GPU Prices Fall After Nvidia Announcement, Ethereum Merge

GPU prices are coming down, particularly if you can find a short-term sale. Just one week after Ethereum successfully completed The Merge, and in the midst of the Nvidia RTX 40-series launch announcement, graphics cards simply can't hold on to their previous value. If you're looking for one of the best graphics cards, we'll show you the current pricing on the latest generation as well as previous generation models.

Let's start with the latest generation GPUs, all of which are still available at retail. There are a few previous generation Nvidia Turing cards included as well, mostly from the GTX 16-series but also the RTX 2060. The previous price data is from right before the Ethereum Merge.

Overall retail prices have fallen 3.5% on average since last week, but that's sort of obscuring a few of the bigger changes. RTX 3090 Ti held steady, but the RTX 3090 dropped 11%, as did the RTX 3060 Ti. Even better, AMD's RX 6750 XT, RX 6700 XT, and RX 6700 10GB all showed double-digit percentage drops, with the MSI RX 6700 XT Mech 2X and ASRock RX 6700 XT Challenger D both going for $359.99 right now.

As good as though prices might seem, considering you're looking at somewhere between RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 levels of performance — plus you get 12GB of VRAM — the real darling of the value segment right now continues to be the Radeon RX 6600. The Sapphire RX 6600 Pulse can be picked up for just $229.99. That's the same price as the EVGA RTX 2060 6GB, and while you don't get DLSS support, you do get more VRAM and generally 20% better performance in traditional rasterization games.

Not every GPU became cheaper over the past week, though. The RX 6950 XT was on sale before, and that ended now, resulting in a $40 price increase. RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 prices are also up, which is weird as no one should be buying those considering the RX 6600 more than doubles their performance. Several other GPUs remain flat on pricing as well — not too surprising considering we're only looking at the past week.

What about previous generation GPUs? For these, we're only looking at eBay prices, since that's where you'd have to go for many of the cards. Granted, a few of the Turing GPUs (2060 and 1660/1650 models) are available at retail still, though prices tend to be quite a bit higher.

Prices are down 4.3% on average, but there are a few GPUs where prices increased slightly — the RTX 2080 Ti, GTX 1650, RX 5700, and RX 5500 XT 8GB. Other models show some steep declines, with the RTX 2060 down 11%, and RX 5500 XT 4GB has fallen 25%! Note that only four RX 5500 XT 4GB cards were sold, however, which definitely distorts the picture.

As noted in our RX 6500 XT review, it's actually slower than the previous generation RX 5500 XT in most games. Sure, you get ray tracing hardware, but not enough of it to really matter. If you need a cheap budget GPU right now, picking up an RX 5500 XT for under $100 (used) isn't a bad idea. Plus, with 4GB the cards weren't much good for mining purposes, meaning you're unlikely to get a card that's been abused for the past two years.

Another interesting piece of information is that the AMD RX 5700 XT is now the best value out of all GPUs, at least if you're willing to take a risk on buying a used graphics card. And there is a risk, especially if you end up with something that's been blasted with high pressure water. Caveat emptor, as always, and look for established sellers with a return policy.

If you're in a rush to find a graphics card either for a new PC gaming build or to replace something that's on its last leg, this will hopefully put things in perspective. Otherwise, we recommend continuing to wait as we can only see prices on most of these GPUs falling even more in the next month or two while we await GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs and Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs.