W
e thought it might never happen.
GPU prices have been wildly
inflated for as long as Nvidia’s been
trying to explain ray tracing.
Through a perfect storm of market
conditions, it’s been nigh-on impossible to buy an RTX
3-series card since their release in September 2020 and
just as exhausting trying to get a high-end 2-series card
before that. But at long last, prices are starting to fall.
Just in case you’re emerging after several years froma Fallout-
esque vault,this pickle was created in the first placeprimarily
by the coronavirus pandemic. Cryptocurrencies, particularly
Bitcoin, saw a massive increase in value during lockdown, and
that encouraged cryptofarmersto buy all the available
high-poweredGPUs onthe market. When Nvidia launched its
new RTX 3080 TI, it became the de facto mining card from
Q4 2020 to present, and that high demand affected its
availability. With Nvidia erstwhile supplying thelarger portion
of the gaming market, attentions turned to AMD’scards.But
AMD, too, were quickly overrun bydemand.
But that, of course, was only partof the problem. Because
the lockdowns werealso creating a global semiconductor
shortage. With people sitting at home instead of mining
resources and manufacturing PCBs, far fewer GPUs were
being constructed than theywould otherwise have been in
everyday life. Much higher demand than expected, much
lower manufacturing frequency, and a backdrop of wider
financial turmoil. Youreally couldn’t design better conditions
for unfeasibly high graphics card prices.PRICE DROPS
2022 is starting to show a pinprick oflight atthe end of a very,
very expensive tunnel. GPU stock levels have improvedthis
year to the degree wheremany retailers have at least some
models in stock at any given time, and at least a stock
replenishment ETA on the cards not currently in their
warehouses. That’sallowed abit of easing on pricing, which
settled down to about 25% above MSRP on average inearly- It only speaks towhat a grim situation we were in
previously that we consider thatan encouraging sign.
It’snot just the stock levels that are improving,either.
Nvidia announced toits AIC partners earlier this year that it
had foundcost-saving efficiencies in themanufacturing
process of its current generation cards of around8-12%,
which it will be passing on to partners. Assuming those
partners and system integrators pass thesaving on down to
the consumer,such a manufacturing efficiency increase
means priceseven closer to MSRP.
Then comethe cryptofarmers.It’sno longer as profitable
to run server rooms full of RTX 3080 TI rigs chipping away for
Bitcoins as it was in 2020, which meansthe stage is set for a
Enemy
mine
Why is
cryptominingno
longer as
profitable as it
was?Nvidia’s
Lite HashLimiter,
intended to curb
usage onthe
company’sGPUs
for mining, is
certainly a factor.
The January
crypto crash also
thinned out the
margins of
cost-effective
enterprises
somewhat,
prompting many
miners toshut
down operations.TAKING STOCK
GPUs are finally becoming affordable again – but should you actually buy one?Pictured: the average
price for any GPU,
2020-2021.