AMD spent part of CES 2026 talking about guardrails: how to keep Radeon cards affordable while the memory market goes sideways. The company’s message is straightforward — it’s trying to hold prices steady — but the mechanics behind that pledge are anything but. Memory shortages and rising DRAM costs are forcing hard choices across the GPU industry, and AMD may be quietly steering production toward the higher-margin pieces of its RDNA 4 lineup.
A promise tempered by reality
In an on-the-record conversation at CES, AMD Ryzen and Radeon boss David McAfee reiterated what many in the supply chain already know: long-term partnerships with DRAM suppliers are central to any strategy to stabilize GPU pricing. “We have very strategic partnerships over many, many years with all the DRAM manufacturers,” he told reporters, while admitting that nobody can predict exactly how prices will evolve.
That cautious optimism matters because memory is a big chunk of a modern GPU’s bill of materials. Tom’s Hardware tracked retail movements and found Radeon cards have already crept up 10–17% over the past few months, with the RX 9070 XT showing the steepest jump (as much as 17%). Those figures underline the pressure AMD faces if it wants to keep mainstream cards accessible.
Why the RX 9070 XT might get a bigger slice of the pie
Not every rumor about supply-direction is created equal, but several outlets point to a plausible production shift: AMD could favor the Radeon RX 9070 XT over the non-XT RX 9070. The logic isn’t exotic — the XT variant already commands a higher street price and ships with 16 GB of GDDR6 on many SKUs, so absorbing higher memory costs hurts its margins less than it would a cheaper card. In short, prioritizing a faster, more expensive SKU can be an ugly but effective way to limit visible price shocks across the lineup.
Treat that as a pragmatic trade-off, not a wholesale retreat: sources suggest production of the regular RX 9070 wouldn’t stop, but volumes could be rerouted toward the XT model. That helps manufacturers hit sticker targets without immediately pushing the most price-sensitive SKUs into painful territory.
What AMD can — and can’t — control
McAfee’s remarks underscore where AMD has leverage: long relationships with suppliers and close work with add-in-card (AIC) partners. Those relationships can blunt the sharpest spikes, give AMD room to absorb some cost increases, and help coordinate pricing decisions with board partners and retailers.
What AMD can’t fully control is retail behavior and macro inventory dynamics. Retailers can—and have—passed higher component costs to customers, sometimes overshooting the underlying increases. Analysts also warn the broader NAND/DRAM crunch could linger for years, not months, which complicates any short-term price promise.
Beyond pricing: opportunism and risk
If AMD can tamp down price growth while competitors struggle, it has a real chance to win share among budget-conscious gamers — especially since RDNA 4 competes mostly on performance-per-dollar rather than outright flagship head-to-heads with NVIDIA’s very top cards. But there’s a flip side: leaning into higher-margin SKUs (or reducing production of lower-end cards) risks alienating the mainstream customers AMD says it wants to protect.
There’s also a technology angle. AMD continues to push FSR Redstone and cautious implementations of multi-frame generation; execs say they’ll move slowly to avoid upsetting players sensitive to latency and artifacts. Those features could be particularly valuable on handhelds and thin-and-light devices — markets that benefit more from upscaling than brute-force silicon. That mobile angle ties into the broader ecosystem: streaming-capable hardware like the PlayStation Portal shows demand for portable play, and software and power-saving tricks are becoming as important as raw silicon in delivering smooth experiences on small devices. For users of handheld PCs, small battery- and power-optimizations — like the low-power download mode recently added to the Steam Deck — can change the usefulness equation for midrange GPUs and APUs.
Read more about how streaming hardware is evolving in the PlayStation Portal coverage and the Steam Deck power-saving update.
For buyers: wait, watch, and think about memory
Short-term shoppers will face a familiar dilemma: buy now at inflated prices or wait for the market to cool. Historically, memory-driven shortages have eventually eased, but industry voices caution that this cycle could be long. If you need a GPU today, look beyond headline model numbers: compare effective memory capacity, performance-per-dollar, and bundle or retailer deals. If you can hold off, monitor inventory and price trend trackers — sudden supply shifts (or an AMD decision to favor certain SKUs) can move prices quickly.
AMD’s public stance is honest if modest: do what you can to keep prices reasonable, but be realistic about the limits of influence when a core component like DRAM goes scarce. The company’s next moves — from production choices between RX 9070 and 9070 XT SKUs to how aggressively it leans on partners to hold retail pricing — will show whether that pledge was mostly PR or a durable, customer-facing strategy.