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There’s actually some good graphics card news to change: They’re getting cheaper
In a rare piece of good news, graphics card prices appear to be falling back to normal levels. Figures from 3DCenter.org Tracking the average best prices for the latest Ampere and RDNA2 graphics cards have trended down over the past three weeks, which is an encouraging sign. Could we finally see the cards return to their normal MSRP before we head into summer?
In the past three weeks, the average price of AMD RDNA 2 graphics cards has dropped from 63% above MSRP to just 45%, while the average price of NVIDIA graphics cards has dropped from 77% above MSRP to just above MSRP 57%. down 18% and 20%, respectively.
There are several important caveats to these numbers, but don’t let them be an idea that everything will be fine. These figures come from major retailers in Germany and Austria, and therefore do not necessarily align with other retailers globally. It’s worth pointing out that Germany’s PC market is generally considered to be in a healthy state, so don’t be dismissed by that.
These figures are also affected by recent releases. The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, both launched in January, are the cheapest graphics cards of this generation for both camps — which would obviously bring down the average price. These do join quite a few households, though, which also reduces their impact on these averages.
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Will this trend continue? It’s hard to be optimistic here, as July 2021 prices look similar to this, just before prices rise again, likely due to increased demand for mining cards due to the increase in Ethereum’s value. Cryptocurrencies did crash at the end of January, but it was a brief slump, and they have since rebounded, meaning demand could pick up again.
Hope history doesn’t repeat itself.