- AMD and Nvidia budget GPUs could be in danger
- This is due to the increase in the cost of video RAM
- More affordable graphics cards with a disproportionate loadout of VRAM may get the axe, as they’ll be badly affected by said price increases
AMD and Nvidia are both rumored to be mulling the possibility of shutting down production of some of their low-to-mid-range gaming GPUs due to the spike in the cost of memory for these boards.
Notebookcheck.net noticed that hardware leaker Jukan on X had flagged up a Korea Economic Daily report claiming that AMD and Nvidia are considering discontinuing some models where the price of the video RAM (VRAM) makes up a lot of the cost of manufacturing the graphics card.
While no models are mentioned specifically, we’re told we’re looking at graphics cards that have the VRAM piled on, but are at the more affordable end of the pricing spectrum.
That means 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 be facing the axe too, and the report expresses a broader worry that third-party graphics card makers such as Asus are considering “reducing memory configurations”. In other words, possibly doing away with lower-end models in favor of beefier GPUs where the price makes more sense when RAM increases are factored in.
Rumor also has it that Nvidia has delayed its RTX 5000 Super refreshes – which really are loaded with a ton of video memory – due to the scarcity of VRAM.
Analysis: another sign that Black Friday may be the right time to pounce on a new GPU
Obviously we need to take this report with a good deal of caution, as with anything floating down from the rumor mill, but the cold reality of the components market is that memory pricing is indeed going up.
And graphics cards have video memory, so this is clearly going to be unfortunate for the GPU market. It also makes sense that graphics cards disproportionately loaded with VRAM are going to suffer the worst, and there could be some considerable impact among budget models with higher memory pools. The question is, will that impact be as wide-ranging as this report hints? Even if some affordable GPU models don’t vanish, as suggested, they could become scarcer, which will lead to supply hiccups and rising prices.
We’ll only know the answer to these worries later, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that things aren’t well in the graphics card market, with earlier rumors already suggesting VRAM-related price hikes for Nvidia graphics cards. Demand in the more profitable AI market is worsening the supply issues for consumer GPUs, sadly.
All of which leads us to one likely conclusion: namely that if you want to get a (relatively) affordable GPU, now might be your best chance of doing so – with Black Friday discounts already underway. If the rumors are right, and it’s looking fairly inevitable at this point, pricing is going only one way – upwards, and it’s just a question of how steep that incline will be.
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