eBay Historical GPU Prices 2023: November 2023 Update

Below is the original text for our look at GPU prices at the start of January, 2022, showing prices from eBay for the month of December. The text below here has not been edited since the original post.
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After trending upward the previous month, prices basically remained stagnant throughout December. Those who really wanted a new GPU for the holidays apparently did their shopping earlier, though the downward trend in cryptocurrency prices in the second half of the month may have also helped keep things in check. The overall supply of GPUs, at least as indicated by sales on eBay, dropped a bit, with a bigger dip on AMD's latest GPUs.

Bitcoin's price dropped about 20% over the course of December, with a short-lived rebound into the lower $50K range from the 24 to the 27. Ethereum started the month at close to $4,700 and ended at around $3,700, again reinforcing the volatility of even the biggest cryptocurrencies. With daily profits from even the best GPUs for mining (i.e., the RTX 3090) now sitting at less than $6 per day, we can only hope that miners will be less keen to expand their hardware holdings. It would currently require 486 days or more of 24/7 mining to break even on an RTX 3090 card, using the average eBay price.

We've switched to doing monthly updates now, with data for all of AMD's RDNA and RDNA 2 GPUs along with Nvidia's Turing and Ampere GPUs. Here's a look back at the month of December 2021.

While the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3090 dropped a bit in average price compared to last month, the remaining RTX 30-series GPUs all increased slightly. Overall, Nvidia's average price per GPU was up by 0.3% for December. AMD's prices dropped a bit on most of the RX 6000-series GPUs as well, but there was a higher percentage of expensive cards sold, leading to an overall average price increase of 5.2%.

All of the cards continue to sell at prices that are anywhere from 50% (RX 6900 XT) to 150% (RTX 3080) higher than the nominal MSRPs, showing just how meaningless MSRPs have become. It's sometimes possible to find better prices at other online stores, but in general the market as a whole tends to be within about 10–15% of the eBay price. Note that we don't try to differentiate between LHR and non-LHR Nvidia cards (for the 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti), though the earlier non-LHR models definitely carry a price premium.

Shifting over to the unit sales (on eBay, just in case you forgot — we have no good way of tracking other resellers), the total number of Nvidia GPUs sold dropped by 4.1%, with 15–25% dips on the 3080 Ti, 3070 Ti, and 3070 coupled with a rather large 29% jump in sales on the RTX 3060 Ti. AMD meanwhile had 15% more RX 6900 XT cards sold compared to the prior month, while all of the other RX 6000-series GPUs were down — with the RX 6600 XT dropping by 67%, from 857 sold in November to just 282 sold in December.

AMD's RX 6600 XT and RX 6600 continue to offer the best ratio of price to performance, not counting the rest of the system, at about 0.13 fps per dollar spent, with the RX 6700 XT coming in third overall. Nvidia's "best value" Ampere GPU was the RTX 3060, with a score of 0.11 fps per dollar. Most of the other GPUs fall close to the 0.10 fps per dollar range, with the RTX 3080, 3080 Ti, and 3090 as usual bringing up the rear — the latter offers just 0.05 fps per dollar.

With the recent announcement of new RTX 3050 and RTX 3090 Ti cards slated to launch at the end of January, along with the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400, things likely won't improve much this month but could look better come February.

GPU prices on previous generation cards likewise remained mostly flat compared to November. The RX 5600 XT showed the biggest increase in price of 10%, with the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 (GDDR5) both dropping by 6%, but the overall average price per GPU sold was only 1% lower. That's the second month in a row where RX 5600 XT prices on eBay increased quite a bit, likely because it was a bit too good of a value before.

The markup on Nvidia's RTX 20-series GPUs (relative to the original MSRPs) ranges from about 10% in the best case (RTX 2080 Super — we're not counting the overpriced RTX 2080 Ti) to a 135% price premium on the GTX 1660 Super. AMD's RDNA GPUs are in some cases even worse than the RDNA 2 cards, with the best value being the RX 5500 XT 4GB that's 'only' priced 89% above it's original MSRP, while the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT sold for 2.53x and 2.33x times their launch prices.

Availability of previous generation GPUs was again quite variable, though on the whole only 1% fewer GPUs were sold on eBay in December compared to November. The GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660 Ti both increased by 20–30%, but the biggest jump was the RX 5600 XT that sold 56% more cards on eBay last month. Most of the RTX 20-series showed fewer cards sold, as did the GTX 1660 (GDDR5), and the RX 5500 XT 4GB also showed a nearly 20% drop in units sold.

As far as performance per dollar spent, the GTX 1650 Super and RX 5500 XT 4GB are the top options right now, basically matching the RX 6600/6600 XT at around 0.13 fps per dollar spent. The RTX 20-series GPUs also tend to fall in the 0.11–0.12 fps/$ range. For gaming purposes, the RX 5700 (non-XT) represents the worst value right now, likely because it tends to be quite potent as a mining GPU.

GPU Prices Summary: Post-Holiday Slump

Welcome to 2022, where the painful GPU prices of last year keep on rolling along. We've now been tracking GPU prices for nearly a year, and the current thought among "People That Know" seems to be that GPU shortages and high prices are likely to last at least until the latter part of 2022. Whether things will then improve due to increased supply or if GPU prices will simply be closer to MSRPs because the next-gen RDNA 3 and Lovelace GPUs will arrive with inflated prices remains to be seen.

There's some slim hope that the recently announced RTX 3050, RX 6500 XT, and pending Intel Arc graphics cards will help improve the situation in the near-term, mostly because those cards shouldn't be particularly attractive to miners. However, the GTX 1650 series and RX 5500 XT 4GB likewise shouldn't be attractive to miners, and yet those cards are still selling at close to double their MSRPs. Alternatively, if you have very deep pockets, perhaps you can look forward to the new halo GPU from Nvidia, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. That should launch by the end of the month — obscene MSRP yet to be determined.

If you want another example of the painful state of affairs, I recently called a local PC shop because a friend had a power surge that killed off their GPU (and possibly more of the system, but that's another story). The only new GPU that was in stock was a GTX 750 Ti, and the shop wanted $149 for the card. That was a $149 card when it first launched nearly eight years ago! Another place tried to sell me a GTX 1050 Ti for $299.

Hopefully you already have a graphics card that will tide you over for another year or two. If not, at least this guide to GPU prices will give you a clear idea of what you can expect to pay on eBay — and while we report average prices for sold listings, you can probably pay 10–20% less if you're willing to be patient and keep bidding on auctions. Note also that getting support or warranty coverage for a card purchased off eBay can be difficult at best, so buying from a reputable retail outlet for a similar price would be preferable. Holding out until prices come down would still be better, however, as we don't want to encourage scalpers or retailers to continue charging unconscionable prices.