With all the price drops I thought it's be interesting to track graphics card prices. Rumors say Nvidia ordered too many 4000 series chips not expecting the crypto crash and their partners are pissed they can't dump all their 3000 stock. Still, it seems that AMD cards are the ones that have dropped the most. How low will they go? Here are a few sale prices I've seen recently. RX 6600 $260 RX 6600 XT $340 RX 6700 XT - $430 RX 6800 - $580 RX 6800 XT $600 RX 6900 XT $700 RTX 3060 $430 RTX 3060 Ti $460 RTX 3070 $514 RTX 3070 Ti $660 RTX 3080 $688 RTX 3090 $1000
I'm pretty impressed with my 6900XT so far. It's the only "flagship" card I've ever had, and it has felt like a massive upgrade over the 2080 Super. I got 3 games included with it with an AMD promotion, although they're not my top choices (Sniper Elite 5, Hipster's Row, and Forespoken).
I didn't realize how big the performance jump between the 6800/6900 and 6700 series was. A 6800 XT at $500 would be tempting.
The 6800 XT has 16GB of VRAM. If it gets cheap enough I might grab one. I'm not buying an 8GB or 12GB card in 2022, not when the consoles have 16GB. The 6800 XT is also about twice as fast as the 1070, so it would actually be a large, noticeable upgrade.
Best Buy has some RTX on sale. RX 6600 $260 RX 6600 XT $340 RX 6700 - $370 RX 6700 XT - $430 RX 6800 - $580 RX 6800 XT $600 RX 6900 XT $670 RX 6950 XT $1000 RTX 2060 $210 RTX 3060 $430 RTX 3060 Ti $460 - $400 RTX 3070 $514 - $500 RTX 3070 Ti $660 - $600 RTX 3080 $688 RTX 3080 Ti $1120 RTX 3090 $1000 RTX 3090 Ti $1250 - $1150
Best Buy carries the Founders Edition cards. Even when things were bad they were selling them for MSRP when they had them in stock.
The open-box shelf at the local Microcenter is pretty plentiful these days. Used to drive by there daily, but not so close anymore. 3080 - $702 3080TI - $934.96 6700XT - $509
Prices seemed to have leveled a bit. I haven't seen a big influx of cards on eBay either. Wonder if AMD and Nvidia are quietly buying up used cards from Cryto farms to stabilize the market. wccftech says more price cuts are coming by the end of the month. Also RTX 3080 production will ramp up to help get rid of excess GA102 chips. https://wccftech.com/nvidia-amd-gpu...-to-issue-aggressive-cuts-to-clear-inventory/
RX 6600 $260 RX 6600 XT $340 RX 6700 - $370 RX 6700 XT - $430 RX 6800 - $580 RX 6800 XT $600 - $575 RX 6900 XT $670 RX 6950 XT $1000 RTX 2060 $210 RTX 3060 $430 RTX 3060 Ti $400 RTX 3070 $500 RTX 3070 Ti $600 - $450 RTX 3080 $688 RTX 3080 Ti $1120 RTX 3090 $1000 RTX 3090 Ti $1150 Best Buy just dumped a bunch of MSI 3070 Ti VENTUS 3X for $450.
EVGA is getting out of video cards which is a real bummer. The owner hated dealing with nvidia. Basically says they were horrible bullies. EVGA had great service and support so this is a big loss for customers.
EVGA has been one of the main manufacturers of my purchases of PC components in recent years along with MSi, Corsair, Gigabyte, and Cooler Master. They made good products.
By all accounts Nvidia is a horrible company to do business with. They're legendary for being greedy bullies. It's not like this is the first big partner they've driven away by being assholes. XFX and BFG were big NV partners back in the day.
I've read Nvidia's "partner programs" have managed to piss off just about everyone. I thought public outcry about some of their practices and more recently AMD offering a bit more competition would get them back in line to some extent, but apparently those things were not influences for improvement. I've gone to an all-AMD setup and haven't had any major regrets so far. The main drawback is ray tracing performance is inferior to Nvidia's cards, which is not surprising given Nvidia has been focusing on that longer. I don't even miss DLSS much. FSR is apparently easy enough to implement that some modder made a mod to put FSR 2.0 into Cyberpunk already. I'd like to see a close matchup between the red and green teams again so quality and prices are improved and hopefully their associate companies are also treated better.
Wasn't a fan of EVGA. I got one of their fire hazard 1070s without the thermal pads. They replaced it but I got stuck with the shipping costs.
I had an EVGA 780 Ti that had some strange issues (very loud coil whine that sounded like whistling, weird stuttering and locking up when using multiple monitors). They sent a replacement, but the replacement had the same issues. I ended up dumping it on ebay with an explanation of the problems I was having. That was my only first hand experience with them. They tried to be helpful, but never actually fixed the issue. Basically they were known for their warranty and support, but you were probably going to have to use it because their cards weren't built that well. I've had the best experiences with the MSI Gaming X Twin Frozr cards in recent years. They run very cool, quiet, and fast. Asus Strix cards are also really good.
I had a few EVGA cards that seemed to work fine. Not too loud and no significant problems, but not a standout, either. As Jensen Huang from Nvidia would say, it just worked. The card I had that was a massive lemon was an XFX card. I've never bought anything from them since that debacle. Very hot, extremely loud, artifacts everywhere, and eventually it either stopped working or I just threw it in the trash from frustration. I've also had pretty good luck with MSi and currently have a Gigabite 6900 XT (working quite well although this series runs HOT) and laptop (buggy as hell).
It sounds like Nvidia is a real asshole to their partners. They've been undercutting them with the Founders addition cards and withholding information making it harder for the partners to run a business. Maybe Nvidia wanted them to go. Maybe they will move more towards a direct sales model. Not sure what it means for EVGA. If they don't team up with Intel or AMD a large part of their business will die off.
I don't see how they can keep going just selling power supplies and motherboards. Their motherboards are absurdly expensive halo products that I doubt they sell more than a few of. Their power supplies are just rebadged units. I think a big part of the problem with EVGA was that their cards didn't stand out, and nowadays people who just want a basic Nvidia card will probably go with a Founder's Edition.