GPU Retail Prices Continue to Decline in October

October has been a crazy month in the GPU market. Nvidia has launched its highly anticipated (albeit overpriced) GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, and Intel has launched two new A-series GPUs, the Arc A770 and Arc A750. Those newcomers all sold out, but GPU prices on the best graphics cards in general have continued to drop. That includes most of the GeForce RTX 30-series and Radeon RX 6000-series cards.

Starting with the bad news, Nvidia's RTX 4090 has suffered a severe price hike to $2,250 for retail availability just a week after the GPU launched. Despite Nvidia’s MSRP of $1,600, consumers ate up all the RTX 4090 supply, with stores selling out almost immediately after launch. That combined with scalpers has effectively depleted all RTX 4090 stock, with the few remaining 4090's listings being rather overpriced — online resellers joining the scalpers, as it were.

There's an exception to this, as brick-and-mortar stores like Micro Center and Best Buy will still sell RTX 4090s at MSRP, assuming you have a local shop and cards are still in stock. That's the best way to get your hands on an RTX 4090 until Nvidia can increase the supply in the coming weeks or months.

Thankfully, Nvidia's RTX 4090 is mostly the only card having supply issues — Intel's Arc Alchemist cards are also seemingly in a constant state of back orders. The rest of the GPU market is doing very well, with most models now retailing for less than their original launch MSRPs.

Nvidia's RTX 3090, RTX 3070, and RTX 3060 Ti have seen the most significant price drops since the past month, with price reductions of 13%, 16.7%, and 11.1%, respectively. The RTX 3090 now starts at $940, the 3070 at $450, and the 3060 Ti at $400. The rest of Nvidia's RTX 30-series lineup only saw price reductions in the 1% and 7% range.

Nvidia's RTX 2060 and GTX 16-series GPUs, like the RTX 1660 Ti and RTX 1650 GDDR6 variants, are the only models that have seen price drops, by 17.4% and 15.8%, respectively. That puts the RTX 1660 Ti's price below that of the RTX 1660 Super at $190, and the RTX 1650 GDDR6's price is $6 less than the vanilla (GDDR5) RTX 1650. Note that many of the places showing inventory on these older Turing cards are third-party listings on places like Newegg or Amazon, however, which means shipping might take longer.

AMD GPUs have seen some decent price drops on the RX 6000-series as well, with the RX 6950XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6700 (non-XT) falling 12.1%, 10%, and 16.7% month to month, respectively. The RX 6700 10GB card doesn't have an official MSRP, so AIBs are free to price the card as they see fit. Performance should land between the RX 6650 XT and the RX 6700 XT, and price falls right in that range as well.

The RX 6950 XT now starts at $800, RX 6800 XT at $540, and RX 6700 at $350. The rest of AMD's lineup has fallen a few percent as well, except the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 which actually saw prices increase slightly.

Newegg seems to be the only retailer carrying any Intel Arc GPUs for the time being, and they're out of stock every time we check. If you're serious about picking up an Arc GPU, give the auto-notify service a shot. We don't know if it's high demand due to people being interested in having a Team Blue graphics card, or if it's just very limited supply, though we suspect the latter.

These are all prices on brand-new listings for graphics cards. If you're willing to take a chance and buy a used graphics card, our eBay GPU prices article gets updated monthly and shows the average eBay price for each GPU on sold listing over the past month.

Buy Now or Wait for More RTX 40-series  and RX 7000-series  GPUs?

The GPU market is mostly holding firm in October 2022. GPU pricing has trended downward over the past several months, and there are new GPU launches slated for next month. Many Nvidia and all AMD graphics cards are now selling below MSRP, with lower prices than we've seen basically since they first hit the market.

If you need to buy a GPU right now, it's as good a time as any, though if you can wait for Black Friday next month you might be able to snag a better deal. Nvidia's RTX 40 series is being launched as we speak, with the RTX 4090 already released and the RTX 4080 (formerly 4080 16GB) planned for November. We expect Nvidia will start unveiling more RTX 40 series GPUs at the start of 2023 and fill out the rest of the lineup during that year.

If the RTX 4090 is any indication, Nvidia's next-generation Ada Lovelace architecture will have a lot to offer at every pricing bracket — Nvidia just wants to clear out existing 30-series inventory before moving down the stack. Even though the 4090's MSRP is exceptionally high, its performance is unquestionably stunning. Moreover, it represents the most remarkable generation-on-generation performance improvement we've ever seen, at least at 4K, delivering a 50% to 73% improvement over the 3090 Ti (not even the 3090). For more details, check out the GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

If rumors are true, AMD won't be too far behind Nvidia's 40-series GPUs. AMD's next generation RX-7000 series GPUs powered by the RDNA3 architecture will be announced on November 3, with at least one or two cards hitting retail before the end of 2022. Performance per watt is reportedly another 50% jump, thanks to TSMC's 5nm node, but we'll have to see what that actually means — more performance at the same power, or lots more performance while matching Nvidia's new 450W TBPs?

If Nvidia and AMD's next-generation GPUs continue to provide the same generational performance uplift as the 4090, we could be in for a treat (though a bit late for Halloween). That means if you don't already own an RTX 30- or RX 6000-series card, it's probably a good idea to wait things out and skip the current generation. And that's always a safe course of action if you're not in a hurry to upgrade, as the one thing we're certain of is that GPUs will continue to get faster as the years tick by.