Won't someone think of the poor PC builders? In all seriousness, PC gaming consumers have been getting a bit battered as of late thanks to global memory shortages caused by massive expansions in the AI sector. The price of consumer RAM has shot up, and now it seems that GPU costs are going to multiply.
As reported by Korean outlet Newsis, it's expected that starting this month AMD will increase its GPU prices across the board, with Nvidia set to follow suit in February. It's also reported that every month following GPU prices will increase, affecting both consumer products and those used in AI data centres and services.
"The average proportion of memory in the overall GPU manufacturing cost has recently exceeded 80%," a source told Newsis. These costs are making it difficult to manufacture GPUs and keep them at their current prices, even if consumers already find the cost of the latest and greatest graphics card to be a major hit to their wallet.
Online the effects are being seen right now, as Nvidia RTX 5090 GPUs are being spotted for prices close to $4000 (via Wccftech), and these costs are only expected to soar. Even if you're not splashing the cash needed for a massive upgrade, you're still likely going to be spending more than MSRP on a new GPU soon.