Graphics card costs have grown over the years, making it impossible for consumers to acquire Graphics cards for their PCs. And if that wasn’t enough, crypto miners added to the fears, and its popularity meant manufacturers could charge a premium.
Well, it seems like things are finally shifting in the GPU sector as reports have shown that GPUs are sliding below their MSRPs for the first time.
So good news for us Gamers who are planning to build their new Gaming PCs!
Why are GPU prices Falling?
With the inflated costs fueled by crypto mania and chip scarcity, picking up a competent GPU at a cheap price was an impossible task for the last couple of years.
However, as per Tom’s Hardware reports, GPUs have been experiencing more than 10-15 percent declines each month over the last several months.
The crypto meltdown, dwindling profitability in GPU mining, and recovery from the semiconductor shortages are a few of the major reasons for pushing the GPU prices down.
Has the GPU Market Recovered?
Graphics cards have been extremely prone to shortages and price fluctuation compared to many other PC components. The two big GPU vendors, Nvidia and AMD, don’t really make that many graphics cards. Instead, they give the designs that add-in board partners (AIBs) license to manufacture and market their own versions.
Ever since the semiconductor chip shortage resolved and the crypto market plummeted, The manufacturers now have a lot of units at their hands with no scalpers and miners to buy in bulk, Thus reducing the demand and a steep fall in price. The GPU scarcity isn’t gone, but it’s in a much better situation.
The situation is improving in other regions of the globe, too. Recent months have witnessed an increase in GPU supply in European nations, pushing down the price. In Germany, prices have decreased as much as 50 percent from their high at the beginning of 2021.
Effects of Crypto crash
The prices of top GPUs have undergone a steep decrease as of late owing to the lower demand in bitcoin mining. The scarcity, as well as high secondary market pricing, has remained continuous over the last two years, leading to a frenzy of resellers trying to cash in on the premiums.
One of the largest causes driving this reduction is the lack of demand for bitcoin following the market crisis back in May, where mining is no longer as profitable.
Is the Nvidia 4000 series GPUs coming out anytime soon?
Nvidia hasn’t released the official release date for its RTX 4000 graphics cards just yet, but VideoCardz predicts that the RTX 4090 might ship in September 2022, the RTX 4080 in October 2022, and the RTX 4070 in November 2022.
All three cards were previously anticipated to arrive a month earlier, but VideoCardz reports Nvidia had to put back the release dates owing to ‘problems with procuring the essential components”.
Is it a good time to purchase your new Graphics Card?
While the brand-new GPU models might be on the way to markets, you may be tempted to wait for them. You can probably even forego the current generation of chips for another one coming down the line. You’ll probably get a few more months of excellent usage out of your present graphics card.
The leading manufacturers already have a huge stock of unsold GPUs with a lot of frustrated customers who have been taken advantage of for the last couple of years, with all the pumped-up prices, people are now ready to see these chip giants bleed out.
At some point, when they’ll have a lot of GPUs and no customers to buy, They’ll be forced to sell them at a much lower price than it is now, to get rid of the stock and move on to releasing the new generation of the cards.
So the best course of action right now is to wait a little bit and see if the prices fall or even till the next gen cards come out. However, if you are in urgent need of a GPU you may consider buying it right now as the prices have already cooled down significantly.
Here are Some Great Value-For-Money GPUs
Currently, GPUs provide excellent value for money. It should be inexpensive and straightforward to locate on digital shelves. In the previous several years, it has not been simple to get the greatest available graphics card, but things are now looking good.
Some of the best GPUs available for purchase are:
AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a graphics card on a tight budget. It is possible that it will not be able to provide the same type of 1440p performance that even the RX 5700 XT was able to, but in terms of 1080p performance, you should have no trouble achieving stable frame rates on the maximum settings for your preferred games.
Best features:
- Performance in 1080p
- Power consumption is very low
- Impressive thermal performance
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
The price-to-performance ratio of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti poses a challenge to the legitimacy of that claim. This graphics card, which is one of the more recent additions to the RTX 3000 family, punches considerably beyond its weight class by giving a performance that might match that of the RTX 2080 Super while yet maintaining a price tag that is quite reasonable for the vast majority of consumers. That has some very great ray tracing as well.
Best features:
- Excellent Ray tracing performance with 1080p quality
- It remains cool despite long usage
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660
There is no question that the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is among the very finest reasonably priced graphics cards that are currently available on the market. It is able to produce over 80 frames per second while playing Middle Earth: Shadow of War at 1080p with the Ultra graphics settings, and it can even manage a respectable 54 frames per second when playing at 1440p.
Best features:
- A performance of 1080p at very affordable prices
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
AMD has made a significant return with the release of the AMD Radeon RX 6800, which means that Nvidia is no longer the only competitor in the high-end market. Alongside the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 is a welcome addition to the list of AMD’s graphics cards. The enthusiast market is one that Team Green has dominated for years, and this product represents another viable option to Nvidia’s higher-end graphics cards in that market.
Best features:
- Improved performance with AMD Ray tracing
- Effective cooler
- Very low power consumption
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050
One of the few Nvidia graphics cards from the Ampere period that comes anything near to being labeled a cheap graphics card is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050. For what it is, it is a good pick for 1080p gaming. It also comes with a lot of features that AMD cards simply don’t have, such as machine learning-enabled Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology and tensor cores to not only play games at fast frame rates but also to handle creative workloads that even the best AMD graphics cards will stumble over.
Best features:
- Ray Tracing and DLSS provide amazing 1080p performance
- Temperatures are low
Which graphics card is better… AMD or NVIDIA?