AMD waited. That’s the detail worth pausing on.
Hardware leaker Harukaze 5719 reports on Twitter that AMD has told its AIB partners GPU prices will climb by at least 10% beginning next month. The cause given is the memory crisis fueled by AI demand — the same squeeze that has been eating away at hardware pricing all year.
And the news lands barely two days after AMD rolled out a new 4GB graphics card.
The waiting game Team Red was playing
The post Harukaze pointed to indicates AMD had been holding these increases back for some time. Team Red was reportedly waiting for existing inventory to thin out. But there seems to have been a second reason for the delay: letting Nvidia announce its own increases first.
Nvidia did exactly that earlier this week. Now AMD follows.
One line from the post should give pause to anyone currently shopping for a card: “the price positioning is expected to be similar to that of NV (Nvidia) graphics cards.” That isn’t the language of a company grudgingly swallowing higher costs. That’s a company that saw a gap in the market and moved to close it.
What this does to the one card that was still a deal
Newegg currently lists the Radeon RX 9070 XT somewhere between $700 and $750. Its launch price was $599 back in March 2025, meaning the damage has largely been done before this hike even arrives.
That’s what makes it sting. Ever since release, the 9070 XT has been the smarter purchase compared to Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 Ti — roughly equivalent performance for meaningfully less money. That price gap was the entire case for buying one.
Come next month, that value window may shrink. Possibly disappear.
These are supplier prices, but don’t get comfortable
As with Nvidia’s increases from earlier this week, these figures apply at the supplier level. Theoretically, that means the full 10% won’t land directly on your credit card.
Realistically, it almost certainly will. Third-party graphics card makers aren’t working with margins generous enough to absorb a 10% cost increase out of kindness.
AMD has been contacted for comment regarding the increases, and this story will be updated should the company respond.
The rest of the year doesn’t look friendlier
Valve warned this month that pricing is only heading in one direction. Sony will likely avoid a PS5 price increase for the rest of the year, though that shifts once the company exhausts its RAM supply after this fiscal year.
So: a fresh 4GB card on Monday, a 10% increase on Wednesday, and a memory shortage with no expiration date. If you’ve been eyeing a GPU and promising yourself you’ll commit next month, next month is precisely what’s about to get more expensive.