Gamers, gamers, the end of the tunnel is (perhaps) soon here! After a period of shortage where prices have literally exploded, the price of graphics cards is starting to fall. And this drop should last – unless there is a new pandemic… It should be noted that the explosion in prices has mainly affected dedicated cards for desktop PCs, the GPUs integrated in laptops being less subject to parasitic phenomena .
The first, unseen factor is that the market has already absorbed large volumes of chips. In 2021, 50 million cards were sold, compared to 42 million in 2020. Part of the demand was therefore able to obtain GPUs. This increase was possible because the factories are running at full capacity.
A second factor is to be found in the evolution of the world of cryptocurrencies. While some cryptos like Ether will soon abandon GPU mining, “big” players like Intel have announced the upcoming availability of ASIC chips dedicated to this use – Intel Bonanza for example. The most important players in this universe therefore have less need for GPUs.
Read also: Intel finally launches ARC A, its first gaming GPUs, and starts with laptops
As a third factor, we must, again, rely on Intel. The semiconductor giant is embarking on the battle for dedicated GPUs this year. Faced with AMD and Nvidia, Intel has already formalized its mobile chips and the arrival of its chips for dedicated graphics cards at the beginning of the summer. Intel estimates to market around 4 million GPUs for 2022.
They will be added to the tens of millions sold by AMD and Nvidia. More choice, more production lines, more GPUs and thus more supply for a demand which should logically fall.
Read also: Why the South Korean semiconductor embargo will (also) hurt Russia
To this must be added certain minor elements, but which also have an impact. Like the fact that China is developing its own GPUs – useful for certain applications. Or that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has a double effect: the 44 million Ukrainians prefer to buy anti-tank weapons. And the 144 million Russians simply no longer have the right to buy chips, AMD, Nvidia and Intel having suspended their operations in the country from the beginning of March.
In short: faced with the drop in prices that is already being seen, wait a bit before buying yourself a GPU, you may be able to save several tens or even hundreds of euros in a few months.
Also see video:
Also see video:
In any case, we hope for a quick return to normal: while the average for a graphics card was $260 between 2011 and 2014, the surge in cryptocurrencies had raised this threshold to more than $400 between 2015 and 2019, the COVID era and the shortage have pushed this average threshold to more than $770 in 2021. I can’t wait for that to stop…
Sources: Ars-Technica, gfxspeak, Tom’s Hardware EN (1), (2)