Video cards getting 3-10% more expensive due to higher memory costs

Earlier this month there was a story about GDDR memory shortages driving up the cost of video card memory. Now DigiTimes reports that this component price hike is seeping through to the retail price of video cards. The site says first-tier vendors of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050/1060/1070/1080 video cards are expected to raise prices by 3-10 percent at the end of August.

From April to mid-July, graphics card sales were contributed mainly by the cryptocurrency mining segment. With demand from the segment starting to cool off since mid-July and graphics cards' supply and pricing both stabilizing, sales from the retail channel have started picking up.

But the stable pricing may not last long, the sources said, expressing concerns that the price hikes caused by memory shortages could again deter consumer demand.

This time it's not cryptocurrency mining that's to blame but strong demand from the smartphone and datacenter market. Samsung and SK Hynix, which provide the bulk of GDDR memory, have reportedly shifted more production capacity to making memory for servers and handsets. As a result, GDDR prices rose 30.8 percent this month.