Nvidia asks for +20 to +30% from its AIBs: the third RTX increase since January

According to Taiwan's Economic Daily News, Nvidia is raising the price of its GPU packages (chip + memory) delivered to its card partners by 20 to 30%. The reason: the DRAM/GDDR crisis announced until 2028. In concrete terms, a TUF Gaming RTX 5080 that cost $1,199 this winter is now listed at $1,595 on Amazon.

Design / Positioning

Nothing has changed on the silicon side - we're talking about prices, not a new die. Notebookcheck relays information from the Taiwanese Economic Daily News: Nvidia is passing on a 20 to 30% increase in the price of GPU packages - i.e., the GB20x chip set + GDDR7 memory - across the entire GeForce RTX range to its AIBs (Add-In Board partners: Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, Palit, and others).

This is the third announced increase since January 2026. The previous one, from the spring, only affected the RTX 5090. This one covers the entire line.

Hands-on - the real impact on displayed prices

Notebookcheck gives a concrete example: Asus TUF Gaming RTX 5080, $1,199 at Amazon this winter, $1,595 today. That's ~+33% accumulated over the current year. The AIBs are already paying "nearly a third more" according to the Taiwanese source, and manufacturers themselves say they can no longer predict their own future prices given the volatility of memory. Translation for the buyer: what is on the shelf today reflects the old price. What will arrive once the stocks are sold will integrate the new grid. The window to buy at the "old" prices is a few weeks, maximum.

Performance / Context

Neither the chip nor the architecture is evolving - you are paying more for exactly the same product. The justification lies in one word: GDDR7. The DRAM crisis triggered at the end of 2025 by the demand for AI and the drying up of HBM/GDDR capacity is expected to last until at least 2028 according to integrators. AMD and Intel made the same move earlier this year; console prices followed.

Autonomy / Long term

Two dynamics to watch:

• Tight used market - the previous generation (Ada Lovelace RTX 40) becomes a reasonable option again, provided that used prices don't go up as well.
• Handheld PCs and AMD Strix Halo / Zen 6 Medusa Point APUs - soldered memory integrations on SoC become more rational when the price of discrete GDDR modules explodes.

Verdict

Encadré récap

Our advice: if a GPU upgrade is planned for the start of the school year, the serious arbitration is now. The memory crisis is not conjunctural, it is structural until 2028. Waiting for "the next gen" will not bring a decrease - at best, the same price as fast.