Saturday, June 10th 2023
GDDR6 VRAM Prices Falling According to Spot Market Analysis - 8 GB Selling for $27
The price of GDDR6 memory has continued to fall sharply - over recent financial quarters - due to an apparent decrease in demand for graphics cards. Supply shortages are also a thing of the past—industry experts think that manufacturers have been having an easier time acquiring components since late 2021, but that also means that the likes of NVIDIA and AMD have been paying less for VRAM packages. Graphics card enthusiasts will be questioning why these savings have not been passed on swiftly to the customer, as technology news outlets (this week) have been picking up on interesting data—it demonstrates that spot prices of GDDR6 have decreased to less than a quarter of their value from a year and a half ago. 3DCenter.org has presented a case example of 8 GB GDDR6 now costing $27 via the spot market (through DRAMeXchange's tracking system), although manufacturers will be paying less than that due to direct contract agreements with their favored memory chip maker/supplier.
A 3DCenter.org staffer had difficulty sourcing the price of 16 Gb GDDR6 VRAM ICs on the spot market, so it is tricky to paint a comparative picture of how much more expensive it is to equip a "budget friendly" graphics card with a larger allocation of video memory, when the bill-of-materials (BoM) and limits presented by narrow bus widths are taken into account. NVIDIA is releasing a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variant in July, but the latest batch of low to mid-range models (GeForce RTX 4060-series and Radeon RX 7600) are still 8 GB affairs. Tom's Hardware points to GPU makers sticking with traditional specification hierarchy for the most part going forward: "(models) with double the VRAM (two 16 Gb chips per channel on both sides of the PCB) are usually reserved for the more lucrative professional GPU market."
Trendforce anticipated some of this market movement with their prediction from last September: "In terms of Graphics DRAM...(we expect) another round of price cuts for graphics cards. However, various types of terminal promotions can only eliminate preexisting inventory, which possesses limited value in driving new demand. Demand for GDDR6 8 Gb and 16 Gb has weakened simultaneously due to buyer inventory adjustment. Buyers' purchasing volume was not stimulated even though DRAM suppliers slashed prices in 3Q22. Therefore, preexisting graphics DRAM inventory continues to pile up, creating greater pressure coupled with the gradual production of previous wafer starts. From the perspective of 4Q22, although there are only two GDDR6 8 Gb suppliers, Samsung and SK Hynix, due to huge inventory pressure the two parties will inevitably compete for orders by undercutting the other's pricing. Therefore, the price decline of GDDR6 8 Gb chips in 4Q22 may be higher than GDDR6 16 Gb, lowering prices by approximately 10~15%."
Sources:
Trendforce, Hardware Subreddit, Dram Exchange, Tom's Hardware, 3DCenter.org Tweet
A 3DCenter.org staffer had difficulty sourcing the price of 16 Gb GDDR6 VRAM ICs on the spot market, so it is tricky to paint a comparative picture of how much more expensive it is to equip a "budget friendly" graphics card with a larger allocation of video memory, when the bill-of-materials (BoM) and limits presented by narrow bus widths are taken into account. NVIDIA is releasing a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variant in July, but the latest batch of low to mid-range models (GeForce RTX 4060-series and Radeon RX 7600) are still 8 GB affairs. Tom's Hardware points to GPU makers sticking with traditional specification hierarchy for the most part going forward: "(models) with double the VRAM (two 16 Gb chips per channel on both sides of the PCB) are usually reserved for the more lucrative professional GPU market."
56 Comments on GDDR6 VRAM Prices Falling According to Spot Market Analysis - 8 GB Selling for $27
So if 8GB is about $27............then 32GB would add roughly $100 to the price of a video card............
hmmmmmmm
30 tier5060 card :laugh:Again, you seem to imply belief that performance scales with memory size.
Core count, generation and frequency dictate performance. Memory systems dictate resolution.
If you were hoping for a 4060 series card that can comfortably play 4K, then I don't know what to tell you. Hope that AMD delivers something?
There have also been games that really don't play well with 8GB of VRAM unless you turn the texture detail down until it looks like crap. You can easily blame the developers for that, and you'd be right, but it still feels like this wouldn't be such a headache if Nvidia hadn't decided to keep the same memory per dollar as they have been since 2016 with the 1070. More VRAM is beneficial, even on a card like the 4060 Ti, and only getting 8GB for $400 in 2023 just plain feels bad, man.
- "All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise." ~4060 Ti TPU review.
With the exception of Horizon Zero Dawn (taking your word for it, as TPU didn't test it), another console port that launched in fairly bad technical condition (www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-horizon-zero-dawn-is-it-finally-fixed), none of the games tested seem to indicate any issues when tested at high quality settings, and the card, when used at the resolution it's designed for (1080p (the most popular gaming resolution)) is basically the equivalent of the 3070 (256 bit) or the 2080 Ti (352 bit).It is a strong 1080p/1440p card. It is possible that 8 GB VRAM could become inadequate, but this hasn't been the case for the last five years, unless you pretend that 4K Ultra gaming with ray tracing is anything other than a tiny % minority, or is relevant for this tier of GPU. I don't think memory requirements are going to scale much until higher resolution gaming becomes the norm. I would imagine that again, the real performance limitation -will be much more limiting than the VRAM size.Reminder that the RX 7600 is also a 128 bit 8 GB card, and it's 25% slower (~30% cheaper so that's fine).
The Arc A770 is also a 16 GB, 256 bit card, yet it's consistently ~25% slower.I don't think lowering textures from "Ultra" to "High" has ever made textures look like crap either.locuza.substack.com/p/nvidias-ada-lineup-configurations You can take a look at the die shots.
I'm mentioning 4K because that's the only resolution the card being complained about struggles at.
Would you say the 2060, a not quite 5 year old card struggles because of it's VRAM buffer? Or do you think it might instead be the?
Adding to the ease-of-confusion, is that the chart referenced is titled "8Gb GDDR6 spot price" in its header/title.
One has to look at the chart and do some math to come to the article headline's 'numbers'.
Wider bus, means more traces, more terminations, more supporting-components, more opportunities for a bad card.
Without quoting... I saw mentions of the 290/390(X) and its 512-bit bus.
all I have to add to that:
:love::love::love:
I miss you Volcanic Islands. I'm sad I never got to have an 8GB 512-bit fren; I would've slathered you in baby oil, and made you scream
(It's okay though, I have a 16GB 2048-bit bus card now :D)
AMD's pricing and anti-consumer practices don't help much either. Intel and Nvidia are terribly anti-consumer and for some reason AMD has been trying it's hardest to catch up in that regard. At this point you have to ask yourself what the market stands to gain by AMD taking the lead. They haven't demonstrated that they have the capacity to lead the GPU market and they clearly would end up pulling the same BS Nvidia does. At the end of the day you are just playing musical chairs and the customers are always the one's left standing. If AMD is going to want to gain GPU marketshare, it has to improve the performance of it's products, the price of it's products, and it's consumer facing practices. If there isn't a Zen 1 moment then I don't see any reason why the market would make a large shift away from Nvidia.
FWIW I play Horizon Zero Dawn at 4K on my 3060ti and it's fine.
They wouldn't lie to you or scalp you, would they? They're kindhearted, generous, pro-consumer, and fair, right?I'd buy a 16GB 4060Ti if it only cost $29 more than the 8GB variant.
It's still not a great deal, but I'd buy it as a midrange card that has a future, instead of a midrange card that doesn't.
That could affect MSRP price, but it doesn't change a fact that Nvidia will eventually earn lots of $$$ due to how low VRAM market price is.
And company this big with like 75% of desktop GPU market share can get a special offer below market prices simply because they buy those VRAM chips by tons.
Also VRAM is really important for AI server solutions, and we have a boom for that now (second mining craze).
Automotive and phones demand for VRAM kinda slowed down I think.
If you compromise, you are ready to lower the settings.
If you lower the settings, you don't need much video memory.
If you do not need a lot of video memory, 8 GB can easily be enough.The 4060ti is a weak card and a terrible $400 purchase, with 16GB it remains the same crap, because sameA 12 GB card on a 192-bit bus is already here - 4070, although it would be exactly 4060ti, because the presented 4060ti in its pure form is a simple 4060
The 4060 Ti is at the performance level of 2080 Ti or 3070 and that is even before you enable DLSS2.
Moreover 40xx has DLSS3 frame generator. While this is some image quality compromise, you're really are not limited to play at 1080 low / medium settings with those cards.
You can actually play 1440p with high settings at >= 60FPS. Texture quality is the least performance penalty setting. It just needs VRAM to store those textures near GPU.
But with 8GB you will be limited very soon by VRAM in near future, since current games easily require 6GB - 7GB VRAM already. So buying a card with 8GB VRAM is not future proof at all.
Considering how cheap VRAM is these days it is purely a SCAM by Nvidia.
And your glorious 4090 for $2000 will be replaced by 50xx series in a year or year and a half.