- AMD’s GPUs are rumored to be getting more price hikes
- This follows price increases that were seemingly applied last month
- A separate claim is that AMD will also focus more on 8GB graphics cards rather than 16GB models
The GPU grapevine is again carrying chatter about AMD‘s plans for its Radeon graphics cards, which seemingly includes another price hike, and an adjustment of production strategy to favor 8GB products.
VideoCardz reports that these two rumors come from different sources, but they were both aired via the Board Channels over in China, which is a font of speculation from the supply chain over in Asia.
Firstly, let’s look at the talk of price rises, where the claim is that either later this month or in March, some AMD graphics card makers may bump up the cost of their products, following a 5% to 10% rise that happened in January.
The extent of the increase this time round isn’t known, but the expectation is that it will bring these Radeon GPUs in line with the price of comparable Nvidia models.
The second source floats the idea that AMD is going to modify its production levels of Radeon graphics cards to favor 8GB models more, but that any adjustment will be more of a tweak than a big shift on the assembly lines.
The further claim is that this new strategy will push two 8GB GPUs more to the fore with higher production levels: the RX 9060 XT 8GB (there’s also a 16GB model of this card) and RX 7650 GRE.
Analysis: 8GB priority fully makes sense for both AMD and Nvidia
In case you were wondering what the RX 7650 GRE is, this is an Asia-only GPU from AMD, so you can’t get it at retailers elsewhere (although you could have it shipped from Hong Kong or similar via a third-party marketplace seller, but I wouldn’t recommend that for a number of reasons, such as returns and customer support for starters). It’s essentially a slightly faster version of the RX 7600, although there’s not a lot of difference.
As mentioned, there are two flavors of the RX 9060 XT, one with 16GB of video RAM and the other with 8GB, so gamers will doubtless be groaning to hear that the latter might be favored for stock levels.
There’s long been a debate over whether 8GB of VRAM is enough for modern gaming, and I won’t get into that again here, but there’s certainly a lot of skepticism over this – and more to the point for me, the level of future-proofing you’re getting with this amount of video memory.
Of course, with the RAM pricing crisis also affecting video memory, it only makes sense that AMD might pursue a course which shifts priorities away from more (relatively) affordable GPUs that pile up the VRAM like the RX 9060 XT 16GB. Nvidia is rumored to be doing the same thing, notably with the RTX 5060 Ti which has 8GB and 16GB spins, too.
As for the rumored price rises, AMD’s GPUs are already creeping up in that respect, which may reflect the mentioned previous price bumps (which have been rumored going back some way) to an extent. Team Red has even admitted that asking prices may not ‘remain flat’ across its GPUs as we progress into 2026.
If we look at the RX 9060 XT 16GB, the cheapest I can see this for at the time of writing on Newegg is $440 in the US, which is almost $100 more expensive than its launch price ($349) last year. While it was good value at that release pricing, it’s not looking so clever currently.
Interestingly, the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB – which is faster than the 9060 XT 16GB, but not hugely so (ray tracing aside) – has maintained the same price gap with the AMD GPU compared to their respective launch prices. They’re $80 apart now (for the cheapest models on Newegg), and those recommended prices were also $80 apart. This seems to back up the idea that AMD Radeon prices will track Nvidia’s mark-ups, which again, only makes sense.
We may well see GPU prices creeping up further over the next couple of months as predicted on the Board Channels – but that’s hardly a shocker given the RAM crisis, which, despite some signs of it levelling out currently, is still expected to get worse throughout this first quarter of 2026.
If you’re thinking of buying one of these more affordable 16GB GPUs, it’s likely that now is the time to do so. Either that, or be prepared to wait out the crisis, which could last through this year and next, or at least that’s what some analysts are predicting.
The best graphics cards for all budgets
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