Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[MrPickins]

If you want a good deal, you can't be that picky. Especially if you want new too. AMD must have for the most part ended production a long time ago and at some point retailers will start to run out.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that, but most of the deals I saw across AIBs were within a few percent of what they'd been selling for all month. I did see some decent prices for XFX and Asrock (IIRC) models, but I'm not buying either brand.

Maybe everything has just shifted in the market, but I'm still looking for the deals we used to get at the end of a GPU generation. I haven't seen any of that.

And, I actually can be picky. My current card is adequate for what I play, so I'm voting with my wallet and waiting. Pretty sure I'm not the only one.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Looks like this just isn't the year for water related analogies. The Flood never really happened in the way everyone thought it would.

I mean, AMD GPUs are going for minor discounts off their MSRPs, but nothing like 50% off blowouts. Used market remained stubbornly high with sellers looking to recoup off their peak purchase price rather than current MSRP.

I'm starting to think that the ideal time to buy the used market is in that period of uncertainty between a product announcement and it's launch. You'll get a lot more of the starry eyed sellers in that window.

NV's insistence on not cutting into their margins is heavily distorting market pricing upward. I wonder if it'll still all come crashing down or if their monsterous 80% market share means they're happy to lost 5% of their customer base to AMD if it means keeping that ASP up.

 

[Aapje]

There are many more choices than just the choice between Nvidia and AMD. The GPU market and the gaming upgrade market as a whole is driven in large part by those who want better technology and those who want better price/performance. A lot of people will just stick with their existing cards unless they see improvements, or if those improvements do happen with consoles, they may switch.

With Nvidia's apparent intentional strategy to focus on the best technology, but not on giving better price/performance with each gen, the logical result is that only those who just want better technology will upgrade, but the value buyers will hold off or switch to AMD. And the value buyers already start with the x080 tier. That's why the 4080 is selling poorly.

 

[jpiniero]

NV's insistence on not cutting into their margins is heavily distorting market pricing upward. I wonder if it'll still all come crashing down or if their monsterous 80% market share means they're happy to lost 5% of their customer base to AMD if it means keeping that ASP up.

nVidia might be offering good deals... but to OEMs and not AIBs. Selling lots of gaming laptops.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

If you want a good deal, you can't be that picky. Especially if you want new too. AMD must have for the most part ended production a long time ago and at some point retailers will start to run out.

That was kind of my thought process for just buying a 6700 XT now. That and having no idea what next gen pricing will be like. On one hand gpu demand has tanked, but on the other hand Nvidia left AMD a lot of room to release cards next year that are minimal improvements to price to performance.

 

[Aapje]

My expectation is that we'll see very similar pricing from AMD as the MSRPs of the last gen, as their costs are probably less or the same as last gen. They probably want to start gaining market share. TSMC N6 now has excess capacity, so at the very least they should be able to produce Navi 33 is large quantities. However, they can also produce both a Navi 31 and Navi 32 chip for every AD102 that Nvidia makes, if you look at TSMC 5N die space.

Then I foresee that demand will dry up relatively quickly and prices will go down. So with some patience you might get some very nice pricing from AMD. Nvidia probably also has to drop pricing to keep sales up, but has high costs, so won't go that low.

 

[mastertech01]

As long as they can get people to pay double for a fancy box and a couple free games why would they slash prices. If I have to wait 6 more months I can. Im not a gamer so Im not in a hurry to blow a months retirement pay on one card.

 

[biostud]

Wouldn't it be fair to assume that nvidia pays more per wafer than AMD does, since AMD is a larger and more stable client?

 

[Aapje]

Nvidia made a huge prepaid deal, so it's unlikely to be a huge difference.

A much bigger issue is that Nvidia made a huge prepurchase, which TSMC doesn't allow them to partially undo, while AMD (and Apple) have a much more flexible contract. So Nvidia needs to sell quantity and cannot afford to lose much market share this generation.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe the flood will happen, just deferred.

 

[Aapje]

Maybe the flood will happen, just deferred.

I do expect that after the winter is over, a lot of these 'mining for heat' people will start selling off their rigs.

We'll see what happens.

 

[ksheets]

I grabbed a 6900XT from Newegg for $590, I finally made up my mind for sure that I wasn't spending $1400 for a 4080. It makes me very sad, I've been into video cards since the beginning ( I miss you orchid righteous 3d!) , but man- with these prices, this might be my last Generation of Video card, my Xbox is working nicely 90% of the time....

 

[mastertech01]

I certainly wont want someones smoked and tenderized video cards for heat after the winter. They can just go ahead and eat them too.

 

[aigomorla]

my Xbox is working nicely 90% of the time

I honestly can't stand a controller.
I also like having ultra ultra wide screens and do not like having to be forced to sit on a couch.
I like having cheat programs / memory editors / .dll injectors on single player RPG's and not being forced to grind stupid stuff.

I do not like the current prices video cards are at right now, but its just a matter of time until Nvidia has to drop them.
They can't survive against AMD.
The high end niche is a niche and by definition its low vol.
AMD has and will take the entire upper-lower, mid, and lower market share leaving NVidia very unprofitable.

I certainly wont want someones smoked and tenderized video cards for heat after the winter. They can just go ahead and eat them too.

I do not think i would touch a mined card unless it was very well taken care of, or from someone i personally knew.
Oh i probably would not bat an eye, if it had a custom waterblock, or was custom watercooled, as i know most watercooled cards are very well taken care of. (im not taking about Hybrids / AIO's but like real full cover waterblocks).

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I think NV has a huge amount of room to drop prices, especially on their AD103 dies and down. They just don't want to due to supply issues with their Ampere line at the moment... and the fact that their current line-up of cards is selling reasonable well at their current prices (yes the 4080 isn't selling out, but at the same time its price is so jacked up that NV likely doesn't care and is making fat margins off the whale buyers at the moment).

AD103 is ~400mm2 (4080 16GB die). That's a reasonably small die by NV standards, and would certainly be profitable at half its current asking price.

 

[jpiniero]

AMD has and will take the entire upper-lower, mid, and lower market share leaving NVidia very unprofitable.

If anything, nVidia's market share is increasing. It is mostly product that nVidia sold quarters ago, but hey.

 

[ksheets]

the 6900xt vs 6700xt- this thing is a real beast!

 

[mastertech01]

the 6900xt vs 6700xt- this thing is a real beast!

Does it take a separate power generator?

 

[coercitiv]

Does it take a separate power generator?

Yes, you must construct additional pylons!

 

[Dribble]

If anything, nVidia's market share is increasing. It is mostly product that nVidia sold quarters ago, but hey.

JPR has AMD down to 8% market share and Nvidia at 88%.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

As absurd as it sounds, this was the reason I was a little worried about Intel entering the GPU market. The market as it stands cannot support 3 players. Hell right now its barely supporting two.

AMD got very lucky that intel's first set of ARC GPUs were a joke because if Intel figures out GPUs NV buyers won't buy an intel GPU but AMD buyers will and both will end up with paltry marketshare.

The absolute nightmare scenario is Intel jumps in and essentially takes out AMD's GPU division, then drops out of GPUs themselves because they cannot make inroads against the NV juggernaut.

 

[blckgrffn]

JPR has AMD down to 8% market share and Nvidia at 88%.

Yeah, winning the worst quarter essentially ever... yay.

"So coming to the discrete GPU market share numbers, the report tells us that the dGPU shipments decline to 14 million units versus 24 million units in the previous year."

That's for Q3. There is a lot of potential explanations here, I think AMD throttled back hard about 6 months ago (maybe longer) thinking there was a looming recession and also clearing the channel for their next gen product. Who knows what nvidia is thinking.

Regardless of market share numbers, DGPU shipments were down over 40% YoY and there is an ampere glut right now in the second hand market at least locally here. Lots of GPUs for too high prices as MSRP corrections have undercut used card viability.

In any case, on sites like Slickdeals the 6600-6700XT are *constantly* being pumped as the best deals and maybe nvidia doesn't care about value buyers but there seems to be some clear momentum there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[maddie]

As absurd as it sounds, this was the reason I was a little worried about Intel entering the GPU market. The market as it stands cannot support 3 players. Hell right now its barely supporting two.

AMD got very lucky that intel's first set of ARC GPUs were a joke because if Intel figures out GPUs NV buyers won't buy an intel GPU but AMD buyers will and both will end up with paltry marketshare.

The absolute nightmare scenario is Intel jumps in and essentially takes out AMD's GPU division, then drops out of GPUs themselves because they cannot make inroads against the NV juggernaut.

AMD has a huge, and growing gaming presence in non-PC gaming, and it uses shared tech. Not as profitable, but still very valuable to the company as a revenue stream. They won't abandon the AIB card market baring a total collapse in sales makes the cost of a design unrecoverable.

 

[Aapje]

@GodisanAtheist

You have to keep in mind that these products are developed for much more than just desktop gaming. Nvidia has a ton of business applications that they sell them for. Intel similarly wants a piece of those markets, but needs to have GPU's anyway for their CPU's. If they have better APUs, they can also try to break into the console market. AMD similarly needs the designs anyway for CPUs and for their consoles. They also want to break into the professional markets.

But I do agree that we need these companies taking market share from Nvidia, not from each other.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I finally decided on the last piece of my new build the other day, to replace the old I3 4340 based desktop & Radeon RX 550 video card, which we use for casual gaming. When I saw the Ryzen 5600G for $114, I finally pulled the trigger. It seems to have performance at around the RX 550 level, so I guess we're going to excise the video card from our system for a while.