News Graphics Cards Selling for Near MSRP: The Best GPU Deals

[InvalidError]

exactly. The price to performance is still improving.

The price to performance improving is of little consolation when the minimum ticket price is $500. PC gaming is about to price itself out of the market.

 

[InvalidError]

I am amazed that there is still so much talk about MSRP. I think that the MSRP and especially for the now 2-years plus older 3000-series cards does not apply anymore. Those GPU’s should be made available right now at least 40%-50% below their originally set MSRP.

The market decides when prices go down, and that is when retailers are getting stock faster than they can get rid of.

Unfortunately for consumers, manufacturers have gotten pretty good at discontinuing previous-generation products early enough to clear shelves before next-gen stuff launches so there isn't much new old stock left to discount by that point.

The only thing that may cause a 40+% below MSRP retail price collapse is a mining GPU flood causing new sales to suddenly freeze, leaving Nvidia, AMD and their AiB partners with over a year worth of stock to clear like they did with the first crypto crash..

 

[jacob249358]

The price to performance improving is of little consolation when the minimum ticket price is $500. PC gaming is about to price itself out of the market.

The minimum wont be $500. We would be talking the 4060 which would compare to what like a 3080? Unless you are talking about a full PC build. But I don't think PC gaming will price itself out of the market. Simple supply and demand. The companies will have to slice prices (and we know they can afford to) or else they will go out of business.

 

[InvalidError]

The companies will have to slice prices (and we know they can afford to) or else they will go out of business.

Only if they have nowhere else more profitable (ex.: datacenter, HPC and automotive) to re-allocate excess consumer wafers to. Part of the reason for GPU prices ticking up is consumers competing against higher-value compute customers for wafers.

 

[SunMaster]

The current low end cards from team green and blue are 3040 and 6500 (or even 6400). They have performance on par with my 970 chip from nvidia - which is now 6 years old, and had a cost of about the same 6 years ago. No performance/price gains for 6 years ? Which part of the computing industry claim something as poor and ridiculous as that?

No wonder team blue has appeared in something that, for everyone able to count, has to look like an extremely lucrative sellers market.

 

[jacob249358]

The current low end cards from team green and blue are 3040 and 6500 (or even 6400). They have performance on par with my 970 chip from nvidia - which is now 6 years old, and had a cost of about the same 6 years ago. No performance/price gains for 6 years ? Which part of the computing industry claim something as poor and ridiculous as that?

No wonder team blue has appeared in something that, for everyone able to count, has to look like an extremely lucrative sellers market.

If the market was normal the 3050 would have been like $199 msrp and dropped lower than that. And the 6500xt wouldn't exist in its current form.
Last gen the 2060 was about the same price as a 970 and performs much better.

 

[SunMaster]

If the market was normal the 3050 would have been like $199 msrp and dropped lower than that. And the 6500xt wouldn't exist in its current form.
Last gen the 2060 was about the same price as a 970 and performs much better.

But the 3050 Isn’t 199 and the 6500xt exists. I did not compare the 2060 to the 970. Last gen 2060 and its previous pricing is not currently interesting.

 

[Geezer760]

ALL those so called MSRP pricing yeah right, I clicked on the links for the 3070s all $750++++ ALL BS pricing same as always, these companies are scamming and raking in the dough, and idiots paying those prices, just to play a $60 game that they will speed run through. but I guess if your rich you can afford to drop a grand or two on a GPU, GPUs it's a drop in the bucket for them. It's rigged game open your eyes people.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

ALL those so called MSRP pricing yeah right, I clicked on the links for the 3070s all $750++++ ALL BS pricing same as always, these companies are scamming and raking in the dough, and idiots paying those prices, just to play a $60 game that they will speed run through. but I guess if you're rich you can afford to drop a grand or two on a GPU, GPUs it's a drop in the bucket for them. It's rigged game open your eyes people.

I said in the article that only some cards are available at or even below MSRP, and the text specifically notes that the 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3070 Ti are not among those that have good prices. The RX 6700 XT, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6600 are pretty much at MSRP, though, and are worth consideration if you don't already have something faster. RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 are also at MSRP, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to recommend those as 'good' options right now.

 

[jacob249358]

But the 3050 Isn’t 199 and the 6500xt exists. I did not compare the 2060 to the 970. Last gen 2060 and its previous pricing is not currently interesting.

But you are saying there hasn't been a price to performance gain in 6 years but that's just not true. We are in a shortage so prices are going to be absurd. I was using the 2060 as an example of a time when we weren't in a shortage.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

But you are saying there hasn't been a price to performance gain in 6 years but that's just not true. We are in a shortage so prices are going to be absurd. I was using the 2060 as an example of a time when we weren't in a shortage.

This is why I included that FPS/$ chart right at the top of the article. People like to say there hasn't been any progress, and certainly generational prices are higher, but if I used MSRP instead of real-world prices we would still see a jump in FPS/$. Actually, let's just do that:

So if cards were all selling at MSRP, the 3060, 3060 Ti, and 3050 are some of the best options ever. And the best 20-series card would be the 2060, sitting midway down the table in 17th position. I'm actually surprised the 3080 still trails the 3070 Ti, at least at 1080p. Anyway, I suspect we'll see MSRP or lower on most of the 30-series within the next three months (just in time for Ada to show up). And I won't be shocked if Ada prices actually end up being lower than my guesstimate above, I'm just trying to prep myself for higher prices.

 

[Math Geek]

nice my 1650 super looks pretty good for the 1080p i use it for. at the $169 i paid for my MSI card, i'd say i did pretty good

 

[SunMaster]

But you are saying there hasn't been a price to performance gain in 6 years but that's just not true. We are in a shortage so prices are going to be absurd. I was using the 2060 as an example of a time when we weren't in a shortage.

You keep pretending the last two years is somwhat of an exception and we'll go back to "normal", and others keep talking about higher prices for the next generation. If we were to go back to normal the new gpus would have to be released at lower msrp (or at least sold at) than the last two years.

The fact is that now, even after the prices has sunk down close to msrp, you're paying about the same per fps as I did 6 years ago.

It's not what happened to currency per gigabyte of storage.
It's not what happened to CPU-power/mips/whatever method you want to use. $300 of CPU in 2015 gave you a 4790k - $300 of CPU today give you a i5-12600K, i7-12700
It's not what happened to currency per gigabyte of ram.

Look what you find of graphics cards sold today performing around the 970 (which gets a score of 9689 here) and what they cost.

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

[jacob249358]

You keep pretending the last two years is somwhat of an exception and we'll go back to "normal", and others keep talking about higher prices for the next generation. If we were to go back to normal the new gpus would have to be released at lower msrp (or at least sold at) than the last two years.

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Yeah, you are right that price to performance is the same it was 6 years ago. I was just saying there is a huge asterick next to that. (hopefully) price to performance will keep improving like it was before the scalpocalypse. I haven't been in the PC space for very long but if it's like the last mining boom I think once intel enters the market and/or Ethereum does the merge GPUs will have to come down in price.

 

[SunMaster]

Yeah, you are right. I was never you were wrong I'm just saying (hopefully) price to performance will keep improving like it was before the scalpocalypse. I haven't been in the PC space for very long but if its like the last mining boom I think once intel enters the market and/or Ethereum does the merge gpus will have to come down in price.

I'm totally with you in the hoping

 

[digitalgriffin]

Everyone should ignore the model numbers and focus on what Bogomarks per $ you get. I mean sure, it's a convenient method to categorize things, but at the end of the day, if a $499 4060 has a significantly higher Bogomarks per $ than a 3070, does it matter?

While I agree with you, last gen has been stagnant, and some cases bogomarks / $ has gotten worse. (Especially at the low end and super high end)

Also, when you make a 4060, $500 you are basically pricing out most of your market. Sixty series was a $250 entry level card at once time. You have to weight this against game complexity which is ever on the rise. Six years ago, you could do 1080p High settings on a 1060. Today you won't even get close to that on a $250 card. Combined with a lower bogomarks/$ and you are getting it worse both ways.

 

[Unolocogringo]

I was lucky and got a 3060TI just as prices started to go up from scalpers and buy bots. Just one. This was supposed to be my upgrade cycle.
I usually buy pairs.One for my computer and another computer when the grandson visits from Florida. Spring break ,Almost 2 months during the summer, Holidays etc...
The rest of their life they spend running Folding @ Home except a few hours a week running flight sims on my computer.
I have cheap 80% hydro electric electricity rates. For you earth hugers like myself.

So I have seen "CRAZY HIGH"prices . Almost $400 for 16 MB of ram. $2k each for a pair of 1-2 mbps wireless bridges to connect to our neighbors house. Antennae were another $450 each so I made my own. And cables to the antennae were about 1/2 in diameter and weighed a ton.
Then prices started a downward trend and you could get a lot of performance for less.
Then mining whacked things up the first time. Things settled down but a little up.

Then prices Became absurdly STUPID again to put in in a way that will not be deleted.
I've gamed with my son since you had to low mem DOS boot to clear enough of the first 640k of ram for flight sims to work. Yeah I'm that old.
And we were always the neighborhood gathering house when our kids were young.



So all we can do now is speculate.
This Russian war with Ukraine will raise wheat prices considerably and affect Africa pretty bad.
Gasoline/Diesel is still $1 more a gallon than before this started. So the price of everything goes up.
Cargo ships and trucks use a lot of diesel fuel to deliver the goods we purchase.

 

[mitch074]

I game quite a bit, and I've given up on consoles for years. My RX480 is currently the longest lasting video card I've ever had, having bought it in August 2016 for €270 (it's the 8Gb version). Until I can get double the performance for the same price (adjusted for inflation), I'll keep it. It might die before then though, in which case the RX6600 XT is looking good enough.

 

[mossi]

I have never bought used parts for use in my main PC before but may get extremely tempted to make an exception this time around if the deals get anywhere near as good as they did in the previous crypto GPU fire sale.

I used to buy new but in the last 10 years I've only been buying second hand graphics card due to the prices and apart from a lightning strike that fried a very nice card I used to have about 7-8 years ago if you're careful enough with your ebay purchases then you your chances are really high.

I bought a GTX 1070 about 3-4 years ago, can't remember exactly and I can still sell it pretty much the same price I bought it on ebay. I usually go for buyers that keep the original box which means they're interested in reselling the card and they usually keep it in good condition.

I have also come across quite a few 2nd hand cards of lower tiers (GTX 750, GTX 760, R7 260X etc) and again buying 2nd hand I have not come across a dud yet.

My son is playing happily with a GTX 760 at the moment (to upgrade to GTX 1060 soon) for the last 2 years or so.

I only buy new motherboard and PSU for my own PC. Anything else I'd buy 2nd hand easily.

 

[Johnpombrio]

I was looking over when I bought my last graphics card with its price and saw an interesting pattern. Prices are definitely going up in the cards that I buy but so have my monitors' needs. IPS 1440P with HDR and 120 Hz with GSync (still do not see any difference between 120Hz and 144) had me boosting my cards and now I am on IPS 32 inch 4K 120 Hz and HDR which my 3080Ti handles well. All my "old" cards go to my sons and my best friend along with the better monitors. Monitor prices were also very high for the first go-round of high refresh IPS monitors and then HDR support.

Timing is also interesting as it took forever for the 2080Ti and 3080Ti to be in stock at MSRP prices so that delayed my purchases for at least 6-9 months for each. I would expect the 4080 to be more quickly available at MSRP with the economic slowdown and crypto turmoil I suspect will happen.

Nvidia EVGA GTX 1080 FTW 2016-08-16 $686.19
NVidia EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 2017-05-15 $749.00
NVidia EVGA RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 2019-03-05 $1399.99
NVidia EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 2021-10-18 $1,419.99 (first state tax payment and shipping of $20 so total $1531.66)

I was surprised to see how expensive the 2080 Ti was compared to the 3080 Ti.

 

[alceryes]

I'm not sure if you're being serious or facetious, but if you know for sure a GPU was used for 24/7 mining for a year or more, I'd probably avoid it unless it really is "dirt cheap." More likely is that any used cards on eBay will be sold for the going rate, and the miners will all lie and say, "Never used for mining — I'm not even sure what that means! This card was treated great and hardly even used at all for the past two years. It's in pristine condition!" And then you'll buy it and get a dusty card that's been ridden hard and needs a good cleaning, and probably new thermal pads and thermal paste.

This. You would be lucky if all it needed was new TIM.

GPUs used for mining are oftentimes run right at max stable temperature, in open-air, hot, humid environments, 24x7x365. (think garage, basement, warehouse, etc.)
When GPUs in these mining farms start failing at their initial max hash rate, or start causing more issues than they're worth, they are replaced. The now damaged component is promptly put on eBay with the 'never mined with' tag. 🤣

 

[Geezer760]

I said in the article that only some cards are available at or even below MSRP, and the text specifically notes that the 3060, 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3070 Ti are not among those that have good prices. The RX 6700 XT, RX 6600 XT, and RX 6600 are pretty much at MSRP, though, and are worth consideration if you don't already have something faster. RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 are also at MSRP, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to recommend those as 'good' options right now.

I understand where your coming from (some cards available at or even below MSRP) yeah, IF your lucky or by the time you go to the site guess what? "SOLD OUT", my main thing is these companies are waaay OVERPRICING these GPUs and taking advantage of the consumers, 3000 series hasn't even been out that long and they raked in tons of cash and still are, now their planning 4000 series, why? MORE CASH, Greed, they stuck it in sooo far deep in the first 3000 series run, their 4000 series will stick it to the consumer even deeper. They only care about ONE thing MORE money, and they know it will sell, to the well off which price means nothing, and the idiots willing to pay those prices and stand in lines for hours or days just blow that kind of cash to play a $60 game, it's ridiculous.

 

[InvalidError]

When GPUs in these mining farms start failing at their initial max hash rate, or start causing more issues than they're worth, they are replaced.

Miners who mine professionally operate their cards at the balance point between power costs and generated income, not "initial max achievable hash rate by overclocking the Mod Edit out of it" where power goes exponential for almost no hash rate gain. Premature failures and down-time from pushing cards too hard are also bad for profitability, especially if you overpaid for them on top of that. Humidity in a remotely competent setup isn't much of an issue either since you can dry the incoming air by simply blending it with recirculated air to raise its temperature before blasting it at equipment. Unless you live in a tropical swamp and have water seeping through the basement walls, a 10kW mining setup would dry the air out faster than water can be drawn out of the walls, not really a problem either.

Also, putting dead or dying "never mined" GPUs on eBay is kind of stupid due to how heavily buyer-biased eBay/PayPal's refund policy is. That would be a recipe to have your sales reverse-charged in bulk. You'd have to sell your problematic GPUs as unknown/defective/parts-only status to avoid that.

 

[alceryes]

Miners who mine professionally operate their cards at the balance point between power costs and generated income, not "initial max achievable hash rate by overclocking the <Mod Edit> out of it" where power goes exponential for almost no hash rate gain. Premature failures and down-time from pushing cards too hard are also bad for profitability, especially if you overpaid for them on top of that. Humidity in a remotely competent setup isn't much of an issue either since you can dry the incoming air by simply blending it with recirculated air to raise its temperature before blasting it at equipment. Unless you live in a tropical swamp and have water seeping through the basement walls, a 10kW mining setup would dry the air out faster than water can be drawn out of the walls, not really a problem either.

Also, putting dead or dying "never mined" GPUs on eBay is kind of stupid due to how heavily buyer-biased eBay/PayPal's refund policy is. That would be a recipe to have your sales reverse-charged in bulk. You'd have to sell your problematic GPUs as unknown/defective/parts-only status to avoid that.

I meant initial max hash rate taking into account acceptable temps, functionality, and historical comparisions with what these cards will do. They are running a business so, naturally they're not going to burn the cards up in 30 days, chasing 5-10 more Mh/s. Mining GPUs will always lose max potential performance after running for a year straight. Some just a little - others a lot.

I hear you regarding humidity but some of the cards I've seen are so horribly caked with almost like dust-turned-mud. Some of these mining set ups are literally run outside with just an awning covering them. Maybe the full day temp variance comes into play to produce 'sweat'.

Very true on the eBay protection. I hope a lot of these liars getting rid of old GPUs get burned. However, many of these GPUs still work, albeit at permanently reduced capacity. I'm sure people are unknowingly buying them, and running them, never knowing that their card's performance isn't what it should be.

 

[InvalidError]

Mining GPUs will always lose max potential performance after running for a year straight. Some just a little - others a lot.

Every review of used mining cards I have seen concludes that as long as the GPU arrives in fully working condition not requiring more than a cleanup, re-pads+paste and possibly new fans, performance is practically good as new.

I hear you regarding humidity but some of the cards I've seen are so horribly caked with almost like dust-turned-mud. Some of these mining set ups are literally run outside with just an awning covering them.

Doesn't sound like anything I'd call a remotely competent setup. That degree of neglect would almost certainly leave very obvious damage on the cards in very short order.