After months of artificially jacking up prices of top GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD, the prices have finally started to decline. While the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series is still 77% above MSRP, 3DCenter says 87% above MSRP is still available. So the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series sells at 67% of MSRP instead of 83%.
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
Due to the ongoing chip shortage, prices of cards from Team Green’s Ampere and AMD’s RDNA2 have been influenced by many factors since their respective release dates, including the increased competition in the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining market. Prices are still too high, but it’s good to see things getting back to normal.
Furthermore, this price decrease coincides with the recent crypto market crisis. Probably, this hasn’t directly affected the decline in revenue we’re witnessing. Thus there’s a high potential that the down value of Bitcoin and Ethereum might force the cost of potential cards like the GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon 6700 XT further going down.
Ethereum now has hit its minimum number until August, according to VideoCardz, but we won’t know if the crypto market collapse affects GPU prices until next month’s report. The ETH 2.0 update is scheduled to fall in June 2022, indicating that it will take decades instead of months to make big money through mining to pay off the initial cost of graphics cards. It could be a good disincentive for GPUs in the mining industry.
Despite the lack of evidence that the crypto market crash has much to do with the decline of graphics card prices, it’s not clear what is happening just yet. But availability has improved in the last few weeks and 3DCentre tweeted its findings that “Availability improving again, no problems to buy cards” which might have impacted the industry. But it’s better to not get too hopeful. Prices and supply have fluctuated over the last 14 months so it’s not going to get better overnight, but people have a better chance of getting the card they want or at a discount.
We Haven’t Escaped the Woods Yet
The current market situation can’t be attributed to a single event but the COVID-19 pandemic which has caused productivity to fall is the main reason. Minor issues like the growth of crypto mining over the last 18 months and the growing market demand are the culprits for the storm that’s keeping us stuck. There’s no easy fix to the problem short of flooding the market with cheap GPUs to deter scalpers.
That’s not the only problem that is causing the stock shortages and ridiculous prices we’ve been dealing with. Still, the ETH 2.0 update might end the use of regular graphics cards in Ethereum mining rigs on its launch. It might lower the price of some GPUs but it’s unlikely to bring all of them back to MSRP across all vendors globally.
Waiting to buy a new graphics card at a fair price will take a long time. So, better consider buying a gaming laptop instead or using a streaming service like Nvidia GeForce if your internet is fast enough. But things can remain tight until AMD and Nvidia release their new series of GPUs which is expected to happen shortly.
