AMD plans to increase the price of its graphics cards by 10-15% in the second half of 2026

It looks like GPU prices just will not catch a break in 2026. NAND and DRAM prices have already gone through the roof thanks to the AI boom, and now GPUs are not far behind. According to Gazlog, which picked up the report from Chinese board channel sources, AMD is gearing up for another Radeon RX 9000 price increase of around 10-15%, expected to kick in during Q3 2026, possibly as early as July.

The reason behind the price hike is thought to be the rising GDDR6 VRAM costs. Since AMD bundles GPU dies with VRAM before shipping kits to its AIB partners, any jump in memory procurement costs gets passed straight down the chain. The spot price of GDDR6 has ballooned since late 2025, and AI data center demand shows no sign of letting up. As memory gets more expensive, graphics cards get more expensive too.

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We've been covering this trend for a while. TweakTown reported the first confirmed RX 9000 price bump back in December 2025, followed shortly by AMD's broader price-hike announcement. Even AMD's own VP David McAfee, when we interviewed him at CES 2026, wouldn't rule out further increases. So the pattern here is pretty well established.

It's not like arch-rival NVIDIA is free from blame in this case. Although the Gazlog report says Team Green has not yet informed its AIB partners of any upcoming price hike, that's only a short-term win for NVIDIA on the value front. It's worth remembering that NVIDIA already raised RTX 5090 pricing for AIBs back in May. With GDDR7 being considerably more expensive than GDDR6, another NVIDIA increase at some point would not be surprising.

Of course, it is important to keep in mind that Gazlog flags this report as not yet definitive, so treat it as a credible heads-up rather than a done deal. That said, given how consistently these price hike signals have translated into actual increases over the past several months, skepticism feels hard to justify.

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For potential Radeon buyers, it looks like higher-VRAM models stand to take the biggest hit, so watch out for deals on these ones. The RX 9070 XT with its 16GB of GDDR6 would absorb a larger absolute cost increase than something like the RX 9060 XT 8GB, and AIBs can always tack on extra margin on top of whatever AMD charges them.

Analysis from industry experts indicates VRAM costs will continue to climb through the rest of 2026, and multiple vendors have echoed that outlook. Waiting around for a price drop on Radeon cards looks like a losing strategy right now. With the AI craze spiraling out of control, it does not look like memory prices will stabilize anytime soon.