GPU memory pricing is up 30 percent this month

Graphics cards may receive a price hike as memory pricing has increased by a whopping 30 percent this month. Both Samsung and SK Hynix have decided to allocate some of their GDDR memory production to meet strong demand for server and mobile phone memory.

The result is August quotes for GDDR memory chips are up from $6.50 in July to $8.50 in August. Samsung supplies about 55 percent of VGA ram while SK Hynix is the second largest supplier with a marketshare of 35 percent.

Following the shift of part of its RAM capacity from the graphics card segment to the server segment, currently the server RAM accounts for 27% of Samsung's overall RAM capacity, up significantly from 12% originally.

Although Samsung is rumored to be expanding its VGA RAM capacity in the fourth quarter, the sources pointed out that the related product sales in the fourth quarter will still be seriously undermined as most of the production is done in the third quarter.

The article doesn't specifically mention it but this presumably affects GDDR5 and GDDR5X memory. It's not known if HBM2 is affected but Samsung and SK Hynix are also the two key suppliers for that type of memory.

Via: DigiTimes