AMD CEO Predicts "Higher Memory and Component Costs" Later This Year, So Get Ready for Radeon GPU Price Hikes

AMD has announced its first quarter results, with booming revenue driven by AI
However, there is bad news for the gaming division due to “increased memory and component costs,” noted AMD CEO Lisa Su.
AMD’s CFO has predicted that “gaming revenue will decline by more than 20%” in the second half of 2026 compared to the first half of the year.

AMD just revealed its latest financial results, with good news for investors in the form of a significant revenue increase, but bad news for consumers, with more RAM-related concerns looming on the horizon.

Tom’s Hardware reports that AMD’s fiscal first-quarter 2026 results posted a new record for data center revenue as the rise of AI fueled further growth, but CEO Lisa Su warned of price increases for PC components ahead.

Su predicted that demand will decline in its client and gaming businesses, essentially the consumer side of AMD’s hardware, in the second half of 2026 due to “higher memory and component costs.”

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So yes, that means AMD’s CEO believes that after next month, as we get closer to the third quarter, RAM and other components will only get more expensive.

In the case of gaming, the damage caused by price increases could be quite considerable, as AMD CFO Jean Hu noted: “We expect the second half [of 2026] Demand in gaming will be affected by higher component and memory costs. “We now expect gaming revenue in the second half to decline by more than 20% compared to the first half.”

Analysis: Radeon price increases, or more expensive consoles?

(Image credit: AMD)

In other words, compared to the first half of the year (of which there are less than two months left, and time flies, as always), the second half of 2026 will be considerably slower for AMD’s gaming revenue. The expectation is not only a 20% drop, but a further a drop of more than 20%, so it could mean a quarter less money raised, or perhaps more, even up to 30%.

This would seem to indicate that AMD’s Radeon graphics cards will be more scarce in the third and fourth quarters, and that there may be further price increases on the RX 9000 models. Clearly, AMD expects things to slow down with these graphics cards as 2026 progresses, but its gaming revenue isn’t just about Radeon, of course: Team Red also makes semi-custom GPUs for the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

Sales of those consoles are weakening naturally, of course, given that they are now in the last stages of their expected useful life, so we are reaching saturation levels for potential buyers. What could also be taken into account here are console hardware price increases, causing further unwillingness to purchase, or possibly AMD is anticipating further PS5 or Xbox price increases later this year, which will compound the misery.

It’s just guesswork, but the outlook is clearly not good for the second half of 2026, and this is the latest in a rapid round of pessimistic RAM crisis predictions, two of which come from the memory chip makers themselves. Micron has warned of growing demand for AI and increased pressure on RAM supply, while Samsung has noted that, at best, a “significant shortage” of memory will continue to plague us until 2027.

There isn’t much faith in Reddit-land that RAM prices will recover anytime soon, or that prices will ever reach the levels we saw last year, before memory increases started coming thick and fast.

As one Redditor put it in reaction to this AMD news: “My prediction is that in 2027 prices will drop an incredible 400% [price increase] to a nice, summery 200%. But they will never fall lower than that again. “RAM economics will change permanently and data centers will be a pain for the rest of recorded time.”