The prices of graphics cards, especially those from NVIDIA, have risen a lot in recent years. But, new information indicates that the manufacturing price is being reduced, but not its commercial price. According to the latest report, the 8GB of GDDR6 memory for graphics cards they would be around 27 dollars in the market.
All graphics cards on the market have a certain amount of VRAM associated with them. Said memory is used mainly to store the data of the textures of the games (among others). It differs from RAM in its access speeds, which are much higher.
This element is more important than you might think, since it is a limitation when playing. Depending on the amount of VRAM on the graphics card, higher resolutions you can run. For example, for 1080p resolutions 6-8 GB of VRAM is recommended and for 1440p resolution 12 GB is recommended.
The price of GDDR6 memory falls, but you will not notice it
He memory price for the graphics cards has been in for months drop. During the pandemic, a shortage of this component was generated, due to the strong demand for graphics cards. The situation has changed, with a great drop in demand, to the point that some of the latest generation models are barely sold.
According to outsiders, NVIDIA and AMD have no problem acquiring this essential component. But, this reduction in manufacturing costs is not being extrapolated to the final product.
It has an economic explanation called rocket-boom effect that you have suffered If you have a combustion vehicle, be it a car or a motorcycle, you are fed up with suffering from it. When the barrel of crude oil (from which gasoline is extracted) rises, the price at the gas station skyrockets. But, when crude goes down, it takes forever to show up at the pump. Hence the name rocket-plume effect, because it rises fast and falls very slowly.
Well, this would be happening in the vram memories. For a year and a half the price of this vital component has only fallen. According to 3DCenter.org, the price of the 8Gb GDDR6Which is equivalent to 1GB GDDR6is less than 4 dollars, specifically $3,375. This means that if a graphics card has 8 GB GDDR6, the cost is $27.
Although this price could drop to $2-2.5 for 1 GB GDDR6 for AMD and NVIDIA. What they do is buy massive quantities of these chips and that causes manufacturers to adjust prices, reducing their margin for immediate sale.
No impact on commercial graphics card prices
The price of 1 GB GDDR6 has gone from $13 to less than $4 in just a year and a half. The fall is greater than 300%, something that benefits manufacturers. They can hold or raise prices (as NVIDIA does) and raise profit margins.
A few months ago NVIDIA presented its financial results for the past year with a piece of information that went unnoticed. The company had increased its profit margin by approximately 1%. This data is now more relevant, since it could be partly due to the fall in the price of VRAM.
It becomes evident that the problems of the pandemic have passed, but with that excuse, prices have remained the same or have risen.
