Nordic Hardware is running a piece where they affirm their sources in the Swedish market have confirmed some retailers have already received first pricing information for AMD's upcoming RX Vega graphics cards. This preliminary pricing information places the Radeon RX Vega's price-tag at around 7,000 SEK (~$850) excluding VAT. Things take a turn towards the ugly when we take into account that this isn't even final retail price for consumers: add in VAT and the retailer's own margins, and prospective pricing is expected at about 9,000 SEK (~$1093). Pricing isn't fixed, however, as it varies between manufacturers and models (which we all know too well), and current pricing is solely a reference ballpark.

There is a possibility that the final retail prices will be different from these quoted ones, and if latest performance benchmarks are vindicated, they really should be. However, Nordic Hardware quotes their sources as saying these prices are setting a boundary for "real and final", and that the sentiment among Swedish retailers is that the pricing "Feels wrong". For reference, NVIDIA's GTX 1080 Ti is currently retailing at around 8,000 SEK (~971) including VAT, while the GTX 1080, which RX Vega has commonly been trading blows with, retails for around 5600 SEK (~$680) at the minimum. This should go without saying, but repare your body for the injection of a NaCl solution.

DRAM prices have been high for quite some time now, due to a general increased demand over a slowly improving supply capability from manufacturers. Pricing of DRAM has been increasing (to the tune that if I wanted to double my memory capacity, I would have to pay double of what I paid a mere 11 months ago.) NAND pricing has been affected as well, with newer technologies such as 3D NAND not having a relevant impact on end user pricing as was expected, since tight supply and growing demand means process-level savings are dwarfed by the increasing prices on the balance of supply and demand.

Most of our woes can be traced back to high-end smartphones, which make use of up to 6 GB of RAM and have copious amounts of NAND memory. Now, reports are coming in that due to the iPhone 8's impending launch, supply is even tighter, with several firms being either unable to secure the amount of Ram they are looking for, or having to order in significant advance (futures speculation anyone?) Reuters is reporting that some clients have moved to 6-month supply agreements for their DRAM and NAND purchases, accepting higher prices than the customary quarterly or monthly deals, to make sure they get enough memory chips for their products.

AMD has unveiled the pricing scheme for its latest EPYC line of datacenter processors. In a series of graphs and tables at it's EPYC launch presentation, it outlined a comprehensive platform that it claims beats Intel on a performance per dollar basis across the entire 64 thread spectrum. What is known up to now in regards to pricing can be summarized in this nice table we have made for you below:

Continuing the trend of previous reports, DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, reports the general price increase in the PC DRAM market is growing larger than anticipated as the already tight supply situation is compounded by quality problems with products made on the leading-edge processes. Based on a preliminary survey of completed contracts for the second quarter, DRAMeXchange estimates that the average contract price of 4GB DDR4 modules will go up by about 12.5% compared with the first quarter, from US$24 to around US$27.

"PC-OEMs that have been negotiating their second-quarter memory contracts initially expected the market supply to expand because Samsung and Micron have begun to produce on the 18 nm and the 17 nm processes, respectively," said Avril Wu, research director of DRAMeXchange. "However, both Samsung and Micron have encountered setbacks related to sampling and yield, so the supply situation remains tight going into the second quarter and PC DRAM prices will continue to rise through this three-month period."

So, it would appear that rumors and leaks about the RX 500 series being simple rebrands of AMD's RX 400 line were true. Recent leaks point to no more changes and performance increases than those achieved through higher base clock speeds on the graphics cards' GPU and memory. The architecture is the same, and the process seems to have followed the same path - as of yet, no confirmation regarding whether or not these cards do use a newer, leaner LPP process for higher clocks and less power consumption.

A GIGABYTE product manager revealed the MSRP pricing of the company's upcoming custom-design GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card lineup, including those of its Aorus branded cards. The lineup starts with the GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming OC, a custom-design card with a WindForce 3X cooling solution and a custom-design PCB, besides a minor factory-overclock, priced at USD $699, the same price as reference-design GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition. Next up, is the Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (non-Xtreme Edition), which has been detailed in our older article. This card is priced at $719, a mere $20 premium over NVIDIA's baseline pricing. You get significantly better cooling and OC headroom. Lastly, you have the range-topping Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition, priced at $749, a $50 premium over baseline. This card comes with GIGABYTE's highest factory-overclock for this GPU. All prices exclude taxes. The cards will start selling from the 31st of March.

DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, today reported that the average contract price of 4GB PC DRAM modules increased over 20% between September and October of 2016 (jumping from US$14.5 to US$17.5) as DRAM suppliers completed their fourth-quarter contract negotiations with first-tier PC-OEMs.

These increases come as the result of production capacity gradually shifting from PC-centric DRAM towards mobile and server DRAM, which have seen tremendous growths in demand. In fact, PC DRAM memory accounts for less than 20% of overall DRAM production. The already low inventories of branded device makers go hand in hand with higher-than-expected demand for DRAM-carrying products. And this higher demand comes after the PC DRAM market being severely undersupplied in the second half of 2016. The result: an across-the-board price upturn for all types of DRAM.

A Spanish-based hardware site has just outed what they claim to be AMD's upcoming R7 Ryzen chips' pricing, and if true, these seem to spell a spectacular amount of value (if performance is at the rumored and expected range, naturally).

As it is, the prices cover only three models of AMD's overall Ryzen line-up, namely, the R7 1800X, the R7 1700X and the non-X, R7 1700 (all 8-core, 16-thread parts). According to the source, these chips will feature base clocks in the order of 4 GHz for the 1800X; 3.8 GHz for the 1700X; and 3.7 GHz for the 1700. Overall european pricing (including taxes) is set at €599.99 for the 1800X; €469.99 for the 1700X; and a "measly" €389.95 for the 1700. As always, you can expect US pricing to be even more competitive; perhaps a $349 pricing for the 1700 chip (which also carries a 65W TDP to boot).

From this, and considering all AMD Ryzen processors will be multiplier-unlocked, we can surmise that the 1700 should be quite a steal at this pricing. And this also bodes well for AMD's upcoming 6-core, 12-thread R5 processors - status-quo upsetting at an affordable price-point, anyone?