The great graphics card drought of the past 18 months or so appears to be improving, but now is not the time to buy a new GPU.
That’s because according to our colleagues over at TechRadar Gaming, resales prices of graphics cards appear to be falling, and dropping rapidly.
On eBay in the U.S. there’s been a downwards trend in prices over the past four months for Nvidia GeForce RTX cards. However, the price drop hasn’t been reflected by the big US retailers like Newegg and Best Buy. After all, retailers don’t sell new-ish cards for the vastly inflated prices we’ve seen from resellers, though they don’t exactly offer bargain priced cards either.
But this is all a clue that the crazy price hikes being slapped onto the likes of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, thanks to sky-high demand and a shortage of semiconductors, could be slowing down.
Does this mean you’ll be able to get an RTX 30-series or AMD Radeon 6000-series graphics card for MSRP? Probably not yet. Both Nvidia and AMD still expect card shortages until late 2022.
Yet a decline in cryptocurrency value and traditional crypto mining, which graphics cards are good at, could see demand ease up and result in prices normalizing.
As such, TRG’s deals editor Alex Whitelock suggests holding fire when it comes to buying a new graphics card, even if you find one. And we’d echo that as there’s scope for prices to fall further and let you get a new GPU without feeling like you’ve been ripped off.
There are others options, such as buying a pre-built gaming PC like our computing writer Tony Polanco did. Sure, you pay a little more than the DIY route, and lose out on deep customization but they are a lot easier to buy for fairer overall prices. So make sure to check out our list of the best gaming PCs.
