AMD rumored to hike price of GPUs by 10% – so it could be a case of grab a Black Friday deal now, or feel the pain later

• AMD is rumored to be enacting a 10% price hike on all Radeon GPUs
• Supply issues around VRAM are pushing up the price of memory
• The cost will be passed on to consumers, so Black Friday might be as cheap as GPUs get for quite a long time

If you're thinking about buying a graphics card, there have been further whispers from the grapevine that price hikes could be coming due to the spiking cost of video memory – meaning Black Friday may be the best chance to get a good deal on a new GPU for some time.

TechPowerUp highlighted (via VideoCardz) that analyst Dan Nystedt on X flagged a (paywalled) report from UDN, which claims AMD has told its graphics card-making partners that prices are set to rise.

The article suggests that AMD is hiking prices by 10% across its entire Radeon product line due to the rising cost of video RAM (VRAM) modules.

Obviously, take that with a whole heap of seasoning, but we have seen multiple reports in recent times about the rising cost of memory – for RAM chips and storage alike – being a very real phenomenon. So, it seems like the situation is worsening for graphics cards when it comes to VRAM, at least on AMD's side.

Analysis: acting with some haste may not be a bad call at this point

GPUs use VRAM to speed up their performance – it's much quicker than relying on the PC's system memory, as VRAM is right there, on the board, and swift to access – and some graphics cards pile a lot of the stuff on.

When AMD sells graphics chips to a board-making partner, the practice is to bundle the video RAM modules with it – these are the two main components in a graphics card, of course. With the cost of RAM increasing by a considerable amount, the price of those bundles is increasing, with AMD charging its partners more.

Of course, that cost won't be absorbed by the card maker, but will be passed on to the consumer who's buying the product. Therefore, Radeon GPUs are likely to get around 10% pricier on the shelves as the impact of this filters through the supply and production chain, but obviously, as noted, we need to be careful around rumors and a single report – it might be untrue.

That said, given a lot of recent speculation about how GPU prices might rise, the evidence is mounting, and there's an increasing feeling that if you do want to buy a graphics card in the near – or even middle-term – future, Black Friday could offer the best prices for quite some time. (There's a tempting Sapphire RX 9060 XT deal on the boil for one thing).

And if you're thinking that price hikes might apply more to high-end graphics cards with lots of VRAM, think again – this will hit more affordable GPUs just as much. Indeed, there's even been a suggestion that some cheaper (mid-range) graphics cards are going to be canned, as those models that pack more VRAM relative to their price bracket (principally more affordable 16GB offerings) are set for disproportionate cost increases – hikes that may not make much sense for the product.

I'd take that with even more seasoning, and the same holds true for the rumors about Nvidia delaying RTX 5000 Super refreshes due to VRAM supply issues. But still, all this very much adds to the general vibe of buying now rather than waiting, which is currently gripping the GPU market.

The best graphics cards for all budgets

➡️ Read our full guide to the best graphics card
1. Best overall:
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
2. Best budget:
Intel Arc B580
3. Best Nvidia:
Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti
4. Best AMD:
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

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