Current generation graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia, namely the RDNA 3 and RTX 4000 models, are steadily dropping in price according to a couple of reports.
That’s good news, of course, and some retail prices have actually dropped below MSRP in Europe for some of these current-gen GPUs, though the problem is that others stubbornly stay above their recommended prices. Meanwhile, in the US, eBay and retail prices for these Lovelace and RX 7000 GPUs are also falling.
Let’s first look at Europe, where we have a report from the Dutch site. hardware.info (opens in a new tab) (highlighted by VideoCardz (opens in a new tab)) which analyzes retail prices in the Netherlands in February compared to January 2023.
On the Nvidia side of the equation, the RTX 4080 price was down 2.6% in February compared to January (all of these are based on the respective months’ average sales prices at popular retailers), and actually it is now 3.5% below MSRP.
With the RTX 4090, this fell further, actually 6.2% in February, but the flagship GPU still costs on average just slightly more than its MSRP (0.4% above).
The RTX 4070 Ti, on the other hand, proved more stubborn, only losing 1.6% of its price in February and remaining 2.6% more expensive than its MSRP.
Turning to AMD with the numbers from Hardware.info, both the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT fell sharply in February, dropping 14.4% and 8% respectively compared to their January retail prices. The 7900 XT is now 6.9% below its MSRP, but the flagship XTX is still 6% above its recommended price.
In the US, we have recent figures for tom’s hardware (opens in a new tab) which show that eBay prices for current generation AMD and Nvidia graphics cards fell sharply at the end of January.
Month-over-month on the used market, the RTX 4090 was down 6.1% from the average price on the auction site, and with the RTX 4080, the drop was even steeper at 8.8%.
As for the RX 7900 XTX, the price of the flagship saw a big drop of 13.4% at the end of January compared to December, while the 7900 XT plunged positively by 25.8%. That is a massive drop in a month.
Tom also noted that: “We are looking at eBay specifically [in its latest stats]where we can easily get information on auctions sold for the last month, but retail prices are also trending down now.”
Analysis: Price declines are having an effect, but from frustratingly inflated levels
Generally speaking, then, this is a welcome development. We all want cheaper next-gen GPUs, the problem is that while they are at least now falling in a number of markets, they are doing so slowly. And they’re falling due to inflated introductory prices, which means that in some cases, with new graphics cards on sale, they’re still above MSRP.
That said, they’re not much above the recommended price, but they’re still well above that far-from-ideal level (certainly in the case of the 7900 XTX, which is 6% above its MSRP in the Netherlands). ). And indeed, with the RTX 4090, we don’t know if we’ll see a gradual increase in price in the future; Rumor has it that Nvidia could scale back production of this card, making flagship GPUs more scarce and raising prices (as a tactic). to boost RTX 4080 sales, or that’s the theory).
We are seeing larger price drops on eBay in the US, much larger in fact, particularly for AMD graphics cards, so this is a positive development as well, for those willing to take the risks of buying from Second hand, of course.
In general, AMD’s RDNA 3 graphics cards are dropping in price at a considerably faster rate than Nvidia’s Lovelace GPUs.
The current-gen pricing picture will be interesting to watch, because so far, the GPU market doesn’t seem to have suffered much from the cost-of-living crisis. But of course the only graphics cards available so far are very expensive models, and it’s the more affordable end of the GPU spectrum, which may not be all. it’s affordable, relatively speaking, this time around, where we could see a bigger impact from belt tightening.