After more than a year of watching scalpers and miners treat graphics cards like gold bars, we’re finally seeing some cracks in the madness. Prices for both NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30-series and AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 cards are dropping down — not back to MSRP yet, but at least trending in the right direction.
According to 3DCenter’s latest tracking, NVIDIA cards are now priced around 77% above MSRP (down from 87% just weeks ago). AMD’s GPUs are doing a little better, about 67% over MSRP instead of the painful 83% we’ve been used to. In other words: still overpriced, but you’re less likely to feel you’re buying a secondhand kidney on eBay.
Graphics card prices in ???? as of Jan 23, 2022
? Price level go down, a noticeable movement in the right direction.
? Availability better again, really no problems to get cards.
? ETH price give hope for the future (see yellow line).https://t.co/fNSz3OX69i pic.twitter.com/leX4cynnGv
— 3DCenter.org (@3DCenter_org) January 24, 2022
Crypto’s Collapse Leads to GPU Supply’s Shuffle
What’s driving the change is a cocktail of factors. The crypto market is currently in the gutter, which takes some pressure off mining demand. Ethereum has hit its lowest point since August, and with ETH 2.0 creeping closer, the appeal of blowing thousands on a GPU farm is fading fast. If miners can’t pay off a 3080 or 6700 XT in a few months, that’s fewer graphics cards getting vacuumed up from shelves.
That said, don’t chalk all of this up to Bitcoin and friends. Availability itself has been improving. 3DCenter said in the tweet: “Availability better again, really no problems to get cards.” That’s something we haven’t been able to say without laughing for 14 months straight. Prices and supply have fluctuated over these months, so it’s not going to get better overnight, but people have a better chance to buy the card or even see a discount.
It’s Not Over Yet
Before you start daydreaming about purchasing a 3080 at list price next week, slow down. Supply chains are still a mess thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic’s lingering aftershocks, and demand hasn’t cooled down. GPUs are still hot items, and prices don’t stabilize overnight, this is more of a gentle slope down than a sudden crash.
ETH 2.0 may take GPUs out of the Ethereum mining game entirely, but even if that happens, don’t expect the whole market to reset. At best, we’ll see more GPUs stay in stock, and maybe prices will come closer to sanity. At worst, we plateau somewhere “less awful” and wait for AMD’s RDNA3 and NVIDIA’s Lovelace launches later this year to turn things in favor.
So, should you buy a graphics card now? That depends. If you’ve been holding out, you might find a card without selling your car to fund it, but you’ll still be paying more than you should. If you can stomach the premium, now’s the best buying window we’ve seen in ages. If not, you have a couple of other options, buy a gaming laptop (still not cheap, but at least you get the full PC built with it) or use a cloud gaming service like GeForce NOW until the market fully resets.