Graphics Card Prices Slid Another 14% in June, Down 57% Since January

Graphics card prices continue to drop, both at retail and for aftermarket used cards sold on eBay. We've pulled together the data for the current prices, and the GPU mining exodus is in full force. eBay prices for the best graphics cards (meaning current generation hardware) fell by 14% on average since June 1, and previous-gen cards dropped by 17% on average. Retail prices aren't dropping as quickly, and many places are making noise about "graphics card deals" in an apparent attempt to clear inventory at the highest price possible. We tracked a 3% drop in retail prices on average, with prices on a few cards even increasing slightly.

Changes since the start of 2022 are even more dramatic, falling 57% on average. Retail availability of most graphics cards at the start of the year was close to non-existent. GPU mining was still profitable, and anyone that really wanted a modern graphics card immediately generally had to turn to eBay and pay exorbitant prices. Things have changed, and many miners are likely operating at a net loss right now. The solution for many is to sell off their used graphics cards as quickly as possible, and the resulting downward price trend is clear to see.

Most GPUs are now selling below their official MSRPs, if you're willing to take a chance on eBay. Nvidia's top-tier RTX 3090 Ti, RTX 3090, and RTX 3080 Ti are joined by AMD's RX 6900 XT, RX 6700 XT, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6600 with pricing that's 20%–30% below the MSRP. That's particularly surprising for the RTX 3090 Ti, considering it's only a few months old now and generally cost over $2,000 at launch, but the MSRP was wildly inflated at launch as well. Some people are likely feeling some terrible buyer's remorse.

Nvidia's RTX 3080 — both the 10GB and 12GB models, if we assume a $800 MSRP for the latter (Nvidia never gave an official MSRP for it) — are basically right at MSRP these days, as are the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3070. It's only the bottom three RTX 30-series GPUs that still tend to sell for more than the official starting price, with about a 10% markup on the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060, and a 20% markup on the RTX 3050.

AMD's GPUs by comparison are all at or below MSRP if you go through eBay, with the exception of the RX 6950 XT. The number of RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT, and RX 6650 XT cards currently sold on eBay remains trivial, however, so don't pay too much attention to those. Also, the retail price on the RX 6950 XT is currently 6% lower than the typical eBay price.

Retail prices in general remain higher than eBay prices, sometimes significantly so. Outside of the RX 6950 XT and RTX 3080 12GB, you can expect to pay on average 13% more to purchase a new card at retail. However, that's skewed somewhat by the RTX 3090 and RX 6600 XT that currently sell for 40% and 32% more at retail right now. AMD has officially discontinued the latter, replacing it with the new RX 6650 XT, while Nvidia has effectively halted production on the RTX 3090 and replaced it with the 3090 Ti.

Focusing just on eBay pricing, nearly every GPU dropped by 10% compared to last month. The RX 6400 and RX 6750 XT are the sole cards that cost incrementally more, though they hardly count considering only three RX 6400 cards were sold on eBay during the month of June, and only five 6750 cards were sold. The 6950 XT had very few sales as well, just ten, though that's better than the two that were sold on eBay in May.

If we omit those three cards, average prices on eBay for the remaining current generation GPUs dropped by 14% compared to last month. Also note that some of the oldest cards, like Nvidia's RTX 3090, 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti, and AMD's RX 6800 XT and 6800, dropped quite a bit more than cards that haven't been around quite as long. Those six GPUs that all launched in late 2020 dropped by 20% on average. Not coincidentally, those cards are the most likely candidates for having been down in the GPU mines for the past year and a half.

We can also look at the data in a slightly different manner, focusing on the average GPU price for all cards sold on eBay. Doing that, the average price for current generation GPUs fell from $736 in May to just $614 in June, a 17% drop. Separating that into AMD and Nvidia GPUs doesn't really change things, with AMD prices falling 17.5% and Nvidia prices dropping 15.6%.

Moving to the previous generation Turing and RDNA1 GPUs, the rate of decline is even higher at 18% month over month. Average sold GPU prices for these cards that are mostly two to four years old went from $361 in May to just $289 in June. AMD's average GPU price this time fell quite a bit more, 27% compared to 17% for Nvidia, with the average RX 5700 XT price falling by 30%.

Total card sales for both previous- and current-generation GPUs were down compared to May, which isn't particularly surprising, as the lower prices mean there's less enticement for people to try to offload older hardware. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of old graphics cards waiting to be sold, though.

Get Ready for a Flood of Used Cards

We recently looked at potential gains or losses for GPU miners over the past two years. Separate from that data, there's an interesting piece of information if we look at Ethereum's network hashrate. It increased from 228.2 TH/s in September 2020 to 1126.7 TH/s on May 13, 2022. That's an 898.5 TH/s increase, which represents a frankly astounding number of graphics cards.

I calculated the ratio of RTX 30-series GPUs sold on eBay over the past year, for current-gen cards, and found that the average hashrate for Ethereum mining (not factoring in Nvidia's LHR models) was 69 MH/s. That's certainly higher than the average hashrate for GPUs used in mining during the past 18 months, and it would still require 13 million GPUs to reach that figure.

Perhaps there were a bunch of Ethereum ASICs contributing as well, and there were definitely a lot of older GPUs used for mining in the past couple of years. Add in all the Turing, Pascal, RDNA2, RDNA1, Vega, and Polaris cards and we're potentially looking at tens of millions of graphics cards that were primarily mining Ethereum.

Now imagine what will happen if/when Ethereum finally transitions to Proof of Stake with "The Merge," ostensibly before the end of the year. Noah (ie, AMD and Nvidia) might need to build another ark to survive the coming flood.

Gamers sitting on older hardware meanwhile may finally have some great budget-friendly upgrades to consider — check our GPU benchmarks hierarchy to see how the past several generations of GPUs match up. Not that buying a used graphics card doesn't bring with it potential concerns, but the RTX 2070 and 2060 Super sit alongside AMD's RX 5700 XT and 5700 all around the $300 mark. Those could easily fall to $200 or less in the coming months, and all of those would deliver substantially more performance than a midrange Pascal or Polaris GPU from 2016–2017. Just be wary of shady used card dealers.