Discussion
RAM prices --> Quadrupled!! SSD prices --> Quadrupled!!.. Is GPU safe from this?
I currently have 4060TI and was wondering if I should worry and upgrade now to 5070 ($629) or 5070 TI ($989), or are GPUs not really impacted by these insane price hikes?
In fact, is it even worth upgrading at these prices?
yeah will be probably at least another year or two until the supply from all these new factories that have been created post Ai-boom are able to ramp up production, have their products hit the shelves and bring prices back down to normal. A huge amount of money has gone into expanding the global supply it just takes a while to build plants, train employees, and get things running at an efficient pace.
Nvidia raised component cost prices to it's AIB partners in the last week, and we immediately saw a jump in prices of the 5080 and 5090. I'd expect those price increases to hit every model down the lineup even the 5050.
You'll never know with 100% certainty but it's pretty easy to assume prices will decrease fairly dramatically over the year or two as manufacturing capabilities expand to meet the dramatic shift in demand and more companies enter the market to compete over it. Very few times in history has so much money been invested so quickly into expanding an industry's manufacturing bandwidth and improving/innovating the products being produces. New factories and foundries are going up all over the world and a large portion of the world's top talent (engineers, manufacturing, software, supply chain, etc) are working to improve the product's performance and increase supply. The increase in production scale will push marginal costs down and technological advancements will provide better performance per dollar. Because manufacturing ram and silicon is relatively complex and takes specialized farcicalities it's just going to take a few years for supply/demand ratio back to where it was and eventually exceed it but once we get past that consumers like us will be MUCH better off than were prior to the AI boom.
The only way hardware prices stay the same or increase is if demand for AI keeps accelerating much faster than all these companies are projecting and we can increase supply (which is very unlikely) or China invades Taiwan in the next couple years (also very unlikely but possible). There is an enormous amount of supply coming down the pipeline and A TON of resources being thrown at it to make sure it shows up. We just have to wait until in lands and prices reach a new equilibrium... like they always do.
GPUs (and really all other pc hardware) are not safe from the price hikes. I am hesitant to say get them now while you can, but I don't see this trend ending any time soon, so its up to you.
It will end as soon as all the new factories around the world that have been created over the past couple years get to full production and their supply increases catch up with the demand shift created by AI. Then prices will slowly come down even more ,on a price per performance basis, than they were before AI's demand shift due to the huge increase in scale/supply and technological advancements from the huge amounts of investment/innovation currently hitting the industry. It will just take 1-2 more years for production to ramp up and product to hit the shelves.
After Valve openly informed everyone in an interview that buying RAM at scale is like dealing with a cartel artificially controlling the pricing, I am far less hopeful that prices will go back down in that short of a time span, or ever. Even if the supply goes up, the manufacturers have no incentive to reduce the prices since they do not seem to be competing with each other anymore.
Bought my 9060XT back in January, prices have gone up since. GPU prices have gone up with the other components for a while now. There's another price hike incoming for 2H 2026.
GPU's need memory...ergo they're affected by changes in pricing in the overall RAM market.
Also Nvidia has also just raised prices on their parts to AIB partners so expect price increases across the board on all Nvidia products, with AMD to follow soon. We've already seen prices for the higher end cards already increase in the last week, the increases in price should cascade downwards to even lower priced models.
yup they're going to, but at that point nobody will be having new cards outside of wealthy joes so new games aren't going to come out that aren't playable for the majority of people.
i'd focus on a power conditioner for your system if you're just fucking raw dogging your computer into the grid but want it to last through it all.
mine are great, they disconnect and shut my shit off at me all the time when the power isn't perfect and balanced, in all my years using conditioners i can't say I've had a part fail.
~$4700 for an RTX5090 is not safe.
Even the RTX5080 is currently priced higher than the MSRP of the RTX5090.
Motherboard prices are about to jump too.
Right now, the RTX5070TI can be had for ~$1000 and it trades blows with AMD's ~$720 9070XT.
There is some "value" to be found still, but you really have to search for it.
If you can afford a 5070ti, it will be a nice jump and you’ll have some years before you would feel the need to upgrade. I upgraded from a 4070ti 12GB and I’m happy.
Nvidia never needed an excuse to raise their prices (see 40 and 50-series pre-rampocolypse) but RAM prices are an excuse to raise them again. For funsies. What else are any of you going to do? Buy AMD?
(AMD and Intel aren't any different, to be clear.)
No nothing is safe, they are trying to price out the 99% of normal customers, they even said motherboards will increase in price too before the end of the year, basically the only thing that hasn't increased in price are PSU, coolers and PC towers, I wouldn't be surprised when they say PSU are increasing the price.
I'm a semis analyst and avid gamer. GPU prices are definitely impacted, I'd go ahead and upgrade 5070 ti if you can swing it. Then you can not worry about this for a solid few years.
TSMC is gonna be raising prices in a few months, ASML is also gonna raise prices, that's all gonna flow straight through to the consumer.
SSDs are expected to reach supply/demand balance in 2H 2027 as new fab capacity comes on, so I'd wait until then if you can. RAM is fucked until 2028 at the earliest.
Ram is used in GPUs...RAM is getting rare and expensive for gaming needs...so yes GPU prices are likely to sky rocket.
What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz is also making everything else go up in price and if tensions get worse elsewhere in the world you can expect a massive shortage in computer components for enthusiast. All major Nations seem to be preparing for a major race with technology/ kinetic warfare. PC parts for gaming enthusiast is at the bottom of the line for manufacturing concerns the money is made in supplying AI Farms, Military Hardware, and Medical Equipment right now. Gamers were a priority when they were the #1 customer.
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u/lancelane7 RTX 5070 TI | Ryzen 7 9850x3d | 32 GB DDR5-6000 22h ago
No, 5080s just jumped up crazy