At this point, it won’t come as a surprise to hear that graphics card prices could be on the rise, as stores and graphics card manufacturers react to rising VRAM prices and dwindling GPU supply. However, a new report now claims that Nvidia itself has started charging a higher price for the GPU+VRAM bundles that it sells to graphics card makers. This Nvidia GPU price increase will put a direct strain on any potential profit margin for the card makers and could result in further price increases.
No in-store prices have been directly affected yet, and Nvidia hasn’t made a public statement regarding changing the MSRP of its cards, but it does hint that wide-reaching price rises for some of the best graphics cards could be incoming.
The new report comes from Taiwanese tech site Benchlife, which claims that on January 16, “Nvidia officially notified its partners that all bundled GDDR6 and GDDR7 memory packages are now increasing in price.” The “memory packages” phrase refers to the fact that Nvidia sells its gaming GPUs as a bundle including the GPU and its allocation of GDDR6 or GDDR7 VRAM.
The site goes on to claim that it has been informed of the exact price increase, but that it won’t publicly specify the amount. It does say that “Nvidia’s new prices are still lower than those announced by AMD to its AIB partners.” That’s despite AMD’s recent claim that it is fighting to “maintain prices” for its graphics cards.
Meanwhile, tech rumor site Videocardz adds that its sources suggest Nvidia is swallowing some of the current VRAM price increase, reducing the need for its graphics card partners to cut their own profit margins or increase prices to consumers.
Nevertheless, the overall picture we’ve seen emerge over the last few months, of memory price increases and GPU supply strains due to AI, really is going to make graphics card upgrades expensive in the coming months. However, right now, there is still a ready supply of cards, with some lower-end models still at sensible prices.
So, if you’re upgrading from an older mid-range card – like a GTX or RTX 20/30 series from Nvidia or RX 5000 series from AMD – there are some decent options available. For instance, the RTX 5060 might have drawn some criticism from us in our RTX 5060 review for not having enough VRAM, but it does actually have enough for the vast majority of 1080p or 1440p gaming situations and is readily available for its $299 MSRP.
