Graphics cards getting expensive again

https://www.techspot.com/news/91013-nvidia-amd-graphics-cards-getting-more-expensive-again.html

Why it matters: Things aren’t looking good for anyone looking to buy a new graphics card. After several weeks of prices falling rapidly towards their MSRP, both Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series and AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 cards saw their average prices rise during August.

The latest figures from 3DCenter.org, which looks at average selling prices of Ampere/RDNA 2 cards at retailers in Germany, show team green’s products rising 9% throughout August to 59% above MSRP, while AMD’s cards were up 5% to 64% above MSRP.

For Nvidia, the data reverses a trend that has seen the average price of the RTX 3000 series fall for over three months. It was at a high of over 200% more than MSRP in mid-May, declining to 50% in early August—the lowest since the year began.

It’s been a slightly different story for AMD. The Radeon 6000 series’ price peaked at 114% above MSRP before falling to 53% in early July, but it’s slowly been on the increase since then and is now slightly above Nvidia at 64%.

While the figures are from Germany, they reflect a global pattern. Our own GPU availability and pricing update for August also shows card prices (on eBay) rising by a few percent points.

MSRP	eBay Average Price June	eBay Average Price July	eBay Average Price August	Current Price Inflation	Price Increase July to August
GeForce RTX 3090	$1,500	$2,962	$2,599	$2,607	74%	0%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	$1,200	$2,187	$1,905	$1,815	51%	-5%
GeForce RTX 3080	$700	$1,948	$1,623	$1,643	135%	1%
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti	$600	$1,323	$1,085	$1,170	95%	8%
GeForce RTX 3070	$500	$1,261	$1,075	$1,228	146%	14%
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	$400	$1,255	$1,012	$952	138%	-6%
GeForce RTX 3060	$330	$830	$723	$752	128%	4%
Average	109%	2%

Availability also gotten worse since the start of the month. Whereas only the RTX 3070 and 3070 Ti failed to achieve four out of five stars in the previous report, the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 are also rated at 3/5 in the latest edition.

It’s even worse for AMD. The RX 6800 is now the most difficult card to find at German retailers, ranked at 1/5 for availability. The RX 6600 XT and RX 6900 XT both score 3/5, and the RX 6700 XT and RX 6900 XT get 4/5.

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang recently said the supply issues plaguing graphics cards would last throughout next year, and with TSMC set to increase contract pricing by up to 20 percent, expect this sad situation to last for a while. On the positive side, AMD could be releasing its own line of mining-specific graphics cards, which might ameliorate the issues to some extent. And all this is despite GPU shipments increasing 42% in Q2.

Wowza, who wants to be a PC gamer right now? For the price of one of those graphics cards, you can get a PS5, XSX, Switch, and games. And current consoles are very capable and just have more value in general.

Have graphics cards ever been cheap.

PC gaming is getting so clapped. Its been months since i don't have a gpu, and there's none in sight for me to buy. Would hate missing out on stalker2 cuz i don't have my pc ready.

Sucks to suck, I got my 3080TUFOC for $650. Got it when it was regular price and had Microcenter discount coupons and card.

Oh no.

Anyway. (Goes back to playing more games on my 3070)

If the PC elitists want to maintain being top tier, they'll have to shell out heavily.

What do you mean again? GPU’s have been outrageously overpriced for well over a year.

With the chip shortage, scalpers, and miners, things have been quite annoying in the GPU market. Even then, when were high end GPS not expensive?

*Looks at RTX 2070* Stay strong my little RTX 2070 friend, stay strong.

I have no reason to upgrade anything just yet beside the CPU which aren't being effective by the silicon. I have so many games in the backlog err in my gaming collection, any PC gamer knows you only upgrade when you "think" you need to.

Keep in mind we do have few PC gamers still running GTX 970 which runs most games they throw at it with no problems...looking at you CP2077.

Since the RTX 2000 series IMO; even at MSRP the prices are overinflated. sad thing is manufacturers are probably going to take the opportunity to further raise the MSRP for future generations of cards. If anything‘s going to kill PC gaming eventually, this setting of even low end cards at luxury prices will be what does it.

Im just glad my 1070’s still able to put good work in. Maybe in a few years we’ll have lower prices again along with cards that can actually handle Ray Tracing.

Ha! Good thing i bought mine five years ago.

Thank goodness for Steam deck.

Time to retire PC gaming for good.

Ouch. Looks like it was just the eye of the storm earlier in the year. crypto is back up. shortages remain even without crypto. looks like the wait is going to continue :(.

yeah there is no getting around it. it remains a really really bad time to build a PC. Honestly on the GPU side there is nothing to recommend as sensible. the only sensible thing to do it hold out unless you absolutely need a new GPU.

Thankfully its really just GPUs that seem affected. if something else like a CPU or MOBO goes you wont get fleeced.

I have a Vega 64 and RX 460 to keep me tied over. Thankfully the PC does not lack content that could run on even the 460 so i wont be short of games to play :).

Prebuild is the only real option at the moment.

Or get yourself a Steam Deck.

True, but for people who want high end the deck won't scratch the itch.

And prebuilt is very expensive in my opinion.

Cards have always been expensive as shit on the top end so I'm not sure what's meant by "again."

Use Google Stadia or Geforce Now for now

No thanks. Better use my ps5 for everything that's on the system and wait until i get the gpu for stalker2.

You can still get decent deals on a relatively high end rig...

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/VR-Ready-Deal-RTX-3070

$2125 for i7-11700K, RTX 3070, 16GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, liquid cooling, etc.

Pedro just got rekt 😄

Honestly, at this point I'm either going to buy a pre built for the card and sell the rest of the parts to make up for it, or just bite the bullet and get a 3070 TI for $1,300 on Amazon. I've put money back every check to get one and I can't get any luck on Newegg Shuffle, so I'm just sitting on a 3K "game fund" waiting on availability for one of these cards. I'm getting tired of waiting so I may just pay the premium to get one.

You have been cosigning and embarrassing yourself in the process. Please don't stop.

I bitterly paid $3,600 for my pre-built.

@davillain-: I also built my rig with the 2070 rtx. Luckily about 7 months before the pandemic... I got my card for like $400 back then. Spent about $1400 on everything altogether. Its holding strong no issues... I'm just glad I did it then and didn't wait.. these prices right now are pretty insane

@Pedro: "I bitterly paid $3,600 for my pre-built."

3090 build?

What are the specs?

@BassMan: RTX 3080,Ryzen 5950,32GB.

@fedor: Nope! 3080 build. 😐

paid 1100 euro's for mine 3080 tuf oc from asus

Sucks, but i don't see it get better anytime soon.

I’m not even trying to get a high end gpu and it’s a struggle

i dropped $1500 tax included for a EVGA 3080 Ti. It hurt but was reasonable I guess.

Pretty sure my 2070S won’t be upgraded anytime soon!

They've been a lot cheaper than they currently are. The thing about PC was that it was always more expensive upfront than console, but you save money with cheaper games and not paying for online, so it evens out if you shop like a smart person. Like my brother got a PC that's lasting him a while for $800 during a Black Friday. It's a PC that can handle 1080p gaming and 144 fps. Yet he also gets discounted games on Steam/Epic and doesn't have to pay for online gaming. You also upgrade whenever you want and choose which to upgrade. Like he can keep his same CPU and choose to upgrade the GPU (so long as the GPU isn't TOO powerful in comparison to the CPU).

The PC is a nice deal overall. Cheaper games, choose which parts to buy, can customize your settings for prettier graphics at the cost of a lower frame rate or worse graphics for better frame rates, no online fees, and a huge library of Steam games. The issue right now is the inflated prices of the GPU due to the dumb cryptominers. But that won't last too long because crypto-currency is going to collapse.

Glad I got mine at retail, before AIB manufacturers jacked prices.

Been interested in a 3070 or a ti for a while but not at these prices. The 3070 averages £900 in the UK at the moment.

Stay strong RTX2080, stay strong.

Sure hope my 2070Super holds together. It is more than powerful enough - but replacing a failure would be painful!

I'd rather spend $2000 on a single graphics card than $500 on a console.

I think I'd rather just read* if my PC ever took a crap on me.

Consoles are that unappealing to me.

*Not to say I dislike reading, I read every day, but video games are, well...just more fun!

They've been affordable.

But no, not cheap. That term is relative though. Is 150 cheap? 500?

No way PC is cheaper. A PS5 digital is $400 (and that includes a $70 controller). Even if you pay full price for PS Plus (I haven't paid full price in years, it's routinely $30-$40), that's $300 for 5 years. That's if you play online of course. You also get lots of perks with PS+ like free games and extra discounts. Also, the 'PC games are cheaper argument fell through 10 years ago. But PC gamers are always stuck in the past, what can you say 😄

Yeah I have a 2080 that's doing well, but I feel the same way.

I think I have my old 980 around here somewhere, that can still run most games.

It's a great build. You picked top end parts, so it is not going to be cheap. You probably could have saved $400 or so going through Cyber Power PC. Still a $3000+ build.

I honestly want nvidia to double the price next gen, really want to know if people would pay $4000, where is the ceiling?

Nope, also their cases are too large for my liking.😥

I'd classify "substantially less that a console" to be cheap, in which case we've had several instances of cheap GPUs. Back in 2013, you easily find a gpu that handily beat the brand new "most powerful console ever built" for under $200 (HD 7870). Going back further to early 2009, you could get a high end GPU also for under $200 (HD 4870) that completely blew consoles out of the water for the rest of their (overly long) generation. Days of performance/price like that are sadly probably beyond us now.

I'm still happy I got my 3070 at near MSRP. Still beats current gen consoles in anything. No reason for me to get any console especially since I have a Switch already and most PS5 blockbusters are also coming to PC.

Read what I said and the guy I replied to. We never said PC was cheaper than console gaming. I replied that graphic cards were cheap in the past, especially if you get them on sale.

Also, there's more to PC gaming than just the price. You pay more for better customization and performance. I simply said that they're around the same price and even out when you factor in paying for online and then sales on different games. My brother paid like $800 to put his PC together. So that's about $700 (PS5 with online) vs $800 for a generation, which isn't too much of a difference.

Really hope my GTX 980 lasts until current high-end graphics cards arent the cost of a new build alone. Getting to the point I wish there was a version of the Series X that you could put Windows on and boom, sweet gaming PC for $500.