Our GPU price index tracks all the best graphics cards and the latest additions to our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. We scrape eBay's historical data to get details on what sort of prices people are paying for GPUs. It's not just eBay, either, as many retail stores end up with prices that are only a bit lower than eBay. Take Newegg as an example, where "winners" of the daily often have to buy unwanted extra hardware just to get a GPU, still at high prices.
Recently for example, the MSI RTX 3080 Ti Gaming X Trio was in the Newegg Shuffle, for $1,770. The average price for that card on eBay over past two weeks was $1,914. Considering eBay's ~15% cut, plus the profits of scalpers, Newegg must be taking a 20–25% piece of the pie! And your chances of getting selected in the Shuffle aren't even good, as I've tried over a hundred times and only got picked (usually for an item I didn't really want) three times.
Here's how things looked during the middle weeks of August.
| Graphics Card | Avg eBay Price | QTY Sold | Gross Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 3090 | $2,567 | 632 | $1,622,477 |
| GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | $1,832 | 546 | $1,000,146 |
| GeForce RTX 3080 | $1,708 | 911 | $1,555,760 |
| GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | $1,141 | 573 | $654,039 |
| GeForce RTX 3070 | $1,205 | 971 | $1,170,327 |
| GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | $933 | 1060 | $989,203 |
| GeForce RTX 3060 12GB | $723 | 1215 | $877,874 |
| Radeon RX 6900 XT | $1,557 | 67 | $104,346 |
| Radeon RX 6800 XT | $1,212 | 159 | $192,759 |
| Radeon RX 6800 | $1,157 | 83 | $96,020 |
| Radeon RX 6700 XT | $869 | 454 | $394,403 |
| Radeon RX 6600 XT | $634 | 209 | $132,437 |
Prices show a slight upward trend of about 5% over the past two weeks, with the RTX 3060 Ti being the only card that dropped slightly (by 0.6%). GPU prices have mostly stagnated during the past two weeks. This is also our first update to include the recently launched Radeon RX 6600 XT, which sold at an average price of $634 — 67% more than the base SEP of $380, though many cards have a much higher starting price. The RTX 3070 and RTX 3090 meanwhile increased by about 10% in price compared to the previous update. It will be interesting to see if the "flood" of Ampere GPUs slated to hit Best Buy tomorrow reverses this trend.
Overall sales of Nvidia Ampere GPUs dropped by 9% while AMD's supply increased by 9%, but most of that is thanks to the inclusion of RX 6600 XT, which accounts for 22% of all AMD RDNA 2 GPUs sold on eBay over the past two weeks. There was also a big spike in the number of RTX 3080 Ti GPUs sold, and RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060 sales were up a bit more than 10% as well. For AMD, supply (or at least, quantity sold) dropped by 15% for the RX 6700 XT, 25% for the RX 6900 XT, and 35% on the RX 6800, while units sold on the RX 6800 XT improved by 11%.
Thanks to the new GPU, AMD reduced the ratio of Nvidia to AMD sales to just 6 to 1, a new record. The cost of those GPUs meanwhile favors Nvidia by an 8.6 to 1 ratio. And speaking of cost, we added the Gross Sales column, showing how much money was spent on eBay over the past two weeks. The answer: $8.8 million, not including tax or shipping. Again, eBay takes at least 13% of that as its share of the profits — about $1.1 million, which is probably relatively small compared to all the other stuff that gets sold on eBay.
Weekly Summary: Wait for the Nvidia Resupply
We suspect part of the reason for the reduction in Nvidia's unit sales is that it's building up extra inventory for Best Buy's August 26 Ampere party. After AMD got some positive publicity for having "over 2,000" RX 6600 XT cards shipped to Micro Center locations for the Navi 23 launch, where potential customers are limited to one GPU each per 30 day period, Nvidia might be trying a similar tactic.
Of course, Best Buy has a lot more locations, and the leaked list of cards going out only includes about 10% of stores. If those are all Founders Edition models, sold at MSRP, don't be surprised if there's a huge jump in the number of Nvidia Ampere GPUs sold on eBay next week. We'll be sure to check on that as well come September.
We're only a few months away from Ethereum going proof of stake (unless it gets delayed), which will reduce mining profitability quite a bit and could end up causing a glut of GPUs on eBay. Let's hope that's the case, or that at least it stops miners from trying to purchase more GPUs for mining. Meanwhile, Ethereum currently sits at around $3,200, slightly higher than at the start of the month.
Given the announced TSMC price hikes and continuing shortages, we've got a long slog before GPUs get back to reasonable prices. We've also heard more details on Intel's upcoming Arc Alchemist GPUs and the Xe HPG architecture this past week. Hopefully that can prove competitive and be one more factor in reducing GPU prices, but we'll have to wait and see.
