The graphics card market has been ridiculous for a long time now. Ever since the global pandemic started affecting production and shipping, it’s been really hard for anyone to get their hands on a graphics card without giving in to high prices. For those that have resisted in hope of finding something even close to MSRP, availability has been near non-existent. While we aren’t anywhere close to being out of the woods yet, it does seem the situation is finally improving somewhat. As it would have it, the slowly improving availability of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards is at last driving down prices.
3D Center released its latest findings for graphics card pricing over the last year in Austrian and German markets. Simply put, the results show that the pricing for both AMD and Nvidia’s graphics cards has started to become cheaper since January 2021. This isn’t to say that graphics cards are getting cheap though, as they’re still above MSRP by quite large margins. It does however show that things are steadily improving, which is still a good thing.
Things are looking up as prices go down
The pricing for AMD and Nvidia’s lineup is still above MSRP, with the median pricing of AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series at 145%, and Nvidia’s GeForce 30 Series at 157% of respective MSRP. It’s also worth noting that this is still higher than the average pricing in January 2021, where the averages were at 142% and 134% respectively. So again, we’re not exactly in the clear just yet. Prices are on track to trend below what we were seeing this time last year though. And, those numbers could get even lower in the coming months.
(Image credit: 3D Center).
A major factor for the lower prices is the focus on the budget gaming market. AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series refresh, and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 are both trying to tap into this. It’s a place in the market that is less likely to be targeted by scalpers and hoarded by crypto miners. However, there’s the point that many gamers may not want a lower-end, budget graphics card like the RX 6500 XT. Either way, it’s pretty likely that the releases of these cheaper options did influence the pricing trends.
We’ve also done our fair share of price and availability monitoring for various retailers over the past few months and feel these trends are reflected in at least the US market. Prices of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are indeed going down at the moment and that has a direct correlation with availability. Still, this isn’t something we can necessarily apply to the global PC hardware market. Time will tell whether the situation further improves in the coming months.
