Demand above expectations, production that is not keeping up and many other problems and dynamics have been afflicting the semiconductor supply chain for over a year. And video cards are no exception, with prices for the latest generation models that have never been close to those announced by AMD and NVIDIA.
According to one very recent estimate on German and Austrian shops, the average price of many GPUs 90-95% higher than the MSRP reported by the manufacturers (as shown in the graph below), in a bullish dynamic after the summer declines, with the July-August period to mark the minimum. The steady rise in prices could accelerate further, at least as far as AMD cards are concerned.
The indiscretion comes from Asian forums related to card makers, so while there’s no confirmation from AMD, it looks pretty solid. AMD is rumored to have communicated to AIB partners (Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, etc.) a 10% increase in prices of RDNA 2 GPUs, with a price tag growing from $ 20 to $ 40 depending on the chip. The partners, of course, will download it on the buyers, or the shopkeepers, who will certainly not bear any burden, in turn pouring it on the end users. The reason of the increase on the part of AMD would seem to be linked to the will to keep the constant margins against the increases decided by TSMC on the production price of the chips.
In September it was in fact rumored of a upward adjustment of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s price lists, up to 20%, a move aimed at increasing margins in a favorable period and supporting future production expansion. As is known, AMD is second only to Apple in terms of the number of orders from TSMC, so if that increase is certain that the company has been invested in some measure and that it in turn will pour it into the rest of its supply chain.
This practice – at the moment – would not seem to affect Ryzen and EPYC processors, also produced at TSMC. It cannot be excluded that AMD has made a choice, deciding to increase the list of GPUs only.
In fact, a further increase in the price of video cards does not go to shift the balance, NVIDIA has in fact 80% of the market and an increase of a few dollars in a period of generalized stellar prices goes easily under the radar. The situation is different in the CPU sector, where AMD wants to gnaw more and more market share from Intel and must also beware of the new Alder Lake proposals.
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