Gadgetory

welcome back to hard Ron box today we're looking at graphics cards once again unfortunately it's not new graphics cards we know you guys are super keen to hear what's happening with those but we really don't have any idea at this point instead we're exploring cards you can actually buy right now which ones are the best value for money and whether you should even buy one at all right now at this point you're probably familiar with the story of graphics card pricing early in 2017 things were going nicely - the graphics card market you could find most cards in stock and the price is near the MSRP but then as cryptocurrency mining started to boom in the later parts of 2017 and especially in early 2018 prices for cards started to soar as eager miners bought them in droves the market was also affected by increasing memory prices graphics card manufacturers have been forced to spend more money to get the gddr5 and HBM modules used with most GPUs and that's led to an increase in the price of manufacturing these cards which of course is then passed on to the consumer if you're looking for someone to blame for that one send your anger emails to Samsung micron and SK Hynix the combination of those two factors made buying a graphics current absolute nightmare at the end of 2017 and the start of this year there was a point around January the CUA you'd be lucky to find a GPU in stock and if you did you're faced with prices more than double the MSRP in some cases luckily midway through March or so the profitability of mining on consumer GPUs dropped away and the stock started to return to the market apparently too much stock at least if you believe some recent reports suggesting Nvidia over-ordered GPUs to the tune of 300,000 units when we last looked at GPU pricing in May prices of popular graphics cards had dropped significantly since the heights of January and there was a clear trajectory suggesting the market will return to near MSRP levels in just a few months well it's now the middle of July and in some ways the GPU market is now looking pretty good for prospective buyers looking at the current lineup of nvidia geforce cards so you can see the pricing trend pretty clearly the current number one graphics card the gtx 1066 gigabyte was priced as high as five hundred and thirty dollars in january more than double its two $50.00 MSRP that came down to $330 in May and now they irregularly found for 300 bucks or so when looking at typical pricing across a range of retailers while the cheapest carts haven't hit MSRP just yet prices are certainly dropping it's even better news for invidious higher-end products the gtx 1070 was up over $800 in january and dropped to just 500 $20 in May but these days you can find plenty available for less than four hundred and fifty dollars and the cheapest models are available at just twenty dollars more than the cards MSRP of 380 it's even better news for the gtx 1070 TI and gtx 1080 which can actually now be found at the MSRP one of the cards didn't drop in price at all that much from January to may was the gtx 1080 TI last time we checked the card was still more than two hundred dollars above the MSRP well today that gap has shrunk massively to the point where the cheapest 1080 t eyes are just twenty dollars above the MSRP switching over to AMD cards it's a similar story the RX 5 70 + RX 580 in particular were massively inflated in January costing more than triple the MSRP and even in May those cards were still well above the MSRP we're still not seeing MSRP like prices today and I doubt we have a will but both models can now be found below $300 which was fairly difficult a couple of months ago vega 56 and vega 64 cards are more readily available now and in fact this is probably the only time since their vote you in the middle of 2017 that has actually been possible to buy these cards easily we're still looking at prices $80 above the MSRP but both use HBM - and the price of buying HBM - chips has increased significantly since launch so that kind of makes sense looking at price drop since January and a lot of cards have received a 40 to 50 percent price cut particularly in the high end it's only really the lower end cards like the GTX 1050 Ti and rx 550 that is still inflated though again memory prices are to blame as a much higher percentage of the manufacturing cost for these cards now lies with the memory modules compared to just two months ago most cards have come down in price by at least nine percent if not more and that's over a pretty short amount of time things are settling back down to normal but we're still not quite at MSRP for most cards in top end cards are at or close to the MSRP in the best-case scenarios though they're lower and cars are a billion flatted ambhi's lineup is still at least 15% above the MSRP though like with invidious mid-range and entry-level cards I can't see the price of these cards coming down too much more due to the higher cost of gddr5 and HB m2 compared to launch now comes the all-important look into what cards are actually the best value right now in May the GTX 1063 gigabyte was the best value card on the market with in video winning all the key battles from price to performance ratio the gtx 1066 gigabyte was just slightly better value than the rx 580 while the gtx 1070 and GT X 1080 was significantly better value than the vague of 56 and Vegas 64 respectively in July things are a bit different thanks to larger price drops in the AMD side we're looking at a 6-game cost per frame average recording the 1% low performance at 1440p and using the same games as the main analysis we see some movement in the value charts in this small selection of GPUs the i-x 588 gigabyte has taken the crown from the GTX 1066 gigabyte it was a slim went to the 1060 last time but a 14% price drop to the AMD card compared to just 9 percent the Nvidia offering has swung things in AMD's favor either card is a great option but the wind does go to the RX 580 here narrowly the Battle of upper end cards has tightened significantly Vega 56 is now on par and even slightly ahead of the gtx 1070 TI which is its nearest price and performance competitor in may it was a slam-dunk victory to the 1070 TI but the market is now much more competitive that said the faster GTX 1080 is slightly better value for around $50 more while the gtx 1070 is the best of this bunch at the higher it's still a win for a video with the GT X 1080 providing notably better value than Vega 56 and while the GTX 1080 Ti is the worst value of the lot it's in a performance class of its own using a two-game average with our wider selection of cards we can see where the other contenders fit in the GTX 1063 gigabyte used to be far and away the best value card but as it hasn't received a price cut since May the RX 580 has screamed back into contention offering just as much value considering it's also better than GTX 1066 gigabyte in terms of value is slightly cheaper than that card in actual dollar values and is faster than the 10 63 gigabyte I'd give the overall crown for the best value card to the RX 580 at this point in time the lower mid-range cards like the rx 560 RX v 7e and GT x 1050 TI are all similar value right now though I think they're a bit overpriced considering what you get the rx 550 is still bizarrely terrible value while the upper end cards fall into the same positions as in our six-game average so with a further two months of graphics cards coming down in price AMD has become much more competitive to the point where the rx 588 gigabyte is the best value card out there taking the crown from Nvidia I'd still recommend the gtx 1070 as an upper mid-range option over veda 56 and the 1070 TI in that order and at the top the gtx 1080 is still a much better buy than vegas 64 for those after a cheaper card it's a tight battle but would go for the RX 5 60 16 cu over the gtx 1050 TI although the 1050 Ti has become much more competitive in the last two months those are our recommendations for the best value graphics cards you can buy right now but that doesn't answer the question of whether you should actually buy one right now or wait for next generation offering us to hit the market there have been so many rumors about next-gen cards from Nvidia in particular pulling to a relay sometime this year that understandably many of you who want to wait a bit longer instead we originally thought in video might unveil those cards at the end of July but with alleged stock issues with current cards it sounds like that's been delayed and well I guess who really knows what the situation is at this point in any case it doesn't sound like new GPUs will launch for at least another few months and then at launch who knows what the status of availability will be and what sort of product segments will be actually covered in the first wave for that reason if you've been waiting to buy a current gen graphics card you should probably just pull the trigger at this point because prices are now the best they've been for over a year I think it makes sense to buy now particularly if you're interested in a mid-range card or lower like the rx 5 radio GTX 1060 because it's unlikely those products will be superseded with the first wave of NVIDIA GPUs because we're so near the MSRP with the prices of a lot of these cards and with memory prices continuing to stay quite high it's unlikely the cards will get significantly cheaper and that's another good reason by now could be a good option I'd be a bit more hesitant to buy now if I was after a high-end card like the GTX 1080 or better those products are more likely to be superseded soon so it could be worth waiting a bit longer to see what next-gen products we have in store and let's be honest at this point in the release cycle is one or even two year old graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA should be well under their launch price so even though we're recommending a few different options here and talked about how nice it is to have pricing come back down to MSRP levels it's still super disappointing to see how expensive those old products are hopefully by the end of the year there'll be a bit more life in the stagnant graphics card market that's it for this one if you're interested in buying a graphics card you can check all the current prices through the links in the description below feel free to support us on patreon to get access to our exclusive discord chat and I'll catch you next time