GPUs are already getting cheaper in 2022

EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 in front of a sparkler — (Image credit: EVGA)

The past few years have seen a massive rise in GPU prices thanks to market demand and chip shortages. Gamers have been especially hard hit thanks to crypto miners adding extra pressure on those hard working cards. However, perhaps January may be the month we can say we started to really see a decline in GPU prices, in the ever hopeful march back to normality.

3DCenter (via Videocardz) has been tracking GPU prices in German and Austrian retailers during these unprecedented times. Despite seeing cards selling for their highest prices since April just a few months back, so far January has seen two distinct price drops.

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The Nvidia RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6700 XT side by side on a colourful background — (Image credit: Future)

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For Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series cards like the RTX 3090, sales fell to 185% of their retail price early in the month and are now down to 177%. AMD saw a similar trend with prices dropping to 178% and then again to 167% of the MSRP. This means cards like the AMD Radeon RX 6800XT are selling for between 1279-1559€, which is still a far cry from the MSRP but at least it’s getting closer. Slowly. Hopefully this trend will continue and spread throughout the rest of the world.

We can be cautiously optimistic about this at the moment. Sure, the chip shortage is still seeing companies desperately scramble to try to make up for market demand. However, we are seeing new budget GPUs starting to appear to help pick up some of the slack.

This, combined with a recent drop in crypto prices and Ethereum’s upcoming move to Proof of Stake means the demand for gamer graphics cards for mining may dry up. Of course we are likely to also see the market flooded with used cards when this happens. Buyer beware on those as they might be well and truly worked to the core, but there may also be good deals to be found.

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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

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