The good news for would-be graphics card buyers is that the average price of AMD GPUs has dropped considerably below the recommended prices (MSRP), and Nvidia is close to doing that too.
That is the conclusion of the regular report of 3D center (opens in new tab)which gathers data from major tech retailers in Germany (and Austria) for AMD RX 6000 and Nvidia RTX 3000 retail prices, comparing them to the MSRPs.
AMD’s current-gen graphics cards are now at 92% of the MSRP in the June 19 report, so actually a good chunk below the MSRP on average, which is great to see, and a big drop of 10% (they were at 102% of the MSRP on May 29, just three weeks earlier).
Nvidia’s Ampere GPUs have dropped, but unfortunately much less, and are now 102% MSRP, compared to 106% three weeks ago. Still, these products are almost at the recommended price now, at least – 2% isn’t exactly a hugely inflated price.
Analysis: You should probably wait longer if you can
Of course, we should keep in mind the usual caveat here: don’t put too much stock (pun not intended) in a single set of figures. Despite this, 3DCenter’s stat analysis is one of the most regular and reliable indicators of the graphics card market to take into account.
What’s more, this also matches what we’ve seen elsewhere in recent times, such as GPU price drops observations made by Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab) (which marked this story). And indeed, Tom has found that prices are falling positively like a rock with used graphics cards being auctioned on eBay – all part of the great crypto crisis and panic that is underway. Which is good news for the consumer looking to buy a GPU for, you know, games.
Seeing Nvidia’s prices not dropping at the same rate as AMD’s is no surprise, and this seems to be a function of demand. Quite simply, there are more gamers out there looking to finally buy an RTX 3000 card at a reasonable price, as witnessed in recent rankings from major retailers like Newegg in the US (and indeed, Nvidia GPUs now represent the entire top 30 of the models). Newegg’s best sellers, which is even more dominant than before).
There’s a broader sentiment here, however, and it belongs to a larger number of consumers looking for increasingly older graphics cards (in many cases) and wondering about the wisdom of paying above the odds (at least for Nvidia GPUs and still some AMD models) for these products, when the high-end cards from both companies aren’t that far apart, and maybe with Nvidia possibly just around the corner.
All of which means it’s probably worth waiting longer for better GPU bargains to emerge yet, as it looks like prices will drop further from here. The 3DCenter price chart for 2022 is a full-fledged downward curve for the entire year, and there is no real reason why we can conceive why this will not continue in the future.