After a year of microchip shortages that's left people constantly Googling where to buy Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, GPU prices are finally falling, in the German market at least.
That's according to a recent report from 3DCenter.org, which states that the Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards prices are reportedly dropping faster than AMD's RX 6000 series GPUs. Since Nvidia's latest-gen GPUs first hit the market, the prices quickly jumped, reaching its peak in May 2021. It was around this time that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Ti rumors entered the picture. This is in contrast with AMD's RX 6000 series graphics cards, which remained relatively close to MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) values.
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A price chart featured in the report shows a noticeable decrease in RTX 30-series GPU prices, which appears to have started towards the end of May and carried on dropping significantly all the way to August. Interestingly, the prices of AMD's RX 6000 series GPUs have started to grow at a stable level just last month and have continued to increase ever since.
And although the prices of RTX 30-series GPUs are now dropping at a much slower rate, the downwards trend suggests that it will probably continue to fall at a similar pace.
The above also leads us to believe that the two manufacturer's GPU prices appear to have swapped places, with Nvidia's RTX 30-series cards slowly approaching MSRP.
The RTX 30-series GPUs currently sit at the top of the pedestal among the best graphics cards overall, with Nvidia's latest RTX 3080 Ti dominating the list alongside the RTX 3090 in terms of performance.
Back in May, RTX GPUs were selling at approximately 300% above MSRP, down to just 150% in August. Of course, the price is still inflated, though it does appear to be showing significant improvement.
On the other hand, AMD's RX 6000 GPUs reached a peak of 214% over MSRP, though but have since decreased to 159% over MSRP in August. However, this can be explained if you consider the fact that there are fewer AMD graphics cards available in the market, with the company's latest silicon being outsold by Nvidia at a rate of 11-to-1.
While the report only concerns Germany, we still can't help but hope the pricing situation improves worldwide as industries recover from the global chip shortage caused by COVID-19 pandemic. However, with Samsung increasing the price of semiconductor wafers, which Nvidia sources from, that cost could be passed on to consumers.
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