GPU pricesare dropping, and they have been for months. Anew report from Bloombergshows just how quickly they’re crashing, claiming that prices have dropped by as much as 50% as the market deals with the crypto fallout.
The report lays out a compelling argument for GPU prices falling alongside the price of Ethereum, which isa trend from the crypto declinewe wrote about in June. According to the data, the average price of an RTX 3080 on the secondhand market has dropped by nearly 50% since late April.
It’s a sobering reality check as theGPU shortagecomes to a close. Although multiple factors have contributed to the GPU shortage, the demand from cryptocurrency miners seems to be the main driver. In the first half of 2021, for example,a quarter of all GPU saleswent to cryptocurrency miners. Some estimates say miners spent $15 billion on GPUs just for mining Ethereum.
The boom from cryptocurrency catapulted the value of Nvidia and AMD last year. Nvidia, in particular, saw 50% growth in revenue in each of the last two years, despite the fact that the company reported that less than 1% of its gaming-related sales came from the company’s mining-focused GPUs. Nvidia added a limiter to its gaming graphics cards to discourage mining, buthackers were able to bypass the limitercompletely in May.
If you feel like it’s impossible to tell the impact of crypto on the price of GPUs, you’re not alone. In May, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)fined Nvidia $5.5 millionfor not disclosing the influence of cryptocurrency on its revenue over the past several years.
The rapid drop in prices comes on the heels of around$800 billion in crypto valuedisappearing from the market. Prior to that point,GPU prices were starting to approach MSRP. Now, you’re able to find several of thebest graphics cards, brand new, for sale under list price.
It’s an interesting time for graphics cards, not only because they’re becoming cheap, but also because Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to release new generations. Nvidia is working on itsRTX 40-seriesgraphics cards and AMD has itsRX 7000 GPUs, and we expect to see both before the end of the year.
We could see prices go back up if demand from cryptocurrency miners does. On the other hand, we may see a repeat of the crypto fallout in early 2018. Similar to 2020, crypto boomed in late 2017 and caused a GPU shortage. Once prices returned to normal, Nvidia and AMD were stuck in a tough spot with pallets of GPUs that there was little demand for.
It’s possible that we’ll see a repeat of that later this year, hopefully giving gamers a break from hunting for an overpriced graphics card. Regardless, make sure to keep our roundup of thebest GPU dealsbookmarked to see where the market is going.
