architecture, the RTX 5050 and older graphics cards will be affected - such as the RTX 3060 12GB graphics card that recently returned to the market at its original 2022 MSRP. According to reports, this round of price increases is the latest adjustment after Nvidia raised the price of its flagship graphics card RTX 5090 (including the China special version RTX 5090D V2) GPU package in May this year. In that price increase, other graphics cards were not affected. Counting further back, the two major GPU manufacturers Nvidia and AMD also raised the price of video memory in January this year. It is said that the price increase ranges from about 10% to 15% depending on the specifications. Perhaps influenced by this rumor, graphics card distributors in retail channels have been in a panic recently and are reluctant to sell. A domestic e-commerce platform shows that starting from Thursday night, many mainstream graphics cards have been removed from the shelves on a large scale. There are also some channels that adjust prices relatively quickly and have already shown signs of a new round of price increases. Taking the 16GB GDDR7 memory 5070 Ti graphics card of a well-known domestic brand as an example, the latest price on Friday afternoon was 10,745 yuan (RMB), and the price the previous day was 9,299 yuan. The same graphics card was priced at about 8,000 yuan before the price increase in January. It could be purchased for about 7,200 yuan in November last year. Similar to the smartphone market, the price increase of video memory has a particularly significant impact on the pricing of mid- to low-end graphics cards. As of press time, a certain brand's 8GB 5050 graphics card has risen to 3,083 yuan. The lowest price of the same product last week reached more than 2,100 yuan, an increase of more than 40% in just one week. In addition to the forced price increases of existing products, some graphics cards that were supposed to be updated this year were also forced to be postponed due to the surge in memory. Last week, news broke that at least one Nvidia partner had received RTX 50 SUPER graphics cards, and even though the hardware was ready, Nvidia ordered manufacturers to suspend new product releases. It is reported that the core problem is still that the cost of video memory chips is too high and unstable. It is said that the main upgrade point of NVIDIA 50 series Super graphics cards is the memory capacity. These graphics cards are expected to use 3GB GDDR7 memory modules to increase the memory capacity without changing the memory bit width configuration. The current price of a 3GB GDDR7 chip has risen to between US$60 and US$70, while the price of a standard 2GB GDDR7 chip is currently US$20. This means that although 3GB of video memory provides 50% more capacity, its cost may be about three times.