The graphics card market continues to look like a very bleak place, with pricing creeping up (again) with Nvidia GPUs, and overall, would-be buyers are still looking at paying almost double the recommended price for a card – with any remaining hope of Black Friday deals fading rapidly as a result.
When we say a card, we mean a modern one, of course, so that’s an RTX 3000 family GPU or an AMD 6000 series, although the newest models – namely the RX 6600 (and 6600 XT) plus RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti – aren’t included in the figures as compiled regularly by 3D Center, based on major German retailers.
The good news, such as it is, is that pricing on AMD graphics cards did actually ease slightly in the latest report issued for November (on November 21, to be precise), with Team Red’s GPUs dipping from 201% over the recommended price to 190%, apparently due to improved shipping levels for the RX 6800 in Germany. Thanks to better availability of the 6800, the price on that particular AMD model has been drifting downwards.
190% is still almost double, of course, but it is at least the first time we’ve seen a drop in pricing going by 3D Center’s figures since August 8, when both AMD and Nvidia cards embarked on an upward trajectory.
As mentioned, the situation has just got even worse for Nvidia graphics cards, as the average price level crept up to 195% over MSRP compared to 188% at the end of October.
Analysis: Abandon (almost) all hope, would-be GPU buyers
So, while we’ve seen a slight improvement over the last few weeks for AMD, pricing still remains almost double – 195% and 190% of MSRP for Nvidia and AMD respectively – and given recent upward movement, it looks unlikely that the broad situation will change.
Indeed, considering other swirling from the rumor mill – which as 3D Center points out, includes YouTube leaker Moore’s Law is Dead claiming that Nvidia GPUs will see ‘poor availability’ towards the end of 2021 – and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s own admission that GPU stock shortages will last through until 2023, it’s very much a vibe of doom with a couple of side orders of gloom.
3D Center’s conclusion is that “there is nearly no hope that the graphics card price situation will change any time soon” in terms of this overpricing, and we’ve got to say that we can’t disagree with that assessment.
At least the appearance of more RX 6800 cards is something of a bright spot on the rocky GPU landscape, but we suspect it’s a blip running against the overall trend. Certainly the Nvidia side of the equation looks very wobbly, which is perhaps why Team Green is potentially planning to rerelease the RTX 2060, that old Turing workhorse – but with double the VRAM – to at least give an option to punters looking for something solid enough for 1080p duties.
It’s better than nothing, for sure, but with Black Friday imminent, the hopes of getting a good deal on an Nvidia graphics card now look even more against the odds, sadly. We may just see the odd cutting-edge GPU which is close to MSRP, or maybe – just maybe – a little under it, but the chances are that any such offers will be extremely scarce. After all, there’s just no incentive to engage in any real price cutting, as GPUs are flying off the shelves even with high price tags, because demand is so far outstripping supply.
And certainly with more popular models like the RTX 3080, the chances seem vanishingly slim, particularly given this latest report. Naturally, whatever price cuts do manifest themselves, we’ll keep you apprised of any graphics card bargains in our roundup of the best Black Friday deals.
And as we’ve argued before, what we might see are some compelling bundle deals involving GPUs which could work out as good value if you need all the included hardware, and indeed buying a whole new PC – assuming you need one – could also be a passable route to grabbing yourself a decent value top-end graphics card.
