I hope you aren’t looking to build a gaming PC or upgrade your existing one for, uh, at least another two years. Prices for graphics cards were already ridiculous, and the AI arms race is sending them even higher. Earlier this week, it was reported that Nvidia was preparing to raise the prices it charges partners. Now AMD is rumored to be preparing to do the same.
Taiwanese outlet Economic Daily News reported on July 28 that Nvidia was raising its prices to manufacturers like MSI and Asus by up to 30 percent. It’s unclear how much of that price increase would ultimately get passed onto consumers, but it could be one of the biggest spikes to GPU prices so far this year. Good thing there are alternatives in the GPU marketplace like AMD, whose recent cards have performed well while being priced more affordably than Nvidia’s.
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) July 31, 2026
Oh wait, AMD is getting ready to raise prices too, though reportedly not by the same amount. According to hardware leaker Harukaze5719, AMD is getting ready to raise prices on its partners by 10 percent. The speculation is that AMD was waiting for Nvidia to start hiking prices first. With that bad news already out there, AMD is now following suit.
As IGN points out, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, which launched at an MSRP of $600, is now going for somewhere between $700 and $750 on Newegg. That still beats the price of Nvidia’s comparable Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, which is currently listed on Newegg at around $1,000, despite launching at $750 back in 2025.
Also 4GB for RX 9050https://t.co/qiOmBZQD1Y
— Ruby_Rapids (@RubyRapids) July 28, 2026
Basically, what this means is that thanks to RAMageddon, AMD buyers will be paying Nvidia prices, and Nvidia buyers will be paying almost double the price AMD was starting at just last year. Just how bad are things? Well, it’s 2026 and 4GB GPUs are making a comeback. Ahead of the rumored price hike, AMD revealed the RX 9050, a low-end card that comes with a 4GB version exclusive to certain regions that costs just $280.
“We’ve previously marked down graphics cards for shipping with 8GB or even 10GB of memory, as many modern games don’t scale gracefully to lower VRAM systems, so seeing even a budget-class card intended for internal resolutions of 1080p or below with this little VRAM is concerning,” reported Digital Foundry earlier this week.
So what should you buy? Probably two years in cryo-sleep until this whole thing blows over. It is going to blow ever, right?
