First, they came for our DRAM, and now they come for our VRAM. Both Samsung and SK Hynix have bumped up their VRAM prices by more than 30% this month alone due to spiraling demand from phone manufacturers.

The price hike comes as both SK Hynix and Samsung reallocate portions of their VGA RAM production capacities towards producing memory dedicated to the server and mobile markets. It’s basic economics - there’s less video memory being made, demand is higher than ever, and prices are therefore rising.

Worryingly, Samsung and SK Hynix aren’t exactly bit players in the VGA RAM market. Between them, they’re responsible for the production of 90% of the world’s graphics card video memory. Micron, it’s time to step up your game.

At current market values, Samsung is charging $8.50 for a gigabyte of VRAM, up from $6.50 at the end of July. That’s an increase of almost 31%. On an 11GB graphics card such as the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, that’s an extra manufacturing cost of $22. That’s without taking into account that GDDR5X is inevitably more expensive than $8.50, and HBM2 is even more expensive than that. Graphics card manufacturers will either need to swallow the loss of bump up the prices and retain their profit margins.

The knock-on effect of this will be visible in the price of graphics cards, which in theory should rise across the board. This is just the start too, with the cost of VRAM set to continue rising for the foreseeable future. You’d best snap up that graphics card you’ve been after quick.

There are now a lot of external factors now playing into the costs of gaming hardware. We’ve seen that SSD prices have been rising, the cost of DRAM has increased significantly, and now VRAM has followed suit. The console manufacturers in particular are going to be hit pretty by all this considering their tiny profit margins. Nintendo is already struggling to get enough chips for its Switch console due to intense competition from Apple, while Microsoft is going to be looking at the rising costs of Xbox One X production and no doubt gulping.

By: DocMemory
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