GPU Prices, January 2022

Here's the data from the first two weeks of October for this update, along with the full month of data for September for current and previous generation graphics cards. We track eBay prices on the best graphics cards and past two generations of hardware found in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Original text follows below this line.

-------------------------------------

The previous update had cryptocurrency prices dropping to the lowest levels in several months. Now? Yeah, both Ethereum and Bitcoin have rebounded, with Bitcoin now hitting it's all-time high — it's currently at $64.1K. Ethereum sits at $3,845, not quite a record, and as usual the volatility means either one could go up or down at a moment's notice.

We're going to provide a look at the first two weeks of October for this update, along with the full month of data for September for current and previous generation graphics cards. Unfortunately, despite the fluctuations in crypto prices, graphics card prices have remained relatively stable — which means relatively high, if that's not clear. Let's start with the October 1–15 data.

Compared to our previous update, there are plenty of fluctuations, but nothing that really stands out. eBay prices on the Radeon RX 6600 XT increased by nearly 8% compared to late September, while prices on the RTX 3070, RTX 3070 Ti, and Radeon RX 6800 all dropped 5–7%, and everything else showed up or down swings of 3% or less. That's basically just margin of error stuff, and as you'd suspect, there's a correlation between the current supply and prices.

The number of RX 6600 XT cards sold dropped by 44%, which likely explains the price upswing. RTX 3060 sales also dropped by 22%, though the price wasn't really affected. At the same time, GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti numbers were both up — 48% in the case of the 3070 Ti — which would explain the slightly lower prices.

The total number of Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs sold in this 15-day period is within 1% of the number of cards sold in our previous update, while AMD's RX 6000-series GPU numbers (sold on eBay) dropped by 14%. That's despite the arrival of the Radeon RX 6600, though it came out right at the end of our data collection period and only accounted for 19 sales on eBay.

We're adding a look at the monthly pricing data for both current and previous generation GPUs, starting with the latest Ampere and RDNA 2 offerings. The RX 6600 didn't come out until October 13, so it's not listed yet, but everything else has been available for at least a month. Compared to the August data for the latest GPUs, prices were generally higher in September while supply (units sold) was far more variable.

For Nvidia's Ampere GPUs, everything in the charts has been out since June at least, giving plenty of time for the supply and pricing to "stabilize." The supply of RTX 3090, 3080 Ti, 3060 Ti, and RTX 3060 were all higher than in August, by anywhere from 10% to as much as 30%. RTX 3080, 3070 Ti, and 3070 units sold were down by 18–23%. There's no clear pattern, in other words. Prices didn't change all that much, with the RTX 3090 increasing by 8% month over month but everything else changing by 4% or less.

AMD's RDNA2 GPUs tell a similar story. Units sold was up 23% on the RX 6900 XT, though total sales was still only 189. The RX 6600 XT also had its first full month of availability, and it accounted for half of all the AMD GPUs sold. Pricing was stagnant on the 6900 XT, increased by 10% for the 6800 XT, 13% on the RX 6800, 4% on the RX 6700 XT, and dropped by 6% on the RX 6600 XT. Total AMD GPU sales were up 34% overall, but again that's all because of the RX 6600 XT.

The previous generation GPUs are mostly no longer in production, but units still continue to change hands. AMD's RX 5700 XT was the biggest seller, by far, with 45% more cards sold in September than in August, and average prices on those cards increased from around $850 to nearly $900. That's because the RX 5700 XT remains one of the better GPUs for mining.

The RTX 2070 also showed a rather large spike in units sold, going from 320 in August to 435 in September. Oddly, the RTX 2070 Super showed a similar drop in units sold, so perhaps there's some confusion about naming on those cards (though we attempted to account for this).

Besides those two GPUs, all of the other previous generation graphics cards show fewer units sold in September than August, which is what we'd expect from discontinued hardware. Prices meanwhile were up on virtually every card, with the only exceptions being the RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2070 Super — the former basically didn't change in price while the latter dropped by 7%. Month over month, pricing on the previous generation GPUs increased by about 5%.

Summary: GPU Supply Remains Very Limited

While China's crackdown on cryptocurrency mining and general use continues, it appears most mining operations have managed to migrate to other countries. Bitcoin's total network hashrate hasn't quite reached its all-time high, but the Ethereum network now has 15% more total hashing power than it's previous peak in May. That's not too surprising to see, based on the continued extreme pricing we see for graphics cards sold on eBay.

When you also factor in the difficulties in getting shipments around the world, it's a safe bet that we won't see anything approaching "reasonable" pricing on graphics cards for some time. AMD and Nvidia have both attempted to build up supply for new GPUs prior to launch, but everything always sells out in a day or less, and then prices shoot up at other online stores. Sadly, eBay pricing on some GPUs is actually about the same as you'll find for cards sold through the Newegg Shuffle.

Given the current upward trend in Bitcoin and Ethereum prices, we can't expect help from that area either. I talked about the Radeon RX 6600 launch in a recent episode of the Tom's Hardware Show, and speculated that large mining groups still see an upside to cryptomining. Right now, even though it might take a year or more to break even on the hardware costs, that's still likely better than many other potential business plans. Unfortunately, that means big miner groups are almost certainly still buying plenty of graphics cards for mining, they're just not using them in China.

Hopefully you already have a reasonable graphics card and can continue to use that. If not, console gaming might be an option, but getting one of the latest consoles is also difficult. At the same time, paying $750 for a console plus controllers and getting a game or two thrown into the bundle generally makes more financial sense than spending $750 on a PC graphics card that's technically slower than either the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X (I'm looking at you, RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, and RTX 3060).