It was a matter of time and nothing promised is valid. This year 2022 will be a turning point for the sector, which stretches the rope and we do not know if it will end up breaking it with its customers. There are multiple factors which are going to be compromised within the industry and which will have no other consequence than what is expected and so dreaded by all: The price increases graphics cards and processors. The reasons ? Next.
In 2021, we’re hearing Intel talk about something key: there won’t be a price increase on their processors, but not because they don’t cost more to make them, but because they were going to assume the losses to give stability to the sector, something that was very applauded by all. AMD claimed otherwise and NVIDIA remained silent. With this scenario in mind, we have to say that there is new information and we are not going to like it.
AMD, Intel and NVIDIA: Rising Graphics Card Prices
The key word here is “until”. We don’t know which sectors or products they will be directed towards, but we have a vague idea on this, since we saw for example this week how AMD said that prices would increase between a 10% and 30% for their EPYC and server platforms.
The full report of this increase is not available (it is paid and restricted) but we have data on this to get a rough idea of why the big three GPUs will be priced higher.
The main problem comes, once again, from TSMC, and in particular within its two high-performance and state-of-the-art nodes such as the current 7 nm and the new 5 nm which will arrive this year 2022. Why? Well, because they’ll bring to life nothing less than the Radeon RX7000, Ryzen 7000, Ryzen 6000 for desktop and laptop, NVIDIA RTX40GPU A and Intel ARC (the 6nm are direct derivatives of 7 nm).
Paying in advance has a cost for users
No one plays to lose and everyone has their foot on the accelerator, but this has forced the industry to finance itself virtually without the need for a bank guarantee. We saw how NVIDIA’s prepayment to TSMC was the start of what Apple kicked off and now users are going to pay for it:
AMD will increase its quotes (price) for all 7nm and 5nm chips produced at TSMC, while TSMC has increased its quotes (price) for mature and advanced process nodes in a 10-20% from this year.
NVIDIA is also said to have made advance payments to TSMC for long-term orders for the GPU series. 5nm RTX 40 starting this year, and could pass on some of the high manufacturing costs to customers.
Here, only the user loses, that’s clear. The price of CPUs and GPUs will be higher if possible, high demand has led to the displacement of unprogrammed chips, and the cost of pre-financing and resource management as well as the increase in raw materials and transportation will drop at the buyer’s. So the siren songs as rumors of price cuts due to the increase in supply will fall into the water, prepare your pocket if you are going to change your PC…
