Gadgetory

to ensure you don't miss a single hardware unbox video hit subscribe then tap the Bell welcome back to hadron box today we're taking a look at graphics card prices one of the most heated issues plaguing the PC building industry at the moment over the past 12 months we've seen some absolutely ludicrous prices for popular GPUs in fact back in January Steve commented on how massively inflated graphics card prices made it difficult for enthusiasts to upgrade or build a new PC today we're revisiting the issue to see how the GPU market sits right now what pricing and availability is like relative to various points in the past year and what the trends in pricing are looking like I'm also going to go through some performance figures to show which graphics cards make the most sense to purchase right now in the current state of pricing so over the past 12 months it's been basically impossible to purchase a graphics card at the MSRP is I'm sure you're all aware there are two fairly simple reasons for that one is that memory is more expensive now than when these GPUs launched which makes it a more expensive to buy the HBM and gddr5 memory used on these cards which in turn leads to higher manufacturing costs the other is the cryptocurrency boom particularly for aetherium which caused much higher than normal demand for GPUs as miners jumped on the crypto pricing surge while graphics card pricing was a bit higher than the MSRP throughout most 2017 prices began to skyrocket in January thanks to a boom in crypto mining profitability and were held at massively inflated values throughout February and early March this chart shows three pricing data points from April 2017 November 2017 and January 2018 for a range of current gen graphics cards plus the MSRP of course these are the absolute lowest prices you could get at the time but more of the typical sale price for these GPUs and as you can see in January a range of popular cards like the GTX 1060 and gtx 1070 were typically found at more than double their MSRP it was even worse on the AMD front with the RX 570 and rx 580 often going for triple the MSRP while the relatively new vega cards were expensive and almost always out of stock you know things are bad when a mere rx 580 is being sold for well over the MSRP of a GTX 1080 or Vega 64 so how are things looking at the moment well the good news is prices have dropped significantly since the early parts of 2018 and it's much easier to find graphics cards in stock now than it was back then when we add in pricing from just a couple of days ago to these charts you can see that the prices while still aren't fantastic they are much closer to the MSRP than it has been for the entire year particularly for nvidia gpus cars like the gtx 1066 here but they used to sell for more than five hundred dollars in early 2018 can now be found from as low as 300 US still 50 dollars over the MSRP but much more affordable than it used to be and I should not hear that for this analysis I did not factor in invidious recent release have found his addition chip use at the MSRP through their official store it was possible to get an nvidia card for less than the prices listed in these charts for about a day but stock sold out pretty quickly instead these prices were collected after those founders edition cars sold out and we only looked at cards that were actually in stock AMD graphics card prices have also come down but they were more heavily inflated during the early parts of 2018 so they haven't dropped as close to their MSRP s as Nvidia cards have still a popular GPU like the rx 580 used to cost around 660 dollars and it can now be found for more like three hundred and fifty bucks there are a couple of strange exceptions to the price drops that we've seen over the past month or so entry-level cars like the geforce gtx 1050 ati and both the Radeon rx 550 and rx 560 are actually more expensive now than they have ever been and in a best-case scenario you'll find prices that are no different to January of this year memory prices more heavily affect entry-level cards and I think this could be why these more budget-friendly options are still well above the MSRP top-end cards in both AMD and NVIDIA have come down in price but not by as much as other GPUs the GT 10 atti for example is cheaper than it was in January but still several hundred dollars more expensive than in 2017 and be Vega cards are a bit cheaper now than in January but they're still well above the MSRP and while they are in stock there are only a few options on the market right now looking at the percentage change in pricing illustrates how the market has changed from January to today mid-to-upper and graphics cards have dropped in price by 35 to 45 percent in a couple of months while vega cards are roughly 10% cheaper and the gtx 1080i has dropped by 22% meanwhile more mainstream offerings have increased by as much as 21 percent as you will have seen in the charts prices right now is still a bit higher than there were back in November and April of 2017 when prices weren't as crazy mid-tier Nvidia cards are around 6 to 10 percent more expensive than there were in November while AMD cards are a bit more inflated than that relative to April GPU pricing we're looking at current prices at least 18 percent higher for all but the GTX 1080 while GPU prices are currently higher than they were in the late parts of 2017 there is a clear downward trend in pricing PC part pickers GPU pricing trend charts illustrate this downward slope better than our tables do and most of these mid and upper end cards are showing a noticeable downward trend over the last month or two so while we're not quite a 20-17 level pricing just yet borrow no sudden explosion in the mining market and fingers crossed on that one it shouldn't be too long before we're back to that point unfortunately when comparing current GPU pricing to the MSRP the picture doesn't look anywhere near as nice even when taking the lowest available price for this cheap use most prices are inflated by anywhere from 10 to 53 percent with an average price hike of 31% again AMD GPU prices are inflated by larger amounts than nvidia cards at the moment which is bad news for those that are interested in a card from team red and thanks to the high pricing of HBM and gddr5 I'm not sure we'll ever get back to the MSRP which is pretty disappointing considering a lot of these cards in our years old the GTX 10 80 for example launched in May 2016 and currently sits 10% higher Bennett launch price two years ago usually this sort of card would be well under the launch price by now the RX 580 it's basically a rebrand our X 480 and that originally launched in June 2016 I'm not sure has ever been seen at the MSRP outside of a few brief moments our only real hope for better GPU prices at this point is an entirely new generation of cards which hopefully should become a reality at least as far as Nvidia is concerned later this year okay so I've discussed how the current lineup of graphics cards in both AMD and NVIDIA stack up in today's prices now let's look at which cards make the most sense to buy right now after all there's no point looking at pricing analysis from several months ago or even from last year's you know everything is pretty much changed since then we haven't gone through and re benchmarked these cards instead we're using data we've previously collected from other reviews if you're interested in a more in-depth look at performance of these cards as always there's plenty of content here at hard-wearing box that will give you a great idea of how these cards stack up I'm going to show six modern titles at 1440p with ultra settings or there abouts in both the raw performance you can expect along with dollar per frame values that will illustrate which cards are the best value using today's typical sale prices you saw earlier the first game we have is far cry 5 which is well optimized for both in the video and especially AMD graphics cards it's no surprise then that AMD's lineup is strong value in this game despite being priced higher above the MSRP than nvidias cards around 350 us the standout is the rx 580 which provides a lower cost per frame than the gtx 1066 gigabyte though the three gig 1060 is the best value cut overall and it's 260 dollar price point moving up the stack would recommend the gtx 1070 TI narrowly over vega 56 though both are goodbyes while at the higher end the gtx 1080 is stronger value than the vega 64 in the battle of inch level cards the RX 560 is great value much more so than the gtx 1050 TI in destiny two things are more heavily skewed in favor of the green team the gtx 1063 gigabyte is once again the standout for value while the six gigabyte variant is better than the RX 580 Vega cards don't make a lot of sense from a value perspective in this title falling well behind the GTX and gtex 1080 in cost per frame at the lower end of the scale the RX 560 16 CU is again a better option than the gtx 1050 TI in star wars battlefront 2 we don't have current data for some of the lower tier cards but we will continue to look at some of the more popular mid tier and high-end options in this highly optimized title the iris 580 just edges out the GTX 1060 as the better value option while once again the higher end in video cards present better value than Vega particularly the gtx 1070 TI which is a great buy right now that said the gtx 980ti is the worst value right now in this title assassin's creed origins is just one of those games that makes more sense to run on NVIDIA Hardware the GTX 1066 gigabyte is better value than the IX 5 ad by quite a margin and then that grows when comparing the gtx 1070 TI and gtx 1082 am these two main Vega offerings the Vega 64 air-cooled model is really bad value in this particular game middle o a shadow of Warren narrowly favors Nvidia in the battle of the mid tier cards though both the gtx 1066 gig and RX 580 are great options for this game again at the higher end of the spectrum its Nvidia that takes the crown with both the gtx 1070 TI and 1080 offering the best value relative to Vega Wolfenstein 2 is the last game we're looking at and it's a tunnel that runs particularly well on AMD Hardware the rx 580 in this game is a much better buy than the GTX 1066 gigabyte while Vega 56 competes strongly with the gtx 1070 TI from a cost per frame perspective we still go for the GT x 1080 over vega 64 though which is where the value proposition swings back into invidious favour we're taking the average cost per frame across the last four games we looked at the gtx 1066 gigabyte narrowly edges out the arcs by Verdi as the best value GPU though if you can find an RX 580 for $300 then it swings back in favor of the rx 584 upper tier cards the gtx 1070 TI is the best value providing a better cost per frame than both the gtx 1070 and vega 56 then the gtx 1080 is clearly better value than vega 64 the overall best value card appears to be the geforce gtx 1063 gigabyte at the moment with the RX 560 16 see you offering significantly better value than the GTX 1050 TI if you're after something a bit cheaper in an alternate reality where GPUs are available at the MSRP this is the cost per frame you're looking at when averaging the far cry 5 and destiny 2 results what a shame that AMD graphics cards can't be found anywhere near the MSRP because they're definitely very competitive if there were priced at that price point the good news is if you are thinking of purchasing a graphics card right now there seems to be plenty of stock of all models available to retailers like Newegg and Amazon though top-end cars like Vegas 64 are a bit harder to find whether you should buy a new graphics card right now or simply wait for the potential launch of new GPUs towards the end of the year is harder to say we don't really know what Nvidia or ambhi's next-gen lineups will look like at this point and there's every chance that mid tier cars like the GTX 1060 won't be superseded immediately when these new GPUs come out and then there's also the continuing down trend of GPU prices to consider if you wait a month you might get a better price on a GPU you are after but then you'll also be stuck on your old card for longer it's definitely a far better choice to upgrade now than it was back in January when GPU prices were at their crazies though so if you have been waiting since the start of the year there's no better time to upgrade your PC than right now that's it for this exploration into GPU pricing there are links in the description below where you can check the current prices on Amazon for every card we've mentioned don't forget subscribe if you haven't done so and consider supporting us on patreon at patreon.com slash hardware and unboxed I'll catch you in the next one you