When will gpu prices return to normal.

[Arco]

It's going to be a real banger. I'm going to ride off of sales and the market to get the best performance for my money.

 

[wheresmycar]

It's going to be a real banger. I'm going to ride off of sales and the market to get the best performance for my money.

i don't know about the rest of the world but here in the UK in the last 5 years the sales have been pants when it comes to popular hardware. Back in the day the sale upshots earned a nice 10%'ish trim on popular mid ranged cards but nowadays anything in the 3060/6600 region or beyond remains the same (extortionate prices to begin with). You do see the odd intentionally overpriced listings with wider discounts but you end up either paying more or the same as the initial listings. Can't speak for previous gen AMD cards though.... i've been eyeing up mostly NVIDIA cards (not anymore though).

 

[80-watt Hamster]

i don't know about the rest of the world but here in the UK in the last 5 years the sales have been pants when it comes to popular hardware. Back in the day the sale upshots earned a nice 10%'ish trim on popular mid ranged cards but nowadays anything in the 3060/6600 region or beyond remains the same (extortionate prices to begin with). You do see the odd intentionally overpriced listings with wider discounts but you end up either paying more or the same as the initial listings. Can't speak for previous gen AMD cards though.... i've been eyeing up mostly NVIDIA cards (not anymore though).

There haven't been widespread sales even in the US since the '18 crypto crash that I can remember. The resurgence of interest in PC gaming (amongst other things) has kept prices up. If the rumored glut is real, we should be seeing something within the next 6 months or so.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I feel that retailers are waiting for the 4k/7k series to drop, and try to keep the price/perf similar to this gen to move old stock. The new ones will sell to those with more cash than sense, and those who MUST upgrade now, and then prices will crash in 6-8 months to around normal for next gen, and deeply discounted for last (this?) gen.

 

[wheresmycar]

I feel that retailers are waiting for the 4k/7k series to drop, and try to keep the price/perf similar to this gen to move old stock. The new ones will sell to those with more cash than sense, and those who MUST upgrade now, and then prices will crash in 6-8 months to around normal for next gen, and deeply discounted for last (this?) gen.

honestly for 5 years i've heard various convincing projections/possibilities for cards to drop in price. None of them materialized!! Even prior to 5 years, prices were always going up (gen 2 gen). Even the wolf in sheep clothes AMD's at it. I've lost faith in GPU prices reasonably normalizing. Actually the higher premium is the current and enduring norm. If anything is likely to change, its market competition which will slowly bring prices down... IMO you can throw that one out of the window too. I wouldn't be surprised if AMD and Nvidia behind the scenes are pen-pals, cunningly/creatively engineering these similar performance gen to gen upgrades and higher premiums.

Anyhow, if some drastic change in the market was to occur (crash/etc) will it really change everything across the board? People with fat-pocket-dosh will still have fat-pocket-dosh to splash around... can't see flagship/top-end performance cards getting a hit. Maybe a $0.20c cut. Actually if you think about it, 5 of those sales if combined saves 5 lucky buyers a full $1. They can hold hands and pop into a dollar store and buy a 5-pack "hehehe-i-got-a-4090TI-for-$2000" printed socks. Point being more sales for the dollar store creates more jobs for us the minions... so everyone wins.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Looking at the chart below, it looks like xx80 series have run around $600 USD (Jan 2017). The 3080 10GB MSRP is $700 USD, and a little fun with an inflation calculator shows that was worth $653 2017 USD at launch, and has declined to $576 2017 USD. The MSRP is not the problem so much as the wildly swinging and never matching supply and demand.

 

[sepheronx]

I had a used rtx 3090 headed my way but it never arrived after 2 and half months so I got a full refund. Which I'm glad cause it's gonna go to the rtx 4070 or AMD equivalent if performance per watt are worth it.

That said, I'm still debating on it or just stick to a 6600 or a 3060 as most games are rather pathetic these days anyway. Something I think most people should be considering - are the games even worth paying a premium in hardware.

 

[SpittinFax]

That said, I'm still debating on it or just stick to a 6600 or a 3060 as most games are rather pathetic these days anyway. Something I think most people should be considering - are the games even worth paying a premium in hardware.

Interesting you mention that. I've found that the real bottleneck is my game library, which is getting old and hasn't seen any new titles added in the last 12 months.

I'm not sure what has happened with the game industry lately but I've checked online stores many times and have consistently found absolutely nothing of interest. On the occasion that I do play, it's usually an old game I'm revisiting or maybe a single round of Rocket League. There's no games out there that I have my eye on at the moment. It's a total yawn-fest.

 

[Valantar]

Looking at the chart below, it looks like xx80 series have run around $600 USD (Jan 2017). The 3080 10GB MSRP is $700 USD, and a little fun with an inflation calculator shows that was worth $653 2017 USD at launch, and has declined to $576 2017 USD. The MSRP is not the problem so much as the wildly swinging and never matching supply and demand.

View attachment 260454

That's somewhat misleading though. That chart is explicitly "non-Titan high end GeForce", i.e. it would include the $1199 2080 Ti and the $1499 3090 Ti. Even with that complex graph, even accounting for the 8800GTX, these recent GPUs represent a huge price jump. 80 series MSRPs haven't increase that drastically - though they have increased - but instead Nvidia has kept adding more and more tiers on top. One could say that the 3090 Ti is "actually" a Titan - and it sort of is - but it very crucially isn't in terms of branding, marketing, the overall framing of the product. So using xx80 series - which used to be the undisputed high end - as a linear comparison is now quite misleading.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

That's somewhat misleading though. That chart is explicitly "non-Titan high end GeForce", i.e. it would include the $1199 2080 Ti and the $1499 3090 Ti. Even with that complex graph, even accounting for the 8800GTX, these recent GPUs represent a huge price jump. 80 series MSRPs haven't increase that drastically - though they have increased - but instead Nvidia has kept adding more and more tiers on top. One could say that the 3090 Ti is "actually" a Titan - and it sort of is - but it very crucially isn't in terms of branding, marketing, the overall framing of the product. So using xx80 series - which used to be the undisputed high end - as a linear comparison is now quite misleading.

That is certainly a valid perspective. I agree with it, but you have to realize that if you compare at the same tier, prices are not rising much. The real issue was the shortages, scalping, and obscene markups down the supply chain. IMHO, those will be corrected with a severe glut not long after the first flurry of sales after the next gen drops.

 

[Sithaer]

Interesting you mention that. I've found that the real bottleneck is my game library, which is getting old and hasn't seen any new titles added in the last 12 months.

I'm not sure what has happened with the game industry lately but I've checked online stores many times and have consistently found absolutely nothing of interest. On the occasion that I do play, it's usually an old game I'm revisiting or maybe a single round of Rocket League. There's no games out there that I have my eye on at the moment. It's a total yawn-fest.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently and checking my backlog + new upcoming games.
Fact is that most of the games I'm playing or planning to play, do run just fine on my aging 1070 + I don't mind tweaking settings down to medium-high or so and I don't care about high fps/refresh either. '75 Hz panel and 45-50 fps on average is all good with me'

I'm only worried about UE 5 games when they start to be more common/norm like UE 4 games nowadays and this year I'm only waiting for The plague tale requiem and Callisto Protocol.
Ye sure I would also like to play Cyberpunk one day but that I could do already since I tried. 'can't crank up the eye candy but the game looks good enough anyway on tweaked settings+ FSR Ultra'

Realistically speaking, I don't really need anything stronger than a 6600 XT to last me a few years again with the way I'm playing games. 'I also play less and less nowadays'
And even this is more of a want than a need I guess. 'for the time being at least'

Tho one thing is for sure, I lost hope with our brand new r/etailer prices they aint going down much lately if not even higher recently and I'm not paying 460 $ for a 6600 XT.
On the second hand market its more like 330 $ with some warranty left, that much I would be willing to pay and then sell my 1070 to make up for the cost a bit.

 

[Valantar]

That is certainly a valid perspective. I agree with it, but you have to realize that if you compare at the same tier, prices are not rising much. The real issue was the shortages, scalping, and obscene markups down the supply chain. IMHO, those will be corrected with a severe glut not long after the first flurry of sales after the next gen drops.

That's true - and we're already seeing corrections. But there are other factors too, like the ever-increasing BOM costs of newer technologies (more expensive VRAM and more of it; PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 and said VRAM requiring higher grade PCBs; bigger, more expensive VRMs), and the ever increasing range of "acceptable performance" as we've reached an unprecedented point where there are three major resolutions for gaming where the majority of players aren't migrating upwards with any kind of speed - 1080p is good enough for a lot of people, which simply wasn't the case back when the choices were 640x480, 800x600 or 1024x768. So now instead of a relatively narrow range of GPUs (or a lot of choices spaced very closely) we now get GPUs targeting everything from entry-level 1080p low-medium/esports/whatever to 2160p Ultra 120+ fps. And of course gaming has grown massively, with tons more people - including a lot more rich people - buying gaming hardware. Thus we're getting the doubled effects of SKU compression/value loss at the bottom (due to BOM costs and margins/greed, mainly), and a lot of stretch in the $400+ range, with tons more SKUs at ever higher prices.

And, of course, tiers are ultimately arbitrary - they're just names meant to indicate some sort of hiearchy and a vague kinship - but they could just as well have named the 3090 Ti the 3080 Ti, as that's the role it's actually fulfilling in their lineup - the flagship gaming card. Adhering to previous norms of what used to be the high end tier is just taking something arbitrary and treating it as a rule with some kind of meaning behind it, which it isn't.

Interesting you mention that. I've found that the real bottleneck is my game library, which is getting old and hasn't seen any new titles added in the last 12 months.

I'm not sure what has happened with the game industry lately but I've checked online stores many times and have consistently found absolutely nothing of interest. On the occasion that I do play, it's usually an old game I'm revisiting or maybe a single round of Rocket League. There's no games out there that I have my eye on at the moment. It's a total yawn-fest.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently and checking my backlog + new upcoming games.
Fact is that most of the games I'm playing or planning to play, do run just fine on my aging 1070 + I don't mind tweaking settings down to medium-high or so and I don't care about high fps/refresh either. '75 Hz panel and 45-50 fps on average is all good with me'

I'm only worried about UE 5 games when they start to be more common/norm like UE 4 games nowadays and this year I'm only waiting for The plague tale requiem and Callisto Protocol.
Ye sure I would also like to play Cyberpunk one day but that I could do already since I tried. 'can't crank up the eye candy but the game looks good enough anyway on tweaked settings+ FSR Ultra'

Realistically speaking, I don't really need anything stronger than a 6600 XT to last me a few years again with the way I'm playing games. 'I also play less and less nowadays'
And even this is more of a want than a need I guess. 'for the time being at least'

Tho one thing is for sure, I lost hope with our brand new r/etailer prices they aint going down much lately if not even higher recently and I'm not paying 460 $ for a 6600 XT.
On the second hand market its more like 330 $ with some warranty left, that much I would be willing to pay and then sell my 1070 to make up for the cost a bit.

IMO, we're really starting to see the combination of the extreme difficulty of AAA game development (that only gets harder with time as the pressure on graphical fidelity increases), coupled with the games industry over the past decade going through a massive transformation into a thoroughly corporatized money-printing machine. Not that the industry wasn't like this before, it was just on a much smaller scale, and smaller developers had much more of a chance of approximating AAA games in various ways. And the corporate culture of the industry has taken a clear turn towards conservatism and against creativity, churning out ever more sequels and quashing ever more creative products as they're "too risky" - i.e. they don't come with a built-in audience and "guaranteed" profits.

Luckily we have more indie games than ever before, and they're better than ever before - but they also rarely demand much in terms of hardware. Though with UE5, that seems likely to change, and change quickly. It seems insanely simple to create stunningly gorgeous graphics in that engine. And I think the gaming scene is ripe for a new wave of "AA" developers as the AAA industry is slowly choking itself to death - though most of these sadly tend to get acquired (or run into financial issues and either shut down or are forced into bad deals with publishers) due to the massive costs and complexity of development. There have been quite a few with some real success in recent years though, which makes me at least somewhat hopeful. The fledgeling move towards unionization and improved working conditions for developers also has the potential for serious positive effects on the type and quality of games launched - but that also requires us as players to be patient and not be assholes when games inevitably fail to reach their (wildly unrealistic, publisher-set) initial launch dates.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Though with UE5, that seems likely to change, and change quickly. It seems insanely simple to create stunningly gorgeous graphics in that engine.

The demo they were running was on a PS5 at 4K60 IIRC. And they were using cinematic assets.

A good sign for those using dated or lower-end hardware.

The fledgeling move towards unionization

I can only hope that works out better than unions in my industry - unions choke creative talent in most manual labor jobs faster than anything else I know. And union contractors are waaaay more expensive.

due to the massive costs and complexity of development.

UE5 could help a lot with that - make it much easier to achieve decent to stunning visuals and focus more on the gameplay.

 

[Appalachian]

Im waiting until Black Friday at the least to get a new card. I was going to wait until the 40** come out but rumors are only the 4090 is coming out this year now. Prices are getting a lot better. Amazon and Newegg had the MSI Ventus 3070 on sale for $499 for a few days. A pretty steep discount.

 

[Blaeza]

Im waiting until Black Friday at the least to get a new card. I was going to wait until the 40** come out but rumors are only the 4090 is coming out this year now. Prices are getting a lot better. Amazon and Newegg had the MSI Ventus 3070 on sale for $499 for a few days. A pretty steep discount.

I was going to get a 3070 but AMD is cheaper and better performing in the UK. £499 for Zotac GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge LHR 8GB GDDR6 or £499 for Powercolor Radeon RX 6800 FIGHTER 16GB?

 

[Lei]

Well it says game changing, So I guess we'll know the prices for next-gen series on September 20

 

[R0H1T]

Game changing for who? Nvidia did change the game last two gens through their extortionist prices!

 

[ModEl4]

Im waiting until Black Friday at the least to get a new card. I was going to wait until the 40** come out but rumors are only the 4090 is coming out this year now. Prices are getting a lot better. Amazon and Newegg had the MSI Ventus 3070 on sale for $499 for a few days. A pretty steep discount.

Don't believe the rumors!
Nvidia isn't going to announce in 3 weeks only a model that is ≥$1499 and nothing else regarding ada availability for the rest of 2022.
In the absolute absolute worst case 4080 will launch like 3060Ti in the first week of December and in the most probable case mid to end November.

 

[Appalachian]

Don't believe the rumors!
Nvidia isn't going to announce in 3 weeks only a model that is ≥$1499 and nothing else regarding ada availability for the rest of 2022.
In the absolute absolute worst case 4080 will launch like 3060Ti in the first week of December and in the most probable case mid to end November.

Thats why I am waiting until at least November. By then we should have some official info on the 40XX. If I cant find a great deal on a 30XX for black friday, ill probably wait for a 40XX. Although I wonder how hard they will be to obtain when they hit the markets.

I was going to get a 3070 but AMD is cheaper and better performing in the UK. £499 for Zotac GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge LHR 8GB GDDR6 or £499 for Powercolor Radeon RX 6800 FIGHTER 16GB?

I struggled with which company to go with for a long time. The lack of vram on the nvidias really gives me pause. I just built my daughter a new computer and went with a RX 6700 XT. AMD is really great price/value. For mine I decided to go with a 12gig (maybe 10 if I find a good deal) nvidia. Mostly due to DLSS, ray tracing and a fair dose of fanboisism.

 

[sepheronx]

Thats why I am waiting until at least November. By then we should have some official info on the 40XX. If I cant find a great deal on a 30XX for black friday, ill probably wait for a 40XX. Although I wonder how hard they will be to obtain when they hit the markets.


I struggled with which company to go with for a long time. The lack of vram on the nvidias really gives me pause. I just built my daughter a new computer and went with a RX 6700 XT. AMD is really great price/value. For mine I decided to go with a 12gig (maybe 10 if I find a good deal) nvidia. Mostly due to DLSS, ray tracing and a fair dose of fanboisism.

Mods exist now where enabling DLSS in some titles will actually be FSR 2.0. I did it with Red Dead Redemption 2 and found the RX 6600 works wonderfully with DLSS enabled.

Ray tracing is fine except that it's a hit with little visual improvement. What will be the end of it will be the Ray tracing like support you see in resident evil series currently where AMD works well in it.

 

[ModEl4]

Thats why I am waiting until at least November. By then we should have some official info on the 40XX. If I cant find a great deal on a 30XX for black friday, ill probably wait for a 40XX. Although I wonder how hard they will be to obtain when they hit the markets.


I struggled with which company to go with for a long time. The lack of vram on the nvidias really gives me pause. I just built my daughter a new computer and went with a RX 6700 XT. AMD is really great price/value. For mine I decided to go with a 12gig (maybe 10 if I find a good deal) nvidia. Mostly due to DLSS, ray tracing and a fair dose of fanboisism.

There is a chance Nvidia and AMD will attempt forced fake shortage for the new models in order to create inflation for these models so they don't have to sell too low the old stock.
Also for those that shop around RX580/GTX 1060 price vicinity (≤$249 SRP) there is also a chance we are not going to ever see AD107 outside mobile/workstation/OEM specific models just like what we had for GA107.

At least the last Q, AMD had better deals than Nvidia, selling RX6600 a little bit lower than RTX3050 and also RX6700XT same or a little bit lower than RTX 3060Ti regarding street prices.

Nvidia regarding memory capacity, they are very stingy, it is a way to forcing more frequent upgrades but there is also the memory IC capacity doubling cycle which is increasing with slower pace than the past, so it is more difficult to differentiate the in-between generations from the past regarding memory capacity that for sure Nvidia takes into account choosing spec for each class every generation.

Edit: I really can't understand why RX6600 has so low price (lower than RTX3050), AMD has that much stock of Navi23?
Even if there is a Navi34 design and it comes in Q2 2023, still it wouldn't justify so low pricing in relation with the competition.

 

[Appalachian]

Mods exist now where enabling DLSS in some titles will actually be FSR 2.0. I did it with Red Dead Redemption 2 and found the RX 6600 works wonderfully with DLSS enabled.

Ray tracing is fine except that it's a hit with little visual improvement. What will be the end of it will be the Ray tracing like support you see in resident evil series currently where AMD works well in it.

Thats good to know. After Blaeza posted those prices it made me curious and I see I can get a RX 6900 XT for $699 from Newegg. After the info you posted the 6900 XT has definitely made my list to watch for on black friday.

There is a chance Nvidia and AMD will attempt forced fake shortage for the new models in order to create inflation for these models so they don't have to sell too low the old stock.
Also for those that shop around RX580/GTX 1060 price vicinity (≤$249 SRP) there is also a chance we are not going to ever see AD107 outside mobile/workstation/OEM specific models just like what we had for GA107.

At least the last Q, AMD had better deals than Nvidia, selling RX6600 a little bit lower than RTX3050 and also RX6700XT same or a little bit lower than RTX 3060Ti regarding street prices.

Nvidia regarding memory capacity, they are very stingy, it is a way to forcing more frequent upgrades but there is also the memory IC capacity doubling cycle which is increasing with slower pace than the past, so it is more difficult to differentiate the in-between generations from the past regarding memory capacity that for sure Nvidia takes into account choosing spec for each class every generation.

I hope they dont try that. I am no expert on crypto by any means, but I read an article on coindesk that ethereum mining is ending. The speculation is that the glut of used cards that will hit the market will drive prices down even further. I hope the speculation has merit.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

I hope they dont try that. I am no expert on crypto by any means, but I read an article on coindesk that ethereum mining is ending. The speculation is that the glut of used cards that will hit the market will drive prices down even further. I hope the speculation has merit.

There's only so much they can do. Fabs need to keep running to get ROI, and the channel can't absorb an unlimited amount of unsold product. Something's got to give eventually.

 

[Valantar]

I can only hope that works out better than unions in my industry - unions choke creative talent in most manual labor jobs faster than anything else I know. And union contractors are waaaay more expensive.

I can't speak to manual labor jobs, but the dampening effect on creativity from unionization in general is massively overblown, and is mainly one of the standard arguments of union busting scaremongering. The dampening effect on creativity of corporate protectionism, profit-seeking and conservatism? That is all the more real, and can be seen in literally every creative field of human activity. As soon as major capital enters the picture, the amount of derivative, soulless, repetitive nonsense explodes. And once major capital takes over, art and creativity essentially dies.

Also: a major part of the point of unionization is to stop the idiotic use of "contractors" in the first places. Give people stable jobs, predictable incomes and safe working conditions so that they can flourish and expand the scope of their work rather than be terrified of where they'll live or how they'll afford food if they don't have their contract renewed.

 

[64K]

Because of the glut of Amperes left unsold prices are dropping but I wouldn't carry that over to the next gen. It is rumored that Nvidia planned to scale back production of new GPUs months ago and that makes sense business-wise. Even if they manage to get rid of the unsold Amperes the world economy looks like we're in for a rough ride for a while and demand for next gen will surely drop but so will supply most likely.