Over the last few years, the graphics card market has deformed into an ugly monstrosity where even the entry-level GPUs priced nearly as much as flagship offerings. We’ve got the GeForce GTX 1050/1050 Ti and the Radeon RX 570 going for $400-500, while the RTX 3080 and RX 6800 XT are priced close to the $2,000 mark. As the holiday season comes to a close, most of us have one question. When will the prices of GPUs return to normal?
As per market analysts, the prices of budget and midrange GPUs should return to their MSRPs in the second quarter of 2022. Top-end, enthusiast-grade graphics cards will continue to sell for a premium and are unlikely to fall back to their official prices in the first half of 2022. This means that if you want a flagship offering from either NVIDIA or AMD, you’ll have to wait for the launch of their next-gen lineups, namely Ada Lovelace and RDNA 3.
Looking at the GPU price trend in Germany, the prices of the latest SKUs have remained more or less static over the last six months. Going by these figures, it doesn’t look like the prices will return to normal anytime soon. However, if you look at the stocks of mainstream GPU on the market, most notably the Radeon RX 6700 XT/6600 XT and the RTX 3060/3060 Ti, the situation has improved quite significantly. Although these parts are still far from their MSRPs, they are available in appreciable amounts.
On the brighter side, the upcoming launch of Intel’s Arc “Alchemist” graphics cards should help alleviate the shortages, reducing the stress on NVIDIA and AMD’s supply lines. The Radeon RX 7000 and GeForce RTX 40 series are set to land in the second half of 2022. By then, the situation may remain precarious depending on the prices of Ethereum and the impact of the Omnicron variant of COVID-19.
According to statistics, the overall shipments of the RTX 30 series graphics cards fell by more than 20% in December compared to November, while the supply of RTX 20/GTX 16 series cards increased by about 15%.
Source: Mydrivers
