A new report from the tech industry could spell bad news for gamers looking to invest in the upcoming Nvidia RTX 5090 Graphics Card.
According to the latest report of TrendForce (through PCGamesN). This will also affect the prices of future graphics memory, so while the current list of the best graphics cards is safe, it could affect the suggested retail price of cards like the Nvidia RTX 5090.
While we don’t have an absolute, definitive reason for the PC RAM price increase, TrendForce claims that the trend is driven by an increase in server demand, likely due to rapid order growth for AI and data center servers.
For current-generation graphics card VRAM, demand is stable or declining, so existing inventory is more than enough to meet demand. As such, only new GPUs entering production that use GDDR7 memory will be affected. TSMC is also preparing to raise prices to take advantage of Nvidia’s ever-increasing profits, and while this won’t directly affect memory prices, it will still contribute to the increase in the cost of GPUs.
There is a silver lining, however, as expected RAM price increases are much lower than initially anticipated, especially compared to Q2 and Q3 2024. This is due to both high existing inventory levels, stable or declining consumer demand, and fewer production issues that affected previous quarters.
What this means for Nvidia
While a 3-8% price increase may not seem like much, such a bump on a premium graphics card like the Nvidia RTX 5090 would make an already extremely expensive card even more expensive.
This could be bad news for Nvidia’s graphics card sales, as it could further drive buyers away. If Nvidia wants to maintain its market dominance, the smartest option would be to take a slight hit to its profit margin and keep its MSRP as originally planned.
And it would be a shame if the RTX 5090 were to fall into obscurity, as it seems to be built with some very impressive technologies. For example, Micron GDDR7 VRAM will offer speeds of up to 32Gb/s and up to 1.5TB/s of bandwidth, which is – as the manufacturer claims – 60% more bandwidth than GDDR6. It is also said to have a 50% improvement in power efficiency compared to GDDR6.
The RTX 5090 boasts a over 30% improvement in frames per second for gaming — both ray tracing and rasterization — when averaged across 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. The improvement for 4K in particular will be more pronounced, with ray tracing at 4K (maxed out at ultra detail) supposedly seeing a massive 3x jump over GDDR6 according to Micron (with a 50% increase over GDDR6X).
Whatever happens, hopefully this memory price hike won’t spoil the fun for too many gamers.