GPU crunch is complete

For almost two years, you’ve had to be incredibly lucky, skilled, or patient to get an Nvidia or AMD graphics card at an MSRP. We have liveblogged and tweeted live Trying to buy GPUs online, navigating the petty websites of retailers fighting against an army of bots didn’t have enough reason to care.

But, yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I linked to Best Buy’s website eight hours later The retailer declined weekly and bought the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition for $599 MSRP.

I also had a $499 RTX 3070 Founders Edition in my cart. And those discoveries weren’t a fluke: Both Some of those GPUs were still available when we checked back this morning. 3070 FE is still there as I type these words. So 3070 is Ti. AMD.com currently has the Radeon RX 6750 XT, 6900 XT and 6950 XT in stock for MSRP as well.

I scoured eBay to run the numbers – the same ones I’ve been compiling since December 2020 to show you the real street price of a GPU. Surely, this week is the week when the most popular graphics cards finally hit the MSRP even in the secondhand market. The RTX 3080 is hovering around $700, the exact price Nvidia originally said it would be priced at.

Over the past six months, the street price of a modern GPU has been Sliced ​​in half. Nearly every graphics card we tracked on eBay has dropped by more than 50 percent since January—30 percent of that since April alone.

It was also Nvidia’s most popular and best bang for your buck cards — the RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 — which saw the biggest drop. Of those cards, the 3060 Ti is the only GPU used. can’t Should be at or below the average MSRP. Meanwhile, an average AMD card will cost you $100 less than the MSRP.

The secondhand market is also normalizing the prices of Nvidia and AMD’s more expensive GPUs. You can buy a used 6900 XT for $300 off its $999 MSRP, and I’ve seen eBay buyers average $318, $466, and $540 from Nvidia’s 3080 Ti, 3090, and 3090 Ti, respectively.

I think it’s safe to say: the big GPU crunch is over.

But should you really buy one? This is a more difficult question – because the forces that are ultimately driving supply and demand to match are not all in your favor.

Why or can’t you buy a GPU now?

First, let’s be clear: The chips powering these GPUs are now two years old. In October 2020, $500 might be a great price for the RTX 3070, but is it still a great price in July 2022 that new ones are on the way? Both the RTX 40 series and AMD’s RDNA 3 are expected this fall and could offer significant performance jumps.

This goes double if you’re looking at one of those cards that Nvidia and AMD later offered at a higher MSRP compared to their performance in their lack of GPUs. I recommend taking a look at this easy 3dcenter / video cards chart of how many GPUs should Cost, normalized against an RTX 3070.

If you are considering used GPUs, the age of these GPUs may be even more important, as there may be already Those two years have been worked for and maybe even time spent working hard at a cryptocurrency mining rig.

Reportedly, a major reason why GPU prices are being used is that crypto miners are flooding the market with cards that are no longer profitable due to the ongoing crypto crash, where the total market cap of all crypto assets has fallen. two thirdsSince its $3 trillion peak last November. (However, miners have been moving away from GPUs for some time.)

Whether it’s used for gaming or mining, maybe buy locally or from a site with good buyer protection – there have been reports of damaged GPUs amid the flood. If you get a chance to test it out, here’s a Gamers Nexus video that can walk you through the potential red flags.

Prefer new instead of used? Outside of my Best Buy Founders Edition, things aren’t quite as rosy — because you’ll have to make as much money as possible now that they have inventory clear, in order to deal with the desire of Nvidia and AMD board partners and retailers.

In her last earnings call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress suggested that supply had outpaced demand. “Channel inventory has almost returned to normal, and we expect it to remain around these levels in Q2,” Kress said. But supply chain sources tell Digitimes (Via video cards) that Nvidia and AMD can now actually be very Many are trying to order new cards and less from TSMC as they reportedly underestimated the demand.

Nvidia has reportedly pushed back its launches of the RTX 4090, 4080, and 4070 to the end of October, November, and December, respectively. wccftech And video cards, which could mean that today’s GPUs won’t last a bit longer than tomorrow’s news. But, that means it may be even longer before the price cuts of current-gen RDNA 2 or RTX 30 series GPUs.

(Nvidia declined to comment on whether the GPU shortage is over; I await comment from AMD.)

Falcodrin, the GPU hunter I profiled last December, tells me new GPU prices are all over the place, and proof of that isn’t hard to find: Best Buy is stocking third-party RTX 3060 Ti cards, priced at Rs. is quite high. I had a more powerful RTX 3070 in my cart. If you’re looking to buy a card with a fancy cooler for twice the MSRP, you still have plenty of options because board prices haven’t dropped yet.

Instead of drops, they’re still trying to attract customers with sales, like today’s EVGA anniversary sale, where an RTX 3080 can be had for just $80 at MSRP and the 3080 Ti and 3090 Ti. Both are under MSRP.

But, if you’re the kind of person who would rather be satisfied with current-gen GPUs than wait for the next generation, it looks like a price cut may be coming. Seeing how MSRP, EVGA sales, and some first-party GPUs at that might be 3dcenter Price index, it is not difficult to see a place for the rest of the prices to sink.

That said, it depends on whether gamers notice that the prices they’ve been waiting for are finally back. Moore Insights & Strategy analyst Anshel Saag thinks they will. “GPUs are likely to return to normal levels as people who make PCs or buy GPUs have actually started making them, now that prices are back in reality,” he told me, “there is a lot of demand for real gamers and From consumers who have been stuck for the past two years due to chip shortages, supply chain disruptions and the crypto bubble.”

And while some people are tightening their belts due to inflation or will wait for the next generation of GPUs this fall, they don’t think they’ll keep gamers away. “You have to remember that for a lot of these consumers, it’s their primary source of entertainment and socialization,” he says, who are looking forward to an RTX 40 or rDNA 3 card “understand that the latest and greatest.” Desire will now be much harder to get your hands on than what is already available.”

But he believes that the lack of GPU is over now. Prices speak for themselves.