GPUs Likely to Reach Pricing Nadir in a Few Weeks

We're hoping they just took the cards *out* of the boxes rather than thinking the entire lot was shipped this way.

(Photo: MyDrivers) Shakespeare himself posed the age-old question: to buy, or not to buy? That’s the question gamers the world over are wrestling with. GPU prices are plummeting, and the market is now a bargain basement free-for-all. EVGA is offering anywhere from $600 to $800 off its stock of RTX 3090 Tis. Newegg is selling Radeon RX 6900 XTs for just $699. It’s enough to make an FPS-starved gamer shed a single tear thinking of prices from just a few months ago.

However, as a savvy follower of the news, you’re aware of the impending arrival of next-gen GPUs from AMD and Nvidia (and um…Intel). When will prices reach their absolute, rock-bottom lowest? That time may be just around the corner. If you’re in the market for an RDNA 2 or RTX 30-series GPU, just be patient.

News of further price cuts comes via Videocardz, which cites a Chinese source from GPU supply chains. The source reports that at the end of August, both Nvidia and AMD will take aggressive action to clear the channel of existing inventory. Also, Nvidia will reportedly take even more drastic steps than AMD in this regard. Previously, companies like EVGA had offered some truly incredible discounts, such as $1,000 off (see below), but only on its high-end models. It’s possible these discounts might be applied to upper-midrange models as well, such as the RTX 3070 and its brethren.

EVGA’s previous fire sale pricing might just return soon. (Image: Videocardz)

Apparently, the reason why Nvidia is more desperate than AMD right now comes down to timing. Nvidia is reportedly ready to launch its 40-series soon, so it’s in a big hurry. Team Green’s previous-quarter financials were pretty bad; the company reported a 44 percent drop in gaming revenue. It obviously wants to rectify that situation immediately. AMD, however, is supposedly launching RDNA 3 in November, so it has more time to clear the shelves.

It’s quite a change of fortune for both AMD and Nvidia, which reported record revenue quarter-over-quarter for over two years. Now, both companies are frantically trying to sell every last GPU in the channel. Nvidia even has so many GA102 dies on its hands that it’s restarted production on 12GB RTX 3080s as well. Those dies could have been RTX 3090 Tis, but it seems like Nvidia figures the sweet spot for cost and profit is the RTX 3080. That will be an interesting SKU to watch in the coming weeks. They’re currently being offered for around $800 on e-tail sites, but what if they were only $600? That might be enough to sway some folks.

There’s also the question of next-gen GPU pricing. Nobody knows if it will reflect the current supply-heavy market conditions. Instead, they might be exorbitantly priced just like the last generation of cards. Given how tough the past few quarters have been for the PC industry, it’s possible companies will try to make up for it with high margins on new GPUs. Prices for AMD’s upcoming Zen 4 CPUs have been leaked in Canada and they are not cheap, even factoring in exchange rates. It could be a hint at what AMD and Nvidia have in store for us. If that’s the case, and both companies continue to sell older wares side-by-side with the new hotness, it will indeed be a glorious time to be a GPU buyer.

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