In a rather unfortunate turn of events, the price of all PC components have started to increase dramatically across the board, especially with regards to memory. The primary cause for this is the recent AI boom, which has skyrocketed the need for high bandwidth memory in both consumer and enterprise level hardware.
Naturally, this affects graphics cards the most, which were terribly expensive to begin with. Things might just be getting worse before they start to get better though, with Nvidia allegedly offloading the cost of memory components to manufacturers themselves.
Nvidia GPU Price Rise Imminent
As per leaker ‘Golden Pig Upgrade Pack’, the memory shortage has started to affect Nvidia now, with the GPU/AI data center company choosing to not bundle GDDR7 memory with its future GPU dies, forcing third party manufacturers to source their own memory.
While this move might not affect already established, big name players in the industry, it will most certainly have negative repercussions on small scale players.
Sourcing memory is not an easy task, and newcomers to the GPU business will likely have to go through some hoops in order to acquire the necessary memory.
Naturally, this will involve additional costs, which will inevitably be piggybacked onto the consumer. Expect Nvidia GPUs to get a lot more expensive in the near future, across all budgets.
It should be noted here that this change does not seem to affect Nvidia’s own, stock GPUs. Assuming you can get a hold of the special Founders Edition cards (or similar), these should be marked at normal MSRP pricing, or so it is hoped.
It’s a strange move for sure, but makes sense from a supply chain perspective. By shifting the load onto third parties, Nvidia effectively removes a part of its responsibilities and potential risks, whose cost is now going to be borne by consumers.
