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As if the graphics card market was not already in a bad state, things are about to get even worse for consumers. The prices for the best graphics cards seems likely to continue to rise, as news of a 20% to 40% increase is now coming out of Japan.CFD Sales Inc., a well-known Japanese technology supplier and distributor, has confirmed these price adjustments for Gigabyte graphics cards. However, given the current times that we live in, the price hikes will likely expand to other brands and make their way to the U.S. market sooner or later.Go deeper with TH Premium: GPUsThe revision notice about the Gigabyte graphics card price increases from CFD Sales Inc. reads:"Thank you for your continued support. This is Ogaki from CFD. Thank you for your continued use of CFD-BIZ.com.Due to a price revision by the manufacturer, we will be implementing a price revision (increase) for GIGABYTE VGA products, effective for orders placed from August 1, 2026.The affected products will vary, but we anticipate price revisions of approximately 120% to 140% [editor's note: likely 1.2x or 1.4x] compared to current prices.We sincerely apologize for this sudden announcement, and we appreciate your understanding."Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.There were already early signs that another significant price hike was looming on the horizon. Over the past several weeks, graphics card prices have climbed sharply across Asia in countries like China and South Korea. AI is still gobbling up all the supply for memory chips, and chipmakers are struggling to keep up with that demand.The unprecedented demand for and shift toward AI hardware has substantially impacted the production cost of mainstream graphics cards, and as always, the repercussions pass down to the consumer.One U.S. retailer confirmed to Tom's Hardware that it has not received any notice about price adjustments for graphics cards. However, it has heard news from Taiwan about Nvidia increasing prices on graphics cards, which is likely the source of the reported increases.【GIGABYTE】VGA値上げ・ご注文残キャンセルについて https://t.co/cpOBZZ953P> メーカー価格改定に伴い、2026年8月1日受注分より価格改定（値上げ）を実施させていただくこととなりました。...現行価格比で約120％～140％程度の価格改定となる見込みです。 pic.twitter.com/H4IJvkhv0YAugust 4, 2026Prices for Blackwell and RDNA 4 graphics cards have usually been higher than MSRP to some degree since their launches, outside of discounts during sales events, but this year's increases have taken prices for those products up a virtual rung on the performance ladder. For example, the $299 RTX 5060 now sells for closer to the $379 MSRP of the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB at US retail. Further increases would make these products even poorer value relative to their long-gone launch MSRPs.Popular models like the GeForce RTX 5070 and the Radeon RX 9070 are currently retailing for 15% and 18% over their original MSRP, respectively. These graphics cards once offered great value for their performance. If the expected round of price hikes comes to pass, we could soon see these cards approaching the $900 mark. That's wild considering just a couple of years ago, that same amount of money was enough to build an entire gaming system from scratch.It may be too soon to panic, but price hikes in other regions indicate that graphics card pricing is going to worsen in the U.S. market. The only question that remains is by how much. To get a clearer picture, we have reached out to Gigabyte to find out what the manufacturer’s plan is for the U.S. market, and if the company anticipates any changes. In addition, we have also contacted several major U.S. retailers to see if they have received any advance notice from suppliers or distributors about potential graphics card price hikes, and we'll update this article if we hear back.
