Taiwanese outfit UDN reported that AMD has notified board makers of an increase of at least ten per cent, marking the second bump in a matter of weeks as the memory market goes sideways.

Industry sources claimed memory prices are rising fast enough to drag the entire graphics card segment along.

The situation is not helped by the fact that Nvidia, AMD and Troubled Chipzilla rely on GDDR to feed their consumer GPUs, with Nvidia pushing the new GDDR7 while AMD and Chipzilla stick to the cheaper GDDR6 kits.

The trouble is that the DRAM supply chain is stretched thin because AI keeps gobbling up every chip in sight. Reports suggest suppliers have even cut production lines rather than expand them, squeezing availability further and nudging prices up again.

A 10 per cent hike means Radeon RX 9000 cards built on the RDNA 4 architecture will not land anywhere near their MSRPs. Prices had only just slumped back to launch levels, and some deals even dipped below them, although that brief window now looks like the last chance for punters wanting a reasonably priced card.

UDN said all the big Radeon manufacturers, including ASUS, Gigabyte, and PowerColor, have been given the heads-up, so shelves are likely to look pricier in the coming weeks once the rises filter through the channel.