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Tom’s Guide
Tom’s Guide
Technology
Jason England

GPU price hikes are coming in 2026, so now is the best time to buy — I’ve found the best deals for you to get ahead of it

AMD Radeon RX 9070.

When looking at the best Black Friday GPU deals, it seems to be a whole lot of savings that bring prices down to the actual retail price or slightly below. This is the best we’re going to get, and given the impending price hikes coming in 2026, this will be your last chance to get the latest graphics cards at prices this low.

This all comes down to the price of video memory (GDDR) modules surging by 172% year-over-year, which is causing the likes of Nvidia and AMD to seriously rethink what models they offer and the price they’re selling at. Prices are going to go up, so now is the time to buy to avoid disappointment.

GPU deals you need to buy now

U.S. GPU deals

U.K. GPU deals

What’s happening?

(Image credit: Future)

This all comes off the back of a shocking year-over-year price jump for DRAM — the memory used not only in GPUs, but also in smartphones, consoles and PCs more generally. Reported by TechPowerUp, DRAM costs have surged 172% compared to this time last year.

We first started hearing rumblings of this around the time leaks seemed to confirm that Nvidia cancelled the RTX 50 SUPER series GPUs, which were set to launch in early 2026. The main reason being that the video memory module supply is extremely limited, which in turn makes it way more expensive.

And in turn, given the scarcity, it’s causing a ripple effect across the rest of the GPU market. Asus, MSI and more have hinted at warnings to me about this, but the clearest came from PowerColor on the company’s subreddit. “Buy before the last week of the year before prices kick up,” the post reads.

The ripple effect could kill budget GPUs

(Image credit: Future)

While a lot of us dream of an RTX 5090, I don’t want to remortgage my house for the chance of path tracing. So my daily driver is the RTX 5060 Ti connected to the Minisforum DEG-1 GPU dock — you can read all about my mini PC/GPU dock setup.

Well, this range of budget-to-mid-range gaming GPUs may be discontinued given the increasing prices of that essential video memory. This is hitting both AMD and Nvidia hard right now. So I know last time I spoke about this, I said to “think” about buying now.

But with a much clearer view of how things are taking a turn for the worse, I can be a lot more definitive: buy now or pay much more later.

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