Both GPU giants are quietly jacking up memory costs for board partners. Word on the street is that Team Green and Team Red officially pinged manufacturers about surging rates for GDDR6 and GDDR7 VRAM bundles. While neither corporation publicly adjusted MSRP, insiders claim NVIDIA demanded a smaller markup compared to the steep hike AMD forced onto assemblers, meaning Radeon cards might see nastier shelf price inflation.
Executives previously swore to eat these expenses to keep gaming affordable, but apparently that promise expired. Because these massive entities control the silicon and memory supply chain, third-party builders, unfortunately, have zero leverage and must pass the financial pain straight to the buyer. Consequently, street pricing for next-gen hardware looks primed to skyrocket, ignoring official listings.
The situation feels extra weird over at the Radeon camp, where leadership seems fixated on pushing the pricier RX 9070 XT instead of the standard model. Despite both cards utilizing identical NAVI 48 architecture, shipment volumes for the XT variant dwarf the vanilla version. Expect the heavy emphasis on sixteen-gigabyte boards to make upcoming AMD lineups significantly more expensive than anticipated.
Executives previously swore to eat these expenses to keep gaming affordable, but apparently that promise expired. Because these massive entities control the silicon and memory supply chain, third-party builders, unfortunately, have zero leverage and must pass the financial pain straight to the buyer. Consequently, street pricing for next-gen hardware looks primed to skyrocket, ignoring official listings.
The situation feels extra weird over at the Radeon camp, where leadership seems fixated on pushing the pricier RX 9070 XT instead of the standard model. Despite both cards utilizing identical NAVI 48 architecture, shipment volumes for the XT variant dwarf the vanilla version. Expect the heavy emphasis on sixteen-gigabyte boards to make upcoming AMD lineups significantly more expensive than anticipated.
