Nvidia GPU Prices Climb 41% in Europe as Memory Shortage Deepens

European buyers hunting for a current-generation graphics card are now paying dramatically more than they were at the start of the summer. According to shattered.io, a eurozone retail tracker put the average Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series card at about €1,107 on September 28, up from roughly €783 on June 28 — a 41.3% increase in three months. AMD's Radeon RX 9000-series average climbed 28.3% across the same window, from about €644 to €826, with most of that move packed into September alone, when the average went from around €786 to €820.

The figures were reported on September 29, 2026, and independently corroborated by PCGuide, which pinned the increase on the ongoing memory shortage rather than any change in GPU design or manufacturing cost. That framing matches a broader DRAM, NAND and HBM supply crunch chipmakers have been flagging since late 2025. What the new data adds is a dated before-and-after snapshot showing how much of that upstream pressure has already reached gamers and PC builders in Europe.

The mechanics are upstream of the graphics chips themselves. GDDR6, GDDR7 and HBM all compete for the same DRAM manufacturing capacity at Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. As AI data center operators placed large advance orders for HBM to feed AI accelerators, those suppliers shifted wafer, packaging and testing capacity away from commodity DRAM and graphics memory toward the higher-margin HBM business.

That shift appears to explain why Nvidia buyers got hit harder than AMD's. Nvidia's flagship RTX 5090 carries 32GB of GDDR7, a newer and lower-volume memory standard more exposed to fabs now prioritizing HBM. AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT uses 16GB of the more mature GDDR6, leaving it less sensitive to the acute squeeze. Shattered.io cautions that per-model euro pricing is thinner in the public record than the aggregate averages, and that a listing showing a €5,299 minimum against a €2,099 MSRP looks like a scarcity-driven outlier rather than a typical street price.

Micron's own commentary suggests relief is not close. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors the company can currently meet only about half to two-thirds of what its largest customers are requesting, and said he expects the aggregate shortage to persist well beyond 2026, with meaningful new industry-wide supply unlikely before 2028, according to Tom's Hardware's report on the earnings call. Mehrotra pointed to the multi-year timeline for building and qualifying new fabs as the structural bottleneck. CNBC separately reported Micron's view that hard price negotiations by customers earlier in the cycle discouraged capacity investment that would have helped today.

AMD's increases have followed a more staged path. Tom's Hardware reported that AMD notified partners of roughly a 10% rise on Radeon GPU-and-memory kits earlier in 2026, then confirmed at least another 10% starting in August, with a separate report floating rumored board-partner hikes of about $20 on 8GB cards and $40 on 16GB models tied to GDDR6 spot prices. The pressure extends well beyond GPUs: Gartner forecasts combined DRAM and SSD prices rising about 130% by the end of 2026 versus 2025 levels, a surge the firm expects to lift PC prices by roughly 17% and smartphone prices by about 13%.