The global memory supply chain is facing a new round of rapid contraction. According to South Korea's "Hankyung" report, due to the sharp increase in the cost of GDDR display memory, AMD and NVIDIA have reported that they may reduce or...
The global memory supply chain is facing a new round of rapid contraction. According to South Korea's "Hankyung" report, due to the sharp increase in the cost of GDDR display memory, AMD and NVIDIA have reported that they may reduce or even suspend the production of some GPUs in order to prioritize the allocation of limited memory to product lines with higher gross margins.
Although the report did not name specific models, the market generally estimates that the “60 Series” and “50 Series” targeted at the mass market may bear the brunt. Supply chain sources pointed out that with the overall shortage of memory, the supply of consumer GPUs is bound to be affected.
The rapid surge in memory prices is the main reason for this incident. Morgan Stanley pointed out that NAND spot prices have increased by about 50% in the past six months, and DRAM spot prices have soared by 300%. The increase is much higher than the long-term memory growth rate from 2016 to 2018.
Channel data also shows that since July, the mainstream capacity prices of DDR4, DDR5, and SSD for desktop computers have generally increased by 50% to 70%, and some high-end DDR5 modules have increased by 80% to 130% cumulatively. According to foreign analysis, the sharp increase in RAM has begun to push up the BOM cost of GPU, which is expected to be reflected in the future price of graphics cards.
As major memory manufacturers gradually shift their production lines from DDR4 to DDR5 and HBM, the supply of DDR4 is declining rapidly, which increases the supply pressure of GDDR and DRAM simultaneously. In addition, AI servers continue to consume a large amount of memory production capacity. This round of shortage is rapidly spilling over to the GPU end market, impacting the supply of graphics cards from 2025 to 2026.
AMD & NVIDIA Could Kill Off Budget GPUs as Memory Shortages Drive Costs Up, Leaving Entry-Level Gamers With Little Options Further reading: Rising memory prices erode hardware profits, Morgan Stanley lowers target price of Taiwan factory Ten years of memory shortage? Demand for AI servers explodes, from HBM to SSD.
