What you need to know
- GPU prices have been inflated beyond belief since 2020, thanks to shortages and scalpers.
- Cryptocurrency mining has exacerbated said shortages.
- For the first time in a long while, GPU prices seem to be trending back toward their normal MSRPs.
When's the last time you saw a GPU being sold at MSRP? It's likely been a long while, as most people have had to resort to bizarre behavior in order to attain a GPU for monstrously inflated prices since the great shortage wave of 2020. Semiconductor woes began the problem, but speculators and crypto miners took the issues further by straining already thin supply chains. Now, GPUs are virtually impossible to come by — though that may be changing, based on a recent report.
As cited by 3DCenter, AMD and NVIDIA GPU prices have been divebombing in Germany (via TechRadar). The article is in German, but even if you're not using Microsoft Edge and its handy translator feature and can't make sense of the text itself, you can still see the post's graph clear as day. It illustrates that German retailers are coming down from the mountains of May 2021's 304% inflated NVIDIA GPU prices and are selling at a comparatively cheap 153% of the MSRP as of July 2021.
3DCenter warns that prices nosediving back toward MSRP levels isn't a one-off, either. It says that consumers should hold their horses and consider waiting three to four weeks to see if standard pricing returns, since spending now may result in paying artificially bloated sums that could be much less puffy in just a few short weeks.
All of this info relates to Germany and German retailers, but it's important that North American audiences pay attention to the prices of the best graphics cards across the pond, as both markets share similarities, and the return to normalcy for one could indicate an incoming trend for the other. If you want an RTX 3060 Ti at its normal price, you may soon be in luck.
