Gamers, gamers, the end of the tunnel is (maybe) here soon! After a period of scarcity where prices have literally exploded, the price of graphics cards is starting to fall. And this decline should continue – unless a new pandemic breaks out … It should be noted that the explosion in prices has mainly affected the dedicated cards for desktop PCs, where the GPUs integrated in laptops are less subject to parasitic phenomena.
The first invisible factor is that the market has already taken up large volumes of chips. In 2021, 50 million cards were sold, compared to 42 million in 2020. Part of the demand could therefore come from GPUs. This increase was possible because the factories are running at full capacity.
A second factor can be found in the evolution of the world of cryptocurrencies. While some cryptos like Ether will soon be leaving GPU mining, “big” players like Intel have announced the imminent availability of ASIC chips dedicated to this use, for example Intel Bonanza. As a result, the major players in this universe have less need for GPUs.
Also read: Intel finally launches ARC A, the first gaming GPUs, and starts with laptops
As a third factor, we must once again rely on Intel. The semiconductor giant will compete this year for dedicated GPUs. 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 that it will bring about 4 million GPUs to the market by 2022.
They will be added to the tens of millions sold by AMD and Nvidia. More choice, more production lines, more GPUs and therefore more supply for a demand that should logically fall.
Also read: Why the South Korean embargo on semiconductors will harm Russia (too)
To this should be added some small elements, but which also have an impact. Like the fact that China develops its own GPUs – useful for certain applications. Or that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 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, as AMD, Nvidia and Intel have suspended operations in the country as of early March.
In short: confronted with the price drop that is already visible, wait a little longer before buying a GPU, then you can save several tens or even hundreds of euros in a few months.
See also video:
See also 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 wave of cryptocurrencies had raised this threshold to more than $400 between 2015 and 2019, the COVID era and the deficit pushed this average threshold to more than $770 in 2021. I can’t wait for that to end…
sources: Ars-Technica† gfxspeak† Tom’s Hardware NL (1)† (2)
