According to some of the biggest retailers in Germany and Austria, graphics card prices are somewhat unsurprisingly, super expensive at the moment. Some cards, like the AMD Radeon RX 6000-series, are sitting at over twice their MSRP.
The report by 3D Center doesn’t feature newer cards released after March 2021, but it does show the current upward trend in GPU pricing. The data shows that in the past month AMD and Nvidia GPU pricing has increased by 18 and 16 percentage points respectively. This puts both card lines' average sales at very close to double what was recommended for retail sale, and is a significant increase since prices have steadily climbed from their lowest back in July.
According to the analysis, in late July, for example you could pick up a humble Nvidia RTX 3060 at a worst price of €799 and best price of €579. That price rose to €1280 by the end of August, and has maintained that while still raising the cheapest price to €699.
- Where the AF are all the graphics cards?! It's not just the new RTX 50-series that's impossible to buy, finding any decent GPU in stock at the major US retailers right now is like staring into an abyss of nothing
- AMD's new RX 9070 GPUs sold out within 10 mins at launch, unless you were willing to pay ever more ludicrous prices
The report also notes the general volatility of the market. Slightly lower-end models like AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT can be found going for higher prices than the beefy RX 6900 XT. There’s also outrageous peak pricing for those who are willing to pay it, but this is all just a sign of the demand far outweighing supply.
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It’s worth noting that because the report is from data from Germany and Austria the pricing may be quite different from other countries. Different rules mean that vendors can sell directly to customers which isn’t the case all over.
There’s a lot to watch in the GPU space at the moment, even aside from the chip shortages, and what’s causing them. Companies making moves like Nvidia set to announce RAM boosts to many of its cards in the coming months, the surprising potential specs on Intel’s Arc Alchemist, and AMD’s next gen flagship design being finalised.
