- AMD and Nvidia budget GPUs may be at risk
- This is due to the increase in the price of video RAM
- More affordable graphics cards with a disproportionate load of VRAM may get the ax as they will be hit hard by said price increases
AMD and Nvidia are both rumored to be considering the possibility of shutting down production of some of their low-to-mid-range gaming GPUs due to the increase in memory costs for these boards.
Notebookcheck.net noted that hardware leaker Jukan on X had flagged a Korea Economic Daily report that claims AMD and Nvidia are considering discontinuing some models where the price of video RAM (VRAM) makes up a large portion of the cost of manufacturing the graphics card.
While no models have been mentioned specifically, we’re told we’re looking at graphics cards that have the VRAM on them, but are at the more affordable end of the price spectrum.
This means that the RX 9060 XT models, which have 16GB of VRAM, and the spins on the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB are the obvious candidates in the danger zone.
Other GPUs may also face the axe, with the report expressing wider concern that third-party graphics card makers such as Asus are considering “reducing memory configurations”. In other words, possibly ditching lower-end models in favor of more powerful GPUs, where the price makes more sense when RAM increases are factored in.
Rumor also has it that Nvidia has delayed updates to its RTX 5000 Super – which really packs a ton of video memory – due to the scarcity of VRAM.
Analysis: another sign that Black Friday might be the right time to splurge on a new GPU
Of course, we have to take this report with a good deal of caution, as with anything that flows down the rumor mill, but the cold reality of the component market is that memory prices are indeed rising.
And graphics cards have video memory, so this will definitely be bad for the GPU market. It also makes sense that graphics cards that are disproportionately loaded with VRAM are going to suffer the worst, and there could be a significant impact among budget models with higher memory pools. The question is, will this impact be as extensive as this report suggests? While some affordable GPU models won’t disappear as suggested, they may become scarcer, leading to supply hiccups and rising prices.
We won’t know the answer to these concerns until later, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that things are not good in the graphics card market, with previous rumors already hinting at VRAM-related price increases for Nvidia graphics cards. Demand in the more profitable AI market is exacerbating supply issues for consumer GPUs, unfortunately.
All of this leads us to one likely conclusion: namely, that if you want to get a (relatively) affordable GPU, now might be your best chance to do so – with Black Friday discounts already underway. If the rumors are true, and it seems pretty inevitable at this point, prices are only going one way – up, and it’s just a matter of how steep that climb will be.
The best graphics cards for all budgets
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