For anyone who's been hoping to not have to pay extortionate prices for an AMD or Nvidia GPU, the news has been pretty good all round. With graphics card prices continuing to fall, which seems to have been brought on by the recent mining nosedive, gamers and PC enthusiasts can breathe a little sign of relief as products become cheaper, sometimes even going below MSRP. In fact, prices have dropped quite a significant amount since the start of this year.
According to a recent report from Tom's Hardware, AMD and Nvidia prices have fallen 57% on average since January, with a 14% drop being recorded since last month. It seems as though there is now a chance for potential buyers to purchase high-end hardware, such as an RTX 3090 Ti or an RX 6900 XT for below their recommended selling prices, with some of them being as low as 30% below MSRP. The data pulled from sites such as eBay shows that most modern graphics cards are now selling for less than their retail values.
There were also reports not long ago that GPU demand has been on the decline overall, likely owning to a return to some semblance of normality since the pandemic. With lockdowns being lifted globally, people have been finding themselves returning to work and/or not stuck at home, which likely means that fewer people have been on the lookout for PC tech, such as graphics cards and CPUs. Tom's Hardware goes on to say that average prices on eBay fell from $736 in May to $614 in June, representing a 17% drop, but does suggest that some cards used for mining will be hitting the second-hand market soon.
On top of this, there's also the next generation to look forward to. With Nvidia possibly launching Ada Lovelace this September, and AMD not far behind with a potential October release for RDNA 3, there's everything to play for from both companies as the technology moves into a new era.
Of course, there's also the newcomers to the industry, but with Intel struggling to globally launch its Arc desktop GPU, the likes of Nvidia and AMD don't appear to have a lot to worry about from team blue. In terms of prices for current tech however, things are starting to look a lot better, and providing people don't mind purchasing from sites such as eBay, there is a lot more opportunity to purchase a modern graphics card for cheaper than MSRP.
Source: Tom's Hardware