Since late July, consumer graphics card prices in China have jumped sharply;
some popular models rose by several hundred yuan within days and high-end cards
have gained about 1,000 yuan. Merchants and sell-side analysts cite rising
upstream memory costs, pauses in bulk shipments by some AIC manufacturers and
tighter channel spot supply; retailers are buying on order rather than stocking
after earlier memory-driven inventory losses. Ma Liang, chief technology analyst
at SDIC Securities, said expanding AI compute demand is prompting memory makers
to prioritize higher‑margin HBM capacity, squeezing GDDR6/GDDR7 supply, lifting
memory chip prices and pushing GPU production costs higher.
