Graphics card prices have been a contentious issue for the past few years, with PC gamers having to pay more and more for new GPUs, thanks to inflation, rising manufacturing costs, limited availability, and a general lack of competition in the market.

Reports from China indicate that Nvidia's add-in board (AIB) partners, especially those in the mainstream segment, plan to raise prices by about 10% on average, as demand for affordable graphics cards outpaces supply.

News of the impending price hike was reported by IT House, citing unnamed "industry sources"; graphics cards like the RTX 4070 Super from Asus, Gigabyte, Zotac, and others add about 100 yuan to the price tag, while GPUs like this are usually priced at around RMB 4,900, so this is not a major price increase. [However, Nvidia's RTX 4060 models and the recently updated RTX 3050 lineup have also increased in price by about 50 yuan, which represents a larger percentage change, although the price increase is still fairly small given the overall low prices of these cards.

Whether the 10% price increase has already taken place or is something that will take place in the coming months is not entirely clear from this report; IT House claims that Nvidia is limiting the supply of new chips for the RTX 4060 Ti to keep prices in check.

Now, before you think that this is just for China and that the rest of the world will not see price increases, that is almost certainly not the case. It is estimated that there are over 300 million PC gamers in China, and while this number is not expected to change significantly in the next few years, there are still a significant number of customers who would like to upgrade their PCs with the latest GPUs.

So as AIB partners struggle to keep supplying shiny new graphics cards to that particular market, there is a good chance that this will affect prices in other regions, although I don't expect Nvidia's mid-range GPUs to suddenly jump $50, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the overclocked models go up quite a bit. [However, given that AMD's share of the GPU market is a fraction of Nvidia's, it is safe to assume that Team Red will not be adding dollars, pounds, etc. to the label. If anything, some Radeon cards, especially those under $500, may be reduced in price to entice PC gamers to get an RDNA 3 GPU.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT is the best sub-$500 graphics card to buy now, and it's perfect for 1440p gaming; there's not much competition in the GPU market, but at least you can get a great pixel pusher without refinancing a kidney or three mortgages We can expect things to change drastically with AMD and Intel's upcoming RDNA 4 and Battlemage chips, which will be available in the near future.