GPU Prices 2023: July Update

Here's the unedited July pricing update (posted at the start of August).

GPU prices continued to drop compared to the previous month, though the rate of decrease slowed quite a bit. Where average GPU prices dropped by 14% in June, they only fell 6% in July. That's perhaps partly because of a modest rebound in cryptocurrency prices, though with an average income of just $2.50 per day on an RTX 3090 Ti or RTX 3090, it would require about 500 days to break even.

Buying a used graphics card has some risks, so we don't strongly encourage people to go the used route. Still, if you're comfortable servicing a card or potentially returning it for a refund, there are some decent deals to be had.

We're now at the point where 18 of the 21 current generation graphics cards are selling on eBay for less than their official MSRPs. The last remaining holdouts are the RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060, and RTX 3050, which were perhaps priced too aggressively to begin with. Everything else is anywhere from a few percent below MSRP, to as much as 30% below MSRP in a few cases. Here's the overview of eBay GPU sales for the month of July 2022.

You can see the month-to-month change in GPU prices on eBay, alongside the current retail prices. Obviously, retail has the advantage of guaranteeing you a brand-new graphics card, whereas eBay usually means used cards. Currently, retail prices are 7% higher on average, though several GPUs (RTX 3090 Ti, RX 6750 XT, RX 6650 XT, and RX 6400) are cheaper at retail.

It's unusual to see changes in MSRPs for graphics cards, particularly from Nvidia, but the highest priced Nvidia GPUs (3090 Ti, 3090, 3080 Ti) are no longer able to justify their extreme pricing. Unofficially, at least, it seems Nvidia has given its partners the option to reduce prices on those cards quite a bit. The flip side is that the three least expensive Nvidia cards — RTX 3050, RTX 3060, and RTX 3060 Ti — are the only current generation GPUs that are still selling above MSRP on eBay.

Overall, Nvidia's average eBay price is 6% below MSRP across all ten of its Ampere GPUs. AMD has substantially lower pricing, both for comparatively equal performance as well as relative to MSRPs. The average eBay price for AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs currently sits at 17% below MSRP.

As we've said before, while these prices might feel tempting, we expect additional price drops in the coming months. After that, all bets are off as we should hopefully see Nvidia Ada and AMD RDNA 3 GPUs enter the market. We'll continue to see the current generation parts alongside the newcomers, but that will mostly be in the midrange and budget sectors.

The monthly volume of GPUs sold on eBay dipped slightly, down 1.4%, but that's close enough to a tie. Nvidia's numbers were down 3%, while AMD's were up 5%, at least on eBay, suggesting more people are starting to give AMD a shot.

Getting a previous generation card basically requires you to go through eBay or some other secondhand market, as very few of these cards are available at retail. The exception, sort of, are Nvidia's GTX 16-series parts, which also have a (very sluggish and overpriced) GTX 1630 as a new option. Our review will be up soon, but as  you'd guess by the reduction in GPU cores and memory interface width, there's not much reason to spend basically as much on a GTX 1630 as you'd pay for a GTX 1650 (GDDR6 version, even).

Prices on Turing and RDNA 1 GPUs dropped again, by 8% on average, while the number of GPUs sold on eBay shot up 26% compared to last month. Still, the total number of previous generation GPUs sold on eBay is only 4,700 — a drop in the bucket compared to the retail GPU market.

As with last month, AMD's RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, and RX 5600 XT saw the biggest price cuts, but only by around 10–12% this time. The GTX 1650 Super also saw a decent 12% dip in pricing, which finally puts it below Nvidia's official MSRP — and about $50 below the typical price of a brand-new GTX 1630. If you're after a decent budget option, the GTX 1650 Super is one of the few instances where buying a used card still makes more sense then getting a new card.

July GPU Pricing Summary: The Deluge

The supply and pricing on used graphics cards has certainly become more enticing in recent months. If you're willing to set a lower maximum, it's quite easy to pick up a card via an auction for even lower prices — that's what "average pricing" means, after all. A bit of cleaning, some new thermal pads, and some testing is potentially all that stands between you and a high performance GPU. Or you could get unlucky and end up dealing with a return, which tends to favor buyers on eBay so it's not too bad.

Still, buying a used graphics card comes with some risks. We'd assume any GPU with 6GB or more VRAM was mining for the past year or more. If you take the chance on a used card, be sure to thoroughly test it, and buy from someone that offers returns.

Nvidia's upcoming RTX 40-series Nvidia Ada GPUs are starting to hit the rumor mill hard. It's possible some of the "leaks" are just guesses, but some of the more reputable Twitter people have started posting information. For example, one recent leak suggests the RTX 4070 Ti will match or exceed the RTX 3090 Ti in performance — not too surprising, given the same thing happened with RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti. Though the rumored specs on the 4070 Ti suggest Nvidia has seriously overhauled the architecture, possibly with lots of extra cache.

AMD's RDNA 3 hasn't been doing the rounds quite as much, so we figure it's still a few months out. It will likely arrive in November, two years after the RDNA 2 cards launched. AMD's use of chiplets will be very interesting to see in action, as that could make or break the design.

While waiting for the next-gen GPUs to launch does make sense, we also have to point out how much scalpers affected pricing on the early RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series launches. Even before cryptocurrency mining really killed retail availability, scalpers were marking up cards by 50% or more in late 2020. Let's hope Ada and RDNA 3 don't repeat that pattern.