Hither's our monthly update on the figurer hardware market to see what the current trends are for CPU and GPU pricing. The situation of terrible availability and high prices continue, merely let's promise we accept some expert news to share on where the marketplace is headed and what's happened in the past calendar month.

Follow up: Stock Update July 2022, August 2022, September 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022, January 2022

Woohoo! CPUs are skilful now

I alter for this month's update is that nosotros'll no longer be covering CPU market. The reason is a positive one: y'all can currently purchase the vast bulk of processors at their respective MSRP in most regions. In that location are a few exceptions, such equally the Ryzen ix 5900X in the United states of america, but other products are now being sold slightly below the MSRP, like the 5800X. And of course, Intel's processors remain bully value, especially in the 10th generation, and then with that there isn't much point dedicating a chunk of time to talk about CPUs availability when the marketplace conditions are almost dorsum to normal.

Current retail GPU market

What isn't normal right now is the GPU market place. At many retailers the state of affairs is improving to some caste. Information technology'southward easier to buy GPUs than in prior months, especially outside the United States.

In Australia, for example, you tin buy whatsoever current generation GPU right now if yous want to, with the exception of the RTX 3060 Ti. Not in bundles or anything like that, but standalone graphics cards. The catch is that pricing is very loftier. Yous are faced with MSRPs 2.5x college for something like an RTX 3070, and even relatively affordable cards similar the Radeon RX 6700 XT are selling for $400 higher up MSRP.

We're hearing similar stories from many of you, especially those in Europe. In Germany, for example, certain yous can buy an RTX 3070, information technology's simply that it'll fix you dorsum over 1100€, when the Nvidia MSRP has been prepare at roughly 520€.

A month ago, when cryptocurrencies were booming, most of these products were out of stock. As nosotros've discussed before, one of the get-go steps before we can see improved GPU pricing is to take cards actually bachelor. Non that anyone will be rushing out to buy a graphics card for gaming with this sort of pricing.

There'southward been no change to the general reasons we have heard for loftier pricing, including shortages of raw components, limited wafer production at fabs, component shortages, high logistics costs especially for international shipping, and and then on. However it seems that AIBs have cooled off a bit on increasing their request cost for custom models, for the concluding few months basically whatever resupply of GPUs would run across prices raised slightly to more closely align with the scalper market, but now that GPUs are sitting on shelves at some retailers, that procedure has slowed down thankfully.

Greater availability? Information technology's due to mining

But why are GPUs more than bachelor now than in previous months?

Well, bated from continued product at tape rates, which is slowly satisfying the insane demand for gaming GPUs, at that place has been a shakeup in the crypto marketplace, then let's talk near that. When we updated you in May, Ethereum was sitting at effectually $three,500, downward from a peak of $4,000 only a few days prior. Since then, ETH has fallen to around $2300 over the class of a month, a 34 percentage drop, with similar declines in other pop coins. But that's not the only contributing gene to the profitability of mining.

Ethereum pricing nautical chart

Equally we mentioned last month, gas prices and difficulty of mining are as well important. Gas prices accept dropped substantially since May, equally fewer transactions are taking place on the Ethereum network, due to lower prices and lower interest in general. As tracked by Etherscan, gas prices are somewhere between one-half and a third of what they were a calendar month ago, so the reward for processing transactions has dropped a lot.

However, Ethereum difficulty has as well declined in the past month, from a acme that coincided with the highest value for Ethereum. Difficulty has dropped past effectually 11 percent over the last 30 days, which has put difficulty around where nosotros were in late April. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good in the sense that lower difficulty means less people mining, and then the popularity of mining is decreasing, reducing the potential of new cards being sold to miners. It's as well bad though, as a lower difficulty increases block rewards and increases mining profitability.

So overall, looking at the near popular coin for GPU-based mining, the value of Ethereum is downward 34 percent, gas prices are more than halved, and difficulty is also downwardly x percent. Everything combined has seen profitability of mining on a GPU like the RTX 3090 as measured at NiceHash, roughly halved in the course of the concluding month – from around $12 to $14 per solar day, to around $vii, not including cost of power.

While most of this profitability decline occurred several weeks ago and has held steady since, the reduction has weakened the demand for graphics cards for mining, especially at certain (high) prices. Information technology greatly extends the time to profitability from purchasing a GPU for mining, and with a lot of dubiousness effectually the futurity of mining in networks similar Ethereum, miners appear more hesitant to buy upwardly cards. In fact, during enquiry for this article, I spotted several full mining rigs for sale on eBay which where nowhere to exist institute months ago. No overflowing of used GPUs yet, but a improve situation.

Current-gen GPU pricing

MSRP eBay Average Price March eBay Boilerplate Cost May eBay Average Price June Current Price Inflation Toll Increase May to June
GeForce RTX 3090 $1,500 $3,083 $3,628 $2,962 97% -iv%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti $i,200 $2,187 82%
GeForce RTX 3080 $700 $2,256 $2,601 $i,948 178% -xiv%
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti $600 $i,323 121%
GeForce RTX 3070 $500 $i,374 $1,660 $1,261 152% -viii%
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti $400 $1,297 $1,617 $1,255 214% -iii%
GeForce RTX 3060 $330 $905 $977 $830 152% -8%
Radeon 6900 XT $1,000 $1,870 $1,972 $1,932 93% iii%
Radeon 6800 XT $650 $1,560 $1,690 $1,450 123% -vii%
Radeon 6800 $580 $1,340 $1,518 $ane,210 109% -10%
Radeon 6700 XT $480 $one,165 $1,088 $907 89% -22%
Boilerplate 128% -8%

Tracking current generation GPU prices on eBay in the third week of each calendar month for new products and completed sales shows good news across the board. GPU prices are down quite a bit since the terrible situation we faced in May, basically the worst month for GPU pricing ever. Cards like the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 have seen a ~25% reduction in scalper pricing, while the RTX 3060 has fallen xv%, and AMD'south RX 6800 and 6700 cards have dropped between 14 and twenty%.

The average decline in pricing is 18%, which doesn't match the decline in profitability – but pricing increases last month didn't reflect the full extent of profitability gains either. The scalper marketplace moves more slowly in response to trends, but it's clear that scalpers are not able to get away with equally high prices this calendar month as they were able to last month.

Make no mistake, GPUs remain ridiculously overpriced. Some GPUs take fallen below double their MSRP for the first time in ages, like the RTX 3090 and RX 6700 XT, but the majority of cards still sit down betwixt 2x and 3x over their MSRP -- the average is 2.3x. That's downwards from price aggrandizement of two.9x last month.

The more than positive news is that GPU prices are the lowest they've been in months. We started tracking around March, when Ethereum was in the $1,800 range, and running the numbers for a few cards it seems that pricing has lowered roughly to the level it was around tardily January to early February. GPU prices are notwithstanding no good, but they're trending in the right direction for now.

If you lot desperately want a current generation GPU and are willing to pay scalper prices, the Radeon RX 6700 XT remains the best value graphics carte on the market going on cost per frame. That'southward because RDNA2 is worse than Ampere GPUs for mining, peculiarly when Ampere isn't LHR limited. The 6700 XT is over xxx% better value than the RTX 3070, while GPUs similar the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti remain the worst value.

Nosotros tin can likewise gain some insight into why prices are the fashion they are correct now when nosotros await at mining profitability. At current profitability rates every bit seen at website Whattomine, with power at 10c/kWh, generally it will take someone buying a new GPU at least 10 months to accomplish profitability -- a lot longer than in previous months.

It'south also interesting to look at how long information technology will take someone ownership a GPU on the scalper marketplace to pay back the inflated price through mining. In other words, how long information technology takes to pay the difference between the average eBay price, and the menu'southward MSRP. That's sitting at around 200 days on average, or 6 and a half months, and requires profitability to remain exactly the same every bit at present for that entire period.

With this data in hand, you can come across why some miners are choosing to go out the business and why mining difficulty has dropped in the past calendar month. It'south a delicate balancing act between profitability, time to profit, and the value of the graphics cards on the used marketplace now and in the future. If profitability and resale value proceed to drop, and the time to profitability increases, mining becomes a riskier investment.

Used GPU pricing

I besides wanted to spend some time looking at the used market and fix up the process of tracking used prices over the coming months for older generation cards.

Have prices on the used marketplace also dropped in line with new current generation GPUs? You bet they accept.

MSRP eBay Average Price May eBay Average Price June Electric current Price Aggrandizement Cost Increment May to June
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti $one,000 $1,458 $1,219 22% -16%
GeForce RTX 2080 Super $700 $one,047 $887 27% -15%
GeForce RTX 2080 $700 $953 $834 19% -12%
GeForce RTX 2070 Super $500 $881 $784 57% -11%
GeForce RTX 2070 $500 $838 $678 36% -19%
GeForce RTX 2060 Super $400 $800 $707 77% -12%
GeForce RTX 2060 $350 $641 $549 57% -14%
Average 42% -14%

Starting time up, we have the GeForce RTX 20 series. Prices have dropped fourteen% on average for used models, and while most are still beingness sold above their launch MSRP, that gap is shrinking. Unfortunately, GPUs similar the RTX 2060 remain woefully overpriced due to a lack of newer cards in that functioning tier, so while you simply have to spend about $100 over the launch cost on an RTX 2080, y'all have to spend $200 over launch toll to go a 2060.

MSRP eBay Boilerplate Price May eBay Boilerplate Price June Electric current Toll Inflation Cost Increment May to June
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti $280 $585 $481 72% -18%
GeForce GTX 1660 Super $230 $582 $495 115% -15%
GeForce GTX 1660 $220 $497 $430 95% -xiii%
GeForce GTX 1650 Super $160 $346 $326 104% -6%
GeForce GTX 1650 $150 $299 $295 97% -ane%
Average 97% -11%

There'southward an interesting tendency to spot with the GeForce GTX 16 series and the pricing of entry-level GPUs. The GTX 1650 and to a lesser extent the GTX 1650 Super accept barely fallen in price, while cards around them are dropping by more significant numbers. That's because these cards are mostly unsuitable for mining with their 4GB VRAM buffers and low retentiveness bandwidth, so pricing is less linked to mining profitability and more to the pricing of other GPUs. With that said, the GTX 1650 is a horrible deal right now.

For Nvidia Pascal GPUs, price drops are a little higher than with Turing but they follow a similar trend. Higher-end GPUs like the GTX 1080 Ti have dropped in cost more than a card similar the GTX 1060 6GB or 3GB. In fact, everything from the GTX 1070 and above is now roughly in line with their launch MSRPs -- non a great situation, just better than other product lines. The GTX 1060 remains inflated though, due to the reasons we've been talking about.

MSRP eBay Average Price May eBay Boilerplate Price June Current Price Inflation Cost Increase May to June
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti $700 $855 $689 -2% -19%
GeForce GTX 1080 $600 $606 $526 -12% -13%
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti $450 $575 $467 4% -19%
GeForce GTX 1070 $380 $498 $403 6% -xix%
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB $250 $366 $327 31% -11%
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB $200 $255 $234 17% -8%
Average 7% -15%

If y'all were lucky plenty to buy one of AMD's Radeon RX 5000 serial GPUs, y'all basically hit the jackpot on the used market place. That's because the 5000 series is proficient at mining, the 5700 XT for case has profitability levels that compare to the RTX 2080 and RTX 3070, as opposed to the RTX 2070 which is its closest competitor for gaming. So while the RTX 2070 was sold for near $840 on the used market last month, 5700 XTs were fetching most $1,200, and even today are still more than than double their launch MSRP. Pricing in this case is heavily linked to mining profitability.

MSRP eBay Average Toll May eBay Average Price June Current Price Inflation Price Increase May to June
Radeon 5700 XT $400 $ane,184 $895 124% -24%
Radeon 5700 $350 $1,035 $806 130% -22%
Radeon 5600 XT $280 $754 $604 116% -twenty%
Radeon 5500 XT 8GB $200 $507 $440 120% -13%
Average 122% -20%

It also puts electric current 5700 XT owners in a bit of a foreign although lucrative position. If you're non at all interested in mining, the 5700 XT is really better at mining than the RX 6700 XT, simply around 23% slower at 1440p gaming. With used 5700 XTs going for effectually $900, and new 6700 XTs going for about $900 too, 5700 XT owners have the chance to take advantage of the used market and get a faster gaming GPU for essentially goose egg.

Older Radeon GPUs face a like predicament as pricing remains very inflated relative to launch pricing as both Vega and Polaris GPUs are splendid at mining, provided yous get i with an 8GB VRAM buffer in the example of the RX 580 and RX 570. This makes the GTX 1060 a much better value than the RX 580 for those after a GPU in the $300 range.

Wrap Up

I key takeaway from this month's update is that GPU pricing is improving. Slowly. Nosotros don't have any articulate indication of when graphics cards volition return to normal, and who knows, perchance side by side calendar month nosotros come back to report GPU prices have increased. Just at least for at present, the current market trend is a positive sign for gamers who take been waiting for a long time to go a new graphics card in their hands.

Despite a glimmer of positivity, I wouldn't recommend anyone pay current scalper prices, or prices for GPUs at retail. With most cards still priced at least double their MSRPs, nigh products remain straight up bad value either compared to other products currently available, or previous years. If you've kept patient for this long, hopefully you lot tin can ride information technology out longer.

Nevertheless it's worth looking across the market to meet if there are whatsoever anomalies you can take reward of. The pathway to upgrade a 5700 XT into a 6700 XT is interesting considering yous probably don't care most mining functioning only gaming.

Where exercise we become from here? For now we'll proceed to track GPU pricing and see how things evolve. What we're seeing now isn't entirely dissimilar to the previous mining boom, so nosotros'll keep an heart on trends and proceed you posted.

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  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 on Amazon
  • AMD Radeon RX 6800 on Amazon