Gigabyte Japan Distributor Warns of 20-40% GPU Price Hikes — Bigger Than Today's AMD 10% Move

CFD Sales, Gigabyte's official Japanese distributor, has told resellers that Gigabyte graphics cards will cost 20% to 40% more on orders placed from August 1, 2026, and may cancel existing pre-orders that cannot be honored at the old price. The notice, signed by Sales Dept. representative 大柿 祐介 (Ogaki Yusuke) and dated July 28, frames the change as a manufacturer-side price revision. The 20% to 40% range, which the original notice expresses as roughly 120% to 140% of current price (a ratio, not a separate percentage jump), is the largest disclosed move in this round of Asian GPU price hikes — a bigger escalation than AMD's confirmed 10% Radeon price hike for the same month.

This is a developing update on the GPU price situation Type0 reported earlier today. Where AMD's move landed at roughly 10%, the Gigabyte channel is now showing 20% to 40%, and at least one Japanese retailer has already begun canceling pre-orders it can no longer honor at the original price — the first concrete downstream crack visible to a buyer.

The memory market shows the cost pressure: DRAM spot prices have roughly tripled since late 2025, from about $2.50 per gigabyte to about $7.50 per gigabyte on the spot market where memory is bought for immediate delivery. That is the cost the Gigabyte hike is passing through. AI data centers are absorbing most of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) output that feeds accelerators like Nvidia's current-generation Blackwell chips, and the same wafer capacity produces the GDDR memory that sits next to a consumer GPU's main processor. The GPUs themselves are not the bottleneck; the memory chips next to them are.

Tom's Hardware reports that a U.S. retailer it contacted has not yet received any U.S. price-adjustment notice. Consumer GPU prices in China and South Korea have climbed sharply over the past several weeks. Wccftech adds that at least one Japanese retailer has already begun cancelling pre-orders it can no longer honor at the original price.

PCMag reported in January 2026 that earlier rumored board-partner (AIB) hikes from Asus and Gigabyte were expected at around 10% on 8GB cards and around 15% on 16GB-or-larger cards, tying the move to VRAM capacity. AMD has separately confirmed its own August Radeon price hike at roughly 10%, and a board-partner move on AMD's current-generation RDNA 4 cards would land in the same memory-pressure channel as the CFD Sales notice. The differentiator here is magnitude: 20% to 40% on the Gigabyte side versus around 10% on the AMD side, plus the cancellation clause for existing pre-orders.

Three things to watch in the next two to three weeks. First, whether other Asian distributors for Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, and Zotac confirm similar hikes on Nvidia's current-generation Blackwell cards in the same August window. Second, whether U.S. retailers absorb any of the increase or pass it through. Third, whether AMD's RDNA 4 cards move in lockstep with the Nvidia side or hold a separate price floor. If those three do not line up, this remains a Japan-channel AIB-level move; if they do, it is the next leg of a regional repricing.