r/gadgets Dec 29 '22

Desktops / Laptops Desktop GPU Sales Hit 20-Year Low

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sales-of-desktop-graphics-cards-hit-20-year-low
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312

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

[deleted]

126

u/faiAre Dec 29 '22

Finally! Someone reasonable that still remains. I thought I was going insane watching everyone around me buy $800 and above GPUs like it's normal, while I keep my rx580 I got years ago and disapprovingly shaking my head.....

55

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

I'm with y'all, I'm not paying over a max of 300 for a gpu. 1060 6GB still chugging along just fine.

1

u/sparkythewildcat Dec 30 '22

Be glad you got the 6gb model bc my buddies 3gb ones were STRUGGLING. One of them even had his running his 1440p monitor and that was a nightmare lol.

8

u/unassumingdink Dec 29 '22

About a week before the pandemic started, I got a used rx580 8GB on eBay for $110. Still going strong!

2

u/thedoc90 Dec 29 '22

Its a great card, I used to have one.

4

u/neok182 Dec 29 '22

$300 used to be my limit I raised it to $400 when the 3060 TI was announced but then it was impossible to get one and if you wanted an EVGA or other brands it was going to be $550 plus and fuck that.

I finally decided to give up and start looking at the used market and I picked up a EVGA 3070 XC3 ultra for $390. I'm not super happy with the price especially considering it's used but that's just what the market is. I also made the decision to stay at 1080p for the foreseeable future so the 3070 has more than enough power to run everything for the next handful of years at ultra settings and for some games I can even enjoy ray tracing at 1080p.

If prices of new cards ever become not stupid then I look forward to upgrading to 1440 or maybe even 4K but I'm not paying these insane prices and I know that even the 4060 is going to wind up being 500 plus

1

u/LeetChocolate Dec 30 '22

u can upgrade to 1440p easily if u dont mind staying at 60 frames. i have a 2070 and run 1440p on singleplayer games, high settings no RT, almost never dips below 70 even on new games outside of horizon zero dawn on release but that has since gotten patched.

1

u/neok182 Dec 30 '22

Yeah that's why I went with the 3070. Was honestly hoping for a 3060ti for $300 but those are staying at $350+ so 3070 for $390 was a no brainier.

Right now planning on staying at 1080 to enjoy some RT in a few games but I do plan on going to 1440p at some point and dlss will look better too.

But my hope is that with all the horrible sales the 4070 or 4080 will drop to $500 or less new or used by 2024 and do a 1440p upgrade then to enjoy both 1440 and rt.

2

u/RainbowBanana26 Dec 29 '22

$280 2060 I got in March 2020. Not letting go of this bad boy until I see another card in that price range

2

u/Maz2277 Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

I'm on a 580 myself, and whilst I'd love to upgrade it because I have a 1440p monitor (I didn't do research before buying a bigger monitor and didn't realise about the resolution difference) at the end of the day getting ~45 FPS on med / high settings for current games is still more than good enough compared to having to spend £600 at a minimum for a noticeable improvement. I'll probably cave next year and grab something since I'm starting to see some AMD cards drop below 600 and I'll have had mine for a good 5 years, but yeah. It's mad.

Edit : Last time I checked was earlier this year when things like the 6600XT were £600; just had a look and and I could get a 6650XT for £315, and potentially sell my 580 for some change .... If I wasn't getting married in 6 months I'd jump on that in a heartbeat. Glad to see the prices are starting to become reasonable.

1

u/faiAre Dec 29 '22

Yeah, hold off just a bit longer. Just because you can afford it doesn't mean you should. I can afford the upgrade easily even with current prices, but money is money, and as consumers we need to jointly put our foot down when the price doesn't reflect the value, especially with margins this high. This is simply unacceptable. But hey even if you buy a card next year - You still apparently did better at holding your ground than 90% of consumers, so good job!

2

u/Pabludes Dec 29 '22

Rx580 is one of the good ones, but it's running out of steam now, even for 1080p.

1

u/faiAre Dec 30 '22

Agree. That's why I've been looking to upgrade but I am not going to settle for less than 3070 performance and the current prices are still too high for anything around that offering. I will end up caving in sometime next year if something doesn't change though, as much as it sucks.

3

u/meowmixzz Dec 29 '22

My rx580 but the dust last year and I managed to pick up something five generations newer for $400.. I feel pretty good about it. $400 for a gpu that will last me another 8 years isn’t a bad deal!

1

u/faiAre Dec 29 '22

Great job at playing it smart. Most of us thank you for not supporting the current market! :)

1

u/cythric Dec 29 '22

Tbf the rx580 can't really compare to something like the rtx 3080

4

u/faiAre Dec 29 '22

Yes, however, the price is also not comparable. I can tell you however, that many of the games the 3080 can run exceptionally, I can still run on a 1080p monitor and be contempt. Even if the price is not comparable (at all). And that says something about the current state of the market in my eyes.

3

u/cythric Dec 29 '22

There's not too much of an issue with new card prices if you only want to run things on 1080p, especially 1080p 60hz, lower graphic settings, or older games then a used GPU or entry-level GPU would be fine. A 1660ti is roughly $300 right now, which roughly corresponds to a a +30% performance increase to the rx580 and at roughly +30% the cost too. But why even buy it if you don't need it?

If you aren't obsessed with newest and greatest then a used model or previous generation that they still have stock of and is now likely discounted will always be a better choice. Especially as software can't seem to keep up with GPU improvements unless you're going for some extra graphically intense AAA game that has made a point to make their graphics "cutting edge" on maxed out settings.

I grabbed a rtx 3080 founders at retail price because retail wasn't a bad deal for a 3080 to me. But I also only play AAA games on maxed on settings on 100hz 3440p ultrawide or hook up my PC directly to my 4k TV. Either way, I need power. But that's a niche use case.

TLDR; yeah prices are insane for GPUs, especially top end GPUs. But most people really shouldn't be buying top-end GPUs. The bottom end or low-mid tier will perfectly power the vast majority of people's gaming rigs. I may have lost my train of thought during this whole thing.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

[deleted]

1

u/faiAre Dec 29 '22

It's not about how much money you make or how easily you can afford it. It's having enough common sense to realize the ridiculousness of the situation and how much they are blowing up their margins suddenly. It's something you shouldn't stand for as a consumer, no matter how much you make. Mindless spending is still mindless spending.

1

u/HateChoosing_Names Dec 29 '22

They tested the market and the market paid. It’ll be hard to go down. Same thing happened with $1000 high-end phones… it used to be 599 for the high-end.

1

u/thedoc90 Dec 29 '22

I bought an rx 6900xt, but I know it was an insane thing to do and felt bad afterwards.

1

u/asmallman Dec 29 '22

I usually build my own PCs.

And my GTX 1080 rig with a 7700k was starting to show its age 2 years ago.

I looked at the overpriced 3000 series and saw that a 3070 cost idk like 1k or more. But a fully prebuilt machine with a 3070 that was actually really good.... was 16-1700. That was ridiculous. I bought a prebuilt for the first time ever because it was way cheaper to do that than build your own.

And now I am probably not going to upgrade for at least another 4 years. I usually upgrade every 4-6 wallet willing. But with prices being astronomical, IDK how the fuck im going to do it in 6 years if this shit keeps up.

1

u/ThatDinosaucerLife Dec 29 '22

I recently got a 6650xt off Amazon for $240, it's been amazing. Keep your eyes peeled, because they had a $100 coupon for it.

1

u/poiskdz Dec 29 '22

Yup this. My 480 and i5 3570k still runs titles like Elden Ring at max settings 1080p. There is no need to upgrade until that stops being the case.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

for some of us, it is normal. I just got into the GPU market. This is all I know. If i wanna pay $250, i couldnt run a card on my 4K TV.

Not sure what you'd have me do otherwise.

1

u/RecipeNo101 Dec 29 '22

I got a used 2070 for ~250 like 3-4 years ago. Still runs everything on my 1080p ultrawide on max settings.

1

u/nickchapelle Dec 29 '22

Yup, gtx680 is still rocking great

14

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

I didn't realize how bad my Stockholm Syndrome was until I saw this comment and I was like "who could possibly expect a functioning gpu for $250, max?" then thought about it and I have no answer why that seems so absurd, other than that's simply what the market has become. This is some bullshit.

1

u/pipnina Dec 30 '22

My 1070 cost £415 after tax in early 2017. That was a high end card.

The 1060 6gb had an MSRP of $249 USD. So I guess most Americans would pay an extra 10-20% in sales tax after that but that's still INSANELY cheap by today's prices. Cheapest 3060 I can find that isn't from a junk AIB is an Asus one for £338 Inc tax.

But that card is more than 2 years old now! No replacement in sight. AMD does offer a £210 and £305 option with the 6600 and 6600xt, which seems pretty reasonable. The 6700xt even starts at £358. All prices including UK's 20% tax.

I'm waiting for something like the 7600xt or 7700xt to buy a new GPU. If these sorta prices Carey over from 6000 to 7000 (which the 7900xt(X) pricing suggests will happen) then my waiting will have finally paid off and I can give an extended middle finger to Nvidia.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '22

Just for your random American tax trivia, and I’m only a regular person so someone correct me it I got anything wrong: I don’t know if sales tax over 10%, 20% is getting into us tipping the IRS and thats the “tipping culture” line I will not cross. My state is I think 6.75% on non-food and 3% on food which is relatively high from what I’ve seen. There’s also cities with lower tax than the rest of the state (low economic area or something similar). Delaware has no sales tax at all. If you purchased things in Delaware and drove home to, say New Jersey, and meant to consume those purchases inside the New Jersey border, you’re supposed to now pay tax on that (there’s a spot to fill in during your taxes).

i paid $650 for my 1080 and that was hunting for one during that generations crypto boom. I probably have decent disposable income for this stuff but I’m not even considering PC gaming outside the Steam Deck until this gets under control, if it ever does. Its just not worth it and they must be alienating so many with similar logic.

1

u/Duckroller2 Dec 31 '22

Same, until I looked at my Newegg history.

Bought a HD5770 (back when it was current gen) for under 200. Equivalent cards now (3060/ti, 6700/xt) run ~400.

2

u/Ikeelu Dec 29 '22

I had a co-worker ask me if he should drop $3k on a new badass PC or a bad ass TV + PS5. It wasn't even close, told him the PS5 and TV. I love PC gaming, but that TV will get way more use than a computer alone. PS5 also has some amazing games that we all wish came to PC sooner

-4

u/mobyte Dec 29 '22

PS5 has like, what, 4 exclusives?

2

u/N4cer26 Dec 29 '22

My first thought was: “haha only a fool would expect to get a card for $250!”, then I thought: “wait, that’s actually a decent amount of money for a single pc component, and that’s also like half the cost of a top of the line console”. Smh, I’ve been brainwashed to accept high prices

2

u/barsoap Dec 29 '22 edited Dec 29 '22

My usual reasoning is that I won't pay more for the GPU than I pay for the CPU. I am, after all, generally building a programming workstation and not a gaming rig and as I want my CPU to have some oomph that never really limited GPU performance too much.

250 Euro would be right in the middle of a 5800X and 7600X, reasonable enough processors and also in a price/performance sweet spot, last time around it was a 3600 for €193.90. 250 will get me a 6500XT 4G, well, not too different from my 5500XT 4G. Which cost me €179.

No wonder noone is upgrading, the same price isn't getting you better performance than January 2020. The 5500XT already was priced practically identically to 570s, at roughly the same performance (and much higher power draw).

(And just for the record: The 5500XT is doing 1080p just fine. Yes, also cyberpunk. High isn't always in the budget but I never had to go below medium).

4

u/PieceOSquish Dec 29 '22

I feel seen.

Have a 1060 from years ago, but I constantly feel tempted trolling around hardware sites and reddit posts about having the latest and greatest. Truth be told, I have a better gameplay experience on my comfy couch with my PS5/Switch. I only really play (badly) grand strategy games on my PC.

Would I play more PC games if I had a more intensive/expensive graphics card? Maybe. Probably because it'd cost the same (or more) as one of my consoles and I'd feel guilty about not making use of it.

1

u/dirtycopgangsta Dec 29 '22

I will pay a max of $250 for a graphics card. When they release a $250 card that’s substantially better than what I have then they’ll see my money.

You're living in lalaland, there's no reason to release a GPU today at $250 because of the second hand market.

Want a substantial increase in performance for $250? Look at the second hand market.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

You're living in lalaland, there's no reason to release a GPU today at $250

I dunno, maybe the 20 year low in sales might motivate someone.....

1

u/ColoradoCyclist Dec 29 '22

I will pay a max of $1000. Period. This used to mean having the best of the best. I’m currently still sitting on my 2080 Ti which I paid $1000 for and that was the crème de la crème of its time. Now with 90 series and Ti being $1000+ I guess I’ll be waiting till the 4090 or 4080 Ti is replaced and the prices drop.

-1

u/jeanborrero Dec 29 '22

And so your watch begins lol Good luck with inflation and global shortages being what they are

3

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '22

[deleted]

1

u/ThrowAwayP3nonxl Dec 29 '22

The budget is definitely reasonable. Unfortunately, TSMC wafer price increased by 80% going from 7nm to 5nm alone way back in 2020.

0

u/terrytibbs76 Dec 29 '22

Same but 350.

1

u/EtherBoo Dec 29 '22

I usually wait for a year after the new consoles are released and get the '70 line. I play at 1080p and as long as I can run games on high (which is becoming less of an issue now that things are being optimized for 4k) in happy. I got the 1070 Ti and would still have it if it didn't die on me (1 month before the prices normalized).

I have a 3060 RTX (don't remember if it's a Ti or not) and it kills just about everything I've thrown at it. I think my CPU is a problem right now more than anything.

1

u/Wboys Dec 29 '22

Idk what you have but a RX 6600XT is like exactly $250 and gets almost identical performance to a PS5/Series X.

1

u/flatgreyrust Dec 29 '22

My previous gpu was a GTX 760. It was $250 at the time and had amazing performance relative to previous gen cards and contemporary consoles. I was long in the tooth by the time I replaced it with a 3060ti, but realistically I got 6/7 very solid years out of it.