AMD reportedly raises Radeon prices again as Nvidia pulls RTX 5080 - Pasquale Pillitteri
AMD is reportedly preparing another price hike for November 2026 on Radeon GPU kits sold to board partners, following an increase that took effect on October 1, while Nvidia has removed the RTX 5080 from its US store with prices now 2.2 times the launch price.
The graphics card market isn't getting a break. AMD is reportedly preparing another price hike for November 2026 on the kits it sells to board partners (the GPU plus GDDR6 memory), after the increase that already kicked in on October 1. The news comes from a Chinese channel account, ChannelGate, and was picked up by TweakTown on October 30. AMD hasn't confirmed it. In the same days Nvidia also pulled the RTX 5080 from its US store, and the card now sells for 2.2 times its launch price.
A hike "on the kits" needs one little-known detail to make sense. AMD doesn't sell finished graphics cards. It sells bundles made of the GPU and GDDR6 memory, which partners (Sapphire, ASUS, XFX, Vastarmor and others) mount on boards they design themselves, with their own PCB and cooling. The increase therefore hits partner margins first, and only later, with a delay and to a different degree, the price tag in the store.
Memory costs triple
The report says GDDR6 got 8-10% more expensive in the third quarter, which would have pushed AMD to revise the prices of the kits it sells to partners. After the October 1 increase, another would follow in November, right in the middle of holiday sales season. The report doesn't say by how much, or on which models. That gap matters, because an entry-level Radeon with 8 GB of memory uses half the memory of a 16 GB card and would see a different increase.
GDDR6 is the video memory of the Radeon RX 9000 series and of a good share of GeForce cards. According to TrendForce the spot price (immediate sales, outside contracts) went from about $2.5 to about $7.5 per gigabyte, triple, because memory makers shifted production capacity to HBM and server DRAM, which feed AI data centers and pay better. Through all of 2025 AMD kept its price lists nearly flat thanks to fixed-price supply contracts. Those contracts expired in 2026. Since then every quarter brings an adjustment.
Nvidia's RTX 5080 disappears
On the market, the 16 GB RTX 5080, launched at $999 in January 2025, now costs far more. Tom's Hardware lists the cheapest model still on sale, a PNY RTX 5080 ARGB Epic-X RGB OC, at $2,199.99, or 2.2 times the starting price. Stock is running low and, the outlet says, the card will hardly make it to Black Friday.
Removing the card entirely breaks that pattern and fuels suspicion about its status.
ChannelGate claims Nvidia has already emptied its warehouse of 16 GB 5080s and that distribution holds about two months of stock, while waiting for a 24 GB RTX 5080 expected between December 2026 and January 2027 (around CES in Las Vegas). In China both the 16 GB 5080 and the RTX 5090D V2, the 5090 variant built for that market, would reportedly be withdrawn. Nvidia, for its part, hasn't commented and maintains the RTX 5090 is still in production.
What to watch next
The November hike rests on a single Chinese channel source and AMD hasn't confirmed it. With no figure even in the report, nobody can say today whether stores will see 3% or 10%. The increase applies to the price of kits sold to partners, which are only one part of a card's cost. TechPowerUp, cited by TrendForce, notes the impact on the final price may stay under 10% and depends on how much partners choose to absorb.
Black Friday falls on November 27. That day will show whether partners absorbed the hike or passed it on to the price tag. If Nvidia wants to unveil the 24 GB RTX 5080, the chance is CES in January. Before that, a statement from AMD or Nvidia would settle in one line what today has to be pieced together from rumors. For anyone deciding what to buy, the guide on GPUs, Macs and SSDs for AI at Black Friday is worth rereading with these prices in hand.
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