Somewhere some guy is waking up from a 5-year coma and saying he wants to get started PC gaming again. His friends exchange glances...
For the last 4 years, hardware prices have been insane. Years before when prices were relatively sane, top-end cards were $600-$700. The mid-range was $250-$350. Nvidia's 3060 is the 3000 generation's mid-range. Here's what recent history looks like...
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| MSI 3060 Ventus 3x |
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| Zotac Gaming 3060Ti Twin Edge |
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| EVGA 3060Ti FTW3 Ultra |
You really cannot point to any one thing.
- Covid happened
- General microchip shortage affected all industries
- Shipping issues
- Crypto-mining
- Inflation
- Good old corporate greed
These points will actually work in any areas where the cost has increased. Anyone saying one thing and one thing only is the cause of price increases is probably full of shit. If politics is involved, assume that's the default and move on. Of note, inflation really hasn't affected all things proportionately.
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| Not ALL the issues were from the Ever Given being stuck in the suez canal, but it didn't help 😂 |
**to be fair, I'm using the Radeon 7900 which is technically above the "high tier" 7800 - but that's only because there is no 7800 yet, AMD decided 2 new extreme tier 7900 versions was a better idea...
Shortly into the 1060/580 release, crypto-mining took off and prices skyrocketed. I got "lucky" getting a 1060 3GB (yuck) for $300. The MSRPs for the Nvidia 20 series and AMD 5000 series were like a practical joke. Cost only really started dropping recently with the change of a major cryptocurrency (Etherium) moving to "proof-of-stake". This had security and validation in mind for the cryptocurrency but mining was no longer profitable (yay). Do note, the crypto-market is in freefall. Unsure if this is simply compounded by moves like that.
So today (end of 2022), there's a flood of second-hand cards for sale. A card from 2 years ago selling second-hand for over the initial MSRP is ridiculous - yet, that's the rule.
At this point, looking at amazon, the 3060 is going for $370 at least, with most over $400. This seems to be "normal" for Nvidia's product line. The 3080 is $800-$1400, and the 3090 is $1400-$1900.
The AMD 6600 is going for as low as $230 - from several vendors. The 3060 is faster overall but it's not huge. Lower single-digit percent change there. Ray tracing makes a bigger difference between the two, but for a lot of people, these cards won't be effective ray-tracing cards anyway. The rest of AMD's product stack is similar, where matching price with Nvidia results in much higher performance levels - up to the point where AMD's cards hit their limit. The XFX 6900 XT is available from $650 now and is about parity with Nvidia's 3080 - not the 3080 OC or Ti or other variants.
Perhaps this performance advantage led to Nvidia making a massive space heater of a GPU which necessitated a new power delivery plug (there were fires!). Maybe their thinking was they should get so far ahead of the competition that it would hurt them. They set an MSRP for this insanity at $1600, and prices soared - the "Founders Edition" hit $3350. The Nvidia store is selling this monstrosity for $2450 now, so they're quite complicit with scalpers. They introduced a cheaper version of the card - a 4080 - MSRP of $1200. These prices have gone full crazy now. Normally you pay a premium to get a little more speed, but now you're getting much less with the "lower-end" card. Simply put, the drop in price is less than the drop in performance, making the 4090 a "better buy". This is how a company tries to milk its customers.
AMD's next generation part to compete with the 4000 series is the 7900xtx and 7900xt. The 7900xtx can compare with the 4080 (perhaps not with raytracing) and the MSRP comes in at $1000. OK - that's still well above what the high-end used to cost. The 7900xt is $900. Lose 10% of the cost, and about 17% the speed - a worse buy? A page from Nvidia's playbook?
In the past, the high-end was about double the cost of the mid-tier. If the high end is going for $1600, we may just see ludicrous MSRP pricing at the mid-tier, even before price gouging, scalping, etc.
Bottom line? Prices are still crazy, and the companies making the cards are setting nonsense prices to goad users into spending for top-tier GPUs. The habit of not producing mid-range cards as well to push customers to buy the high-end is relatively recent. It's been happening for several years, but that's only the last few product lines. How do we get around it? Jump ship. AMD's prices are more reasonable even if they are trying the same thing.
The new GPUs are priced so high, the old GPUs aren't going to drop in cost until mid-range models come out - and only if mid-range GPUs are given mid-range prices. It doesn't feel like an improvement over the last generation, but an expensive extension of it.
Buy older higher tier cards until the cost drops. Get second-hand cards if you can trust the seller. Hit them where it hurts. Hit their wallets.
Addendum - another thought: We're paying for a feature that we just weren't quite ready for. We have 4k monitors and we have fast refresh-rate monitors. But we barely have graphics cards that can do both with ray tracing turned on. Even current budget cards will give us excellent frame rates at 2560x1440. But if a $600 graphics card is struggling to do that with ray tracing turned on (maybe not in all games) maybe that feature is a little beyond common mainstream. No one should be paying $1000+ for gaming hardware that would be outdated in a few years. GPUs shouldn't brute force their way into getting something done expending this much power and heat.
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