AMD has reportedly increased the pricing of RX 6000 series GPUs for AIBs

AMD has reportedly increased the pricing of their RX 6000 series silicon by $20-40 following TSMC price increases  

A report from the Board Channels Forums, via Videocardz, has claimed that AMD has increased the pricing of future RX 6000 GPU shipments to their AIB partners by $20-$40 (approximately 10%).

This change has come thanks to increasing foundry costs for TSMC’s 7nm lithography node, the node behind all of AMD’s current-generation and last-generation CPUs and graphics cards. If this report is correct, the value of AMD GPUs is expected to rise very soon. 

At this time, it is unknown how these changes will impact the retail pricing of AMD’s graphics cards. Components shortages, shipping issues, high demand, and other factors have already inflated the pricing of Radeon graphics cards to ludicrous levels. 

AMD’s latest Ryzen and EPYC series processors all use TSMC’s 7nm lithography node, and so far, it looks like AMD has not increased the pricing of their other 7nm-based products. That said, AMD has not decreased the pricing of its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs in response to Intel’s Alder Lake launch, and neither have they launched significant Black Friday price reductions for any of their Ryzen 5000 series products. AMD’s lack of expected price decreases could be due to rising wafer costs at TSMC. 

  
Rising costs at AIBs will be passed onto retailers and then passed onto consumers. These price increases are not good for the PC market, and they are not good for consumers. That said, such price increases are not unexpected within today’s PC market. 

TSMC’s 7nm node is in high demand, and with their rising spending on new foundries and process technologies, it makes sense for them to increase their pricing. While it is easy to see AMD as the bad guy in this situation, TSMC is the company that had increased its pricing first.

Today’s PC market is a dismal place. High pricing for vital components is making PC gaming too expensive for most people. There’s a reason why Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles are selling like hotcakes and why many PC gamers question why they haven’t moved to consoles. We need GPU pricing to get lower soon. If it doesn’t, the PC gaming ecosystem will lose its heart. PC gaming has an affordability problem, and manufacturers need to address this.  

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