As if it wasn't already difficult enough to build a gaming PC, a reliable insider has claimed that both Nvidia and AMD are looking to raise the price of GPUs “significantly” this year.
Over the past few years, gaming as a hobby has become very expensive, with the prices of both consoles and games themselves increasing as production costs rise. 2025 is when the dam really broke, though, as the cost of everything from the Switch 2 and its physical release to the disappointing arrival of $80 games continued to rise.
Console gaming has been hit hard in the past few months, but it's especially noticeable for PC users, as GPUs, RAM, memory and storage have all become more expensive, largely due to the emergence and investment in AI. As if that wasn't bad enough, a new report claims that AMD and Nvidia will raise GPU prices “significantly” throughout the coming year.
GPU prices may start to rise again as early as this month
Expect costs to continue rising in 2026
As pointed out by Eurogamer, this report is courtesy of Newssys, which recently reported that both Nvidia and AMD are looking to increase GPU prices in 2026. According to the report, Nvidia and AMD plan to begin “sequential price adjustments” over the next few months, with AMD raising prices earlier this month and Nvidia apparating in February.
The increased prices will reportedly hit consumer GPUs first, including Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 and AMD's Radeon RX 9000. Newsis points out that the RTX 5090, which was released in early 2025 for $1,999, could cost more than $5,000. A price point that would prevent most gamers from being able to afford the hardware.
Of course, the price hike shouldn't come as a surprise given everything that's been going on over the past few months. GPUs are already expensive because of how powerful they are, but the rise of generative AI has made the technology more important than ever, making consumer GPUs more difficult to obtain because the demand on board is so high.
If paying five grand for an RTX 5090 wasn't bad enough, it's very likely that these price increases are only going to get worse in the future, especially as both Xbox and PlayStation look set to introduce new generations of hardware. AI has already made the world a worse place in many respects, but before 2026 really begins it will have a particularly noticeable impact on gaming.
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