NVIDIA and AMD GPU Prices Projected to Surge in Q1 2026

Key Highlights:

• Flagship Price Surge: NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 is projected to reach $5,000 (7.15 million KRW), a 150% increase from its $1,999 launch price.
• Monthly Hikes: Both NVIDIA and AMD are expected to implement incremental price increases every month starting in Q1 2026.
• Memory Crisis: Rising costs of specialized video memory (GDDR7/GDDR6X) now account for over 80% of total manufacturing costs.
• Enterprise Impact: Price adjustments will affect not only consumer gaming cards but also enterprise-grade AI data center hardware.

Philippines — Leading graphics card manufacturers NVIDIA and AMD are set to implement significant price increases starting in the first quarter of 2026, according to a report by the South Korean news agency Newsis. The price hikes, driven by a global memory shortage, are expected to affect both consumer gaming hardware and enterprise-level AI infrastructure.

The $5,000 Flagship

The most dramatic adjustment concerns NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce RTX 5090. Originally launched earlier this year at an MSRP of $1,999 (approximately 2.86 million KRW), the card is projected to surge to as high as $5,000 (7.15 million KRW) within the year. This represents a 150% increase from its initial price point.

Rolling Monthly Adjustments

The Newsis report indicates that both companies plan to transition to a rolling price model, with incremental increases expected every month for the foreseeable future. AMD is reportedly scheduled to begin these adjustments in January, with NVIDIA following suit in February.

The price hikes will initially target the latest consumer lineups, including:

• NVIDIA: GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” series.
• AMD: Radeon RX 9000 “RDNA 4” series.

Beyond consumer products, the increases are also expected to impact high-end GPUs used in AI data centers and servers, such as NVIDIA’s H200 accelerators.

Memory Costs Drive Market Volatility

A critical factor behind this shift is the skyrocketing cost of memory components. Industry insiders cited by Newsis note that the proportion of memory costs in the total manufacturing of a GPU has recently exceeded 80%.

As an example of the broader memory crisis, the report highlights the cost of standard DDR5 16GB (2GB×8) DRAM modules, which rose from $5.50 in May to approximately $20 in November—a nearly fourfold increase. While GPUs primarily utilize specialized GDDR7 and GDDR6X memory, the shortage in the general DRAM market has exerted extreme upward pressure on all semiconductor pricing.

As the industry moves into the second quarter of 2026, analysts and stakeholders will be monitoring how these sustained monthly increases impact global supply chains and consumer accessibility in the high-performance computing market.