Graphics Card Prices Could Soar Amid Increasing Memory Prices

[AleksandarK]

The prices of graphics cards have been perhaps the most controversial topic among PC enthusiasts lately. High demand and low supply of the latest generation GPUs have lead to the massive price increase over MSRP. Graphics card makers, AMD and NVIDIA, have already announced that this situation is not going to get better until March ends. However, there seems to be another possible issue appearing slowly on the horizon. According to the Chinese website MyDrivers, the prices of graphics cards are expected to increase thanks to the increasing prices of memory used in them, presumably including both the slower GDDR6 and the faster GDDR6X memory.

The source claims that the new memory price increase is going to take place after February 12th, when Chinese New Year ends. As both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere generation and AMD Radeon 6000 series generation use GDDR6X and GDDR6 respectively, that means that the increased prices of these memory types could increase the MSRP, which is already above its original intent.


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[spnidel]

wait for rdna5

 

[MachineLearning]

Just when you thought, "surely it can't get any worse..."

 

[seronx]

Guess it is time to jump on them HBM2/2e/3 memory graphics cards. Oh wait...

 

[Nuckles56]

I guess that will be another $100+ to the prices of the 30 series and RDNA 2 cards which are already excessive unless you're in the states

 

[bug]

Look at the bright side: the more they cost, the more you save by not buying one.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Just shoot scalpers and coin miners and situation will go much better

 

[wurschti]

At this point, I don't even care anymore.

 

[Flanker]

Just praying nothing in my pc breaks in the near future lol. Mother of god

 

[Hyderz]

well i used to change gpu every 2 generation but now might have to change every 4 generations then.

 

[xorbe]

So the 3060 Ti that I saw on Amazon for $1599 is gonna be $1799 now? Glad I have a spare 1060 in case my 2080 Ti ever dies!

 

[Arcdar]

It's anyway ridiculous, just like Mainboard prices in the last 5 years. And I don't believe it'll get better anytime soon, as even if they could offer it cheaper why would they, once they got used to the profits they made. And everyone is jumping onto the hype train cutting their share out of it. I mean, what is there to do. PC's are needed for nearly everything now. From work to research to past-time-activities.... and the "power hunger" of all application (research - but also games and crypto mining) just keeps increasing which means they know the consumer WILL have to buy something at some point or have to stop doing what it is they have the hardware for..... it's just like power in an area where only one provider is available.... what could you do if they argue that they have to increase prices with bullshit arguments? nothing. you just have to suck it up, no matter if it's right or not (good example - PGNE in the bay area ^^ ... try to get better power/water prices? Maybe now, that they burned down the county one time too often and filed for bankruptcy )



I get that chips are more and more complex and thus more expensive to design and produce. But the platform the chip is placed on didn't change much over the last 10 years. No matter if you look at Mainboard structure/materials or GPU boards. Yes, they got more layers. Yes, they got more lines and capacitors. But looking at the upper middle class you don't get that much more functionality from a brand new z590 board compared to a z170/z270 for instance (how many more sata-slots do you have? how many more M.2? Oh, yeah. A new PCIE-Standard.... that's worth .... something? ). The same for GPU's. Neither the board design itself nor the way they are produced changed massively in the last 10 years and the "how do I get capazitators on this board and the lanes I need to connect them in between the layers" should have drastically improved in the same timeframe. Even designing the boards can't be that expensive anymore, as most of that is done by AMD/Nvidia and just adapted to the specific needs of the board partner. Takes some time, some manpower, some SW-Licences to get it done. After that it's assembly which still works not much different than it did 5 years ago.

In general besides the chips (and thus licencing fees / the cost of the chips on the MB or GPU - including RAM) the costs of production should have gone down massively and thus the prices of mid/high end mainboards/gpus should have stayed in a range of +10 to +25% of their all time prices and not artificially blow up like a woman after you take 30 seconds to answer the question "does this make me look fat?" (upper mid-range mainboards had been at ~200€ and high end started at ~300€ for instance - with z590 we START with the low end somewhere between 200-300€ and go up to 1k € for a MAINBOARD! ... it's bad enough that GPU's are in that price-range which should top out at max 700-800€ for "deluxe aqua" designs but mainboards now, too?).

 

[silentbogo]

Even before all these news about memory shortages, and before 3000-series and 6000-series scalping, and before our current "short-lived revival" of mining, my RTX2060S was already more expensive on used market than whatever I paid for a new one. Makes me wanna downgrade, cause that's gonna be the first time my PC hardware turns to pure profit

 

[ixi]

Look at the bright side: the more they cost, the more you save by not buying one.

Pretty much. Here sitting without computer for more than 6 months already. Neither I'm willing to buy a product which costs almost 20% or more from MSRP. Dream on fanboys.

 

[dj-electric]

"Graphics Card Prices Could Soar Amid Increasing Memory Prices"
Oh, that's fine. Their prices were too low so far, and we needed some adjustment

 

[ZoneDymo]

idc if the end up costing 1 million, I wasnt getting one anyway for current prices so whatever, have a ball gpu makers

 

[InVasMani]

Increase the prices 500% I'll wait year the miners can have all the supply they want for their fantasy farmville coins.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Just praying nothing in my pc breaks in the near future lol. Mother of god

SSDs and RAM is still cheap...

 

[renz496]

nice? haha. to those that end up refusing to buy new generation of GPU back in november/december because it was 100 or 200 over MSRP and hope things will get better in 2021....well good luck to you guys. it is time to re-evaluate our gaming rig and maybe ditch those 4k monitors so we don't need faster GPU to keep the in game performance high.

maybe things will get more to sane level by the end of this year.

 

[watzupken]

In the end, console gaming looks like a way out of this price increase madness for PC components. Of course that is if you can get one.

 

[stimpy88]

They don't even try to hide what they are doing anymore.

 

[koaschten]

In the end, console gaming looks like a way out of this price increase madness for PC components.

Which one, PS4 or XBox One

 

[silentbogo]

Which one, PS4 or XBox One

Maybe it's a global conspiracy to push for Cloud Gaming

 

[watzupken]

Which one, PS4 or XBox One

You missed out Xbox Series S. Lol.

Maybe it's a global conspiracy to push for Cloud Gaming

Perhaps some manufacturers will announced that screw prices are increasing as well, so need to increase prices of their GPU.

 

[Fluffmeister]

16GB continues to be ideal.