Tuesday, March 29th 2022
ASUS To Drop Graphics Card Prices by 25% from April 1st in the U.S.
ASUS has announced that it will be dropping the prices for almost the entirety of its NVIDIA RTX 30-series graphics card stack. The news comes on the back of finally descending channel prices for the latest GPUs, alongside the U.S. Trade Office decision last week of excluding integrated circuit boards from the added taxes in the China-US Trade War. As an ASUS representative told Tom's Hardware, users should expect an "up to 25%" price reduction to be applied throughout its RTX 30-series stack (from the RTX 3050 through the RTX 3090 Ti). Interestingly, there was no mention of AMD's graphics cards in the announcement.
After more than a year of inflated pricing, there may be a light in the tunnel - although it's becoming increasingly difficult to discern whether it's the RTX 3000-series family behind the veil or NVIDIA's next-gen solutions. No other AMD or NVIDIA board partner made a comparable announcement, but one would expect them to follow ASUS on the downward pricing trend or risk sitting in larger unsold inventories than they're comfortable with. Of course, this remains a problem for ASUS throughout the world, should the company not extend the price-cut to other regions other than the U.S.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
After more than a year of inflated pricing, there may be a light in the tunnel - although it's becoming increasingly difficult to discern whether it's the RTX 3000-series family behind the veil or NVIDIA's next-gen solutions. No other AMD or NVIDIA board partner made a comparable announcement, but one would expect them to follow ASUS on the downward pricing trend or risk sitting in larger unsold inventories than they're comfortable with. Of course, this remains a problem for ASUS throughout the world, should the company not extend the price-cut to other regions other than the U.S.
30 Comments on ASUS To Drop Graphics Card Prices by 25% from April 1st in the U.S.
If the current prices for the highest upcharge are MSRP+100%, then a 25% decrease in price becomes a 150% of MSRP. A halving of current pricing represents going from 200% to 100%.
I have to be reasonable here and ask...you'd be happy to purchase a GPU that's basically 2 years old at this point for full release MSRP?
I'm not going to quibble, nor am I going to say what I'll spend. Looking at things, I don't intend to see to the 6xxx or 3xxx series GPUs until they're last generation tech. I believe that both AMD and Nvidia are going to push new generation tech in the next few months. In that period we'll see consumers that spent insano money on the current gen get ready to pony-up for the next gen. The people who held off will wait for the latest stuff. The cheap b******s like myself will wait for that glut of production to hit the lull in demand, and we'll see about 90% MSRP prices for a GPU that's about to be outmoded by the next generation.
A next generation that seems like it will be huge, power hungry, and include more features that we won't see in games. For someone in my position, a 3080 ti will be more than enough for light 4k gaming, if the 6800 xt isn't a much more...cost efficient...solution. Lord knows, a thousand dollar GPU is really less tempting than the painful 600 dollar that was unreasonable before the coof....but priorities change.
-Good lord...I just swallowed the Nvidiot tax. Now I'm one of them....sigh....-See above for Malaysia:
www.lowyat.net/2022/269385/asus-rtx-30-price-drop-malaysia/
Also, let's consider this from a business perspective.
What is 4/1/22?
It's the day after 3/31/22...or the end of quarter one. Financials are generally driven on a quarterly basis.
Why isn't this an April Fool's Day prank? Well, the other regions are getting a price drop. People know that US tariffs are being lifted. After almost two years of astronomical pricing, people are basically giving up on sales volumes. Despite all of this, the electronics industry requires that volume given they cannot support astronomical pricing.
This is somebody intelligent at Asus. They calculated that the pricing drop was likely about 30%, so they announced an "up to 25%" drop. This hedges their financial bets, and forces competitors to come down to their level. It also garners huge good will, and a fair amount of people who on April 1st will be clamboring to buy something at 150% or more of MSRP... It's a huge all-around win.
1) You stifle competition
2) You get consumer good will
3) You get huge free publicity on items that are two years old
4) You get your investors psyched because there will be a decrease in per unit pricing, but the return of volumes and stability is infinitely better than selling unobtanium
My two cents, the timing is a big corporation making a unilateral decision that will influence the market overall. I may be wrong...but billion dollar companies don't understand humor. April 1st is only a thing for the cheeky little guys. End of Q1, with fiscal planning on the line, is no joke to Asus. I may be wrong though...how did that whole "out of season April Fool's joke" thing work with Blizzard? Or Blizzard-Activision. Or whatever we want to called their hollowed out shell this week.