The discrete video card market decreased by 42% over the year, which we have already written. It is logical to assume that the drop in sales should lead to lower prices – which has so far only been observed on a limited scale.
According to a February report by Hardware.info, some price reductions are still being seen. That’s an average of 5.6% for Radeon graphics cards and 3% for NVIDIA cards, compared to January. Starting prices are gradually normalizing, and some graphics cards are now available at a lower than recommended price (RTX 4080 or RX 7900XT). However, it is noticeable that there are many cases of price growth in the table:
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX in February is 14% cheaper than in January, but the price is still 6% higher than the recommended price. However, the RX 7900 XT is now 6.9% off MSRP. NVIDIA RTX 4090 prices have dropped by 6.2% in just one month, the biggest drop in the RTX 4000 series.
At Mindfactory, one of the largest German retailers, the average price of a video card sold in February this year is at least 93% higher than in the same period of 2020. The average selling price of NVIDIA graphics cards is now €825, while Radeon cards usually cost €600 – up €427 and €295 from 2020, respectively. In general, the data for 2023 may be affected by the fact that AMD and NVIDIA have just released the latest graphics cards, which are traditionally more expensive at the start.
We should not forget about two major events that have affected the video card market recently: the ban on mining in China and the collapse of the cryptocurrency market. It is obvious that before them, manufacturers could sell large batches of video cards, not particularly worrying about retail prices, which were many times higher than the recommended ones, and the secondary market did not put such pressure on prices. Now that the emphasis of the market has shifted towards individual sales to ordinary users, an increase in the retail price can be justified even in the conditions of a market drop of tens of percent.
Head of NVIDIA Jensen Huang: “The idea that chips will become cheaper is a story from the past”
Source: VideoCardz
