AMD’s Radeon RX 9000 series faces a notable price increase in China, driven by rising memory costs and supply shortages, signalling a shift from performance-driven to cost-driven pricing strategies in the graphics card market.
AMD’s Radeon graphics cards are facing a fresh round of price pressure in China, with reported third-quarter 2026 guidance lifting retail channel prices across much of the RX 9000 range by between 5% and 20%. The steepest move appears to be for the RX 9070 XT, which the guidance places at 6,999 yuan, up from 5,599 yuan. At that level, the card’s channel price would be roughly $1,037.
The increase is the latest sign that graphics card pricing is being driven less by GPU performance and more by memory costs. Industry reports have pointed to a broader shortage in GDDR6 and GDDR7, the video memory used alongside modern graphics processors. That shortage has already pushed up component costs for board partners, who buy the GPU core and memory as a bundled package, leaving them with little room to absorb the extra expense.
According to the reported guidance, the RX 9070 rises to 5,599 yuan, while the RX 9070 GRE moves to 4,599 yuan. The RX 9060 XT 16GB and 8GB versions also see sizeable increases, with the higher-capacity model climbing to 4,299 yuan and the 8GB version to 3,099 yuan. The older RX 7650 GRE is affected too, though its increase is smaller at 5.6%. In relative terms, the biggest rises are concentrated in the higher-memory cards.
The China pricing follows earlier reports that AMD had warned board partners of higher GPU-and-memory bundle costs. Tom’s Hardware and TrendForce have reported that AMD told some add-in board partners about a 10% rise in kit pricing in 2026, while other industry sources have linked the move to rising DRAM and VRAM costs tied to demand from AI systems. Similar pressures have been affecting Nvidia products in China as well, suggesting the issue is not limited to AMD. AMD has not announced a global change to Radeon RX 9000 pricing, and there is no confirmed timetable for similar increases in the US or Europe.
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