GPU Prices 2023: June Update

Below is the original article showing pricing data for the month of October, 2021. We track eBay prices on the best graphics cards and past two generations of hardware found in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.
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Our previous update noted that Bitcoin and Ethereum prices were trending up, and that continued throughout the remainder of October. At present (November 8), Bitcoin and Ethereum are now at their respective all-time highs: just over $66,000 for BTC, and around $4,800 for ETH. Whether they'll stay that high, continue to increase, or drop back to previous levels is, as usual, anyone's guess. I can't tell you how many emails I receive on a monthly basis predicting where cryptocurrency will go next and offering interviews with "experts," but it's a lot.

We're going to switch to just doing everything on a monthly basis going forward, since checking on these things more often doesn't usually tell us much and requires more time. And with that said, here's a look back at the month of October, 2021.

The average prices for Nvidia's RTX 30-series GPUs have been mostly stagnant over the past month — they're 0.2% lower overall. AMD's GPUs meanwhile had an average price increase of 5.2%, which is a bit surprising since October was the first month of the RX 6600 being on sale. Of course, only 106 of those cards were sold, which isn't particularly significant. Overall, the average price per GPU sold on eBay was 0.6% higher in October than September.

Both AMD and Nvidia had higher numbers of GPUs sold last month, at least on eBay. That's not actually good news, of course, since eBay mostly consists of people selling the cards they acquired elsewhere for a profit. The number of Nvidia GPUs sold increased by 7.4% while AMD sales was up 3.1%. Overall, there were 5.3 times as many Nvidia GPUs sold as AMD GPUs, on eBay, with gross combined sales that were 7.6 times higher for Nvidia.

It's important to note that we're not trying to separate the LHR from the non-LHR GPUs on the RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti. Generally speaking, the non-LHR cards go for higher prices, but trying to filter things to show only LHR and only non-LHR was difficult, since many listings don't indicate which type of card it is. That only matters if you're mining with the cards, which most likely a lot of the people buying these things on eBay are planning to do.

Given the continued shortages with graphics cards, not to mention packaging of chips, wire bonding, and substrate shortages, it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the next month of holiday shopping. We don't expect to see any Black Friday deals on graphics cards — well, maybe a pretend deal, but certainly not at anything close to AMD or Nvidia MSRPs in significant quantities. But there will undoubtedly be some people that decide they simply must have a new graphics card for the holidays, which could mean going to eBay, and that means we could see prices continue to increase in the next month or two. We'll see what happens over the course of November in the next update.

Incidentally, if you're looking for the best current-gen graphics card, in terms of fps per dollar spent, we've added that data to the tables. This uses the geometric mean of performance across nine games at three resolutions and two settings (54 tests). It's not a perfect look at GPU value, and it doesn't factor in ray tracing, DLSS, or any other potential bonus features, but it's at least an interesting data point. Of the thirteen latest generation GPUs, the best overall value goes to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, followed closely by the Radeon RX 6600 and then the Radeon RX 6700 XT. The best value Nvidia card is the GeForce RTX 3060, no surprise there, but it's about 14% below the 6600 XT in the FPS/$ metric.

While the previous generation GPUs are mostly discontinued, the shortages and increased demand mean we're still seeing plenty of those sold on eBay. Prices are often closer to the launch MSRPs as well, but then these are mostly two or three year old GPUs. As you'd expect, mining performance still plays a big role in how much the cards cost on eBay, as well as how many have been sold.

The average prices for Nvidia's RTX 20-series, GTX 16-series, and RX 5000-series GPUs trended downward slightly, by 2.6% — Nvidia's Turing GPUs dropped by 2.6% while AMD's RDNA GPUs dropped by 1.8%. Meanwhile, the number of previous generation GPUs sold on eBay increased month over month by 11% (12.8% for Nvidia, 8.1% for AMD), with the RX 5700 XT as the most popular single GPU by far at about 20% of all GPUs sold.

As far as performance per dollar spent, the previous generation GPUs at best match the best deals on current generation GPUs, though they fall in different price and performance categories. The RTX 2070 Super, GTX 1650 Super, and RX 5500 XT 4GB rate as the best deals, though the latter are very much budget GPUs at upper-midrange pricing. It's also a bit weird that the RTX 2070 Super had a lower average price than the RTX 2070, matching the 2060 Super, so that may have just been a blip caused by a few lower priced sales. In terms of performance, the RTX 2070 Super comes out just ahead of the RX 6600 XT, which in turn comes out ahead of the RTX 3060, so paying less for more performance isn't a bad idea — assuming you can actually find a card at these prices.

Summary: Prepping for the Holidays

It's difficult to pin down a precise reason for the increased cryptocurrency prices, and frankly we're not even going to try. They're going up right now, sort of like they went up last November and December, but hopefully not to the same extent. GPU prices generally lag crypto price changes by a month or two at least, so things haven't changed much yet, but they still could. With the delay in Ethereum's switch to proof of stake, GPU miners seem to be attempting to get as much of the currency as possible while they still can — not to mention Ethereum's London fork that destroys coins on every transaction is helping to reduce the number of coins in circulation, while appears to be helping to drive the price up.

With Black Friday on approach, plus the continued shortages in numerous areas of the supply chain, we don't expect much in the way of welcome changes during the next couple of months. If you really want a new high-end graphics card, you might want to check out the best pre-built gaming PCs. The deals there aren't necessarily great, but when Newegg and other retailers are selling individual GPUs at extreme prices and limited quantities, it's at least something to consider.

We do expect an increase in demand from shoppers during the next month or so, regardless of price — it's the most wonderful time of the year, after all. If we're correct, we could see eBay prices go up in the short term. But that only works if people are willing to pay the markup, and just like we were taught back in school, you should just say no. Unless you want to say yes, in which case who are we to judge?

There's also word of new Nvidia RTX GPUs with increased memory capacities, though that could easily be fake news. Even if those do materialize, they're more likely to launch at even higher prices than existing models rather than helping to drive prices down. For PC gamers, it's probably best to just hang onto whatever graphics card you have right now, and maybe hope Intel's upcoming Arc GPUs launch with reasonable performance and prices. But don't hold your breath.