"The price of the graphics card has been reduced recently, but I don't plan to buy it yet. Some people say that I can continue to wait."
Recently, due to the superposition of various factors, the price of graphics cards has dropped significantly, but Xiao Wang, a game enthusiast, is not in a hurry to buy them. With the news that the RTX 40 series has been exposed on the market, he decided to wait and see. The 30 series graphics cards may be available. Lower the price again.
In overseas markets, the quotations of high-end graphics cards have avalanche overnight, and there is also news of price cuts in mainland China. So what are the quotations of graphics cards on the market?
A reporter from Securities Times recently visited Huaqiangbei Market, known as the "First Street of China's Electronics", and found that the price of graphics cards began to fall after the year, and the current price is also at a low level in the past two years.
However, several store owners said that the decline may continue after that.
The superposition of various factors has led to a sharp drop in the price of graphics cards. Some institutions pointed out that several factors will continue to drive down the price of graphics cards this year, and it is still not a good time to buy graphics cards.
Graphics card prices drop significantly
How much has the graphics card dropped now?
A reporter from the Securities Times came to "Huaqiang Electronics World", and boxes of popular graphics cards were placed in many stalls.
"Now the price of graphics cards is low."
The owner of a graphics card store told reporters that the current price of RTX 3080 graphics cards is generally around 7000-8000 yuan, while a RTX 3080 graphics card can be sold for over 10,000 years ago, and at its peak, an RTX 3080 that does not lock computing power is quoted. Can be as high as about 14,000 yuan.
When the reporter further inquired about the reason for the decline of the graphics card, the boss replied: "This is not necessarily true. Now the main reason is that there is a lot of goods, so the price will not increase. If there is a shortage of goods and Ethereum is hot again, then the price will definitely increase."
In addition, games, performance, etc. are also factors that affect the price of graphics cards.
"Prices have been falling recently, but not by much."
Boss Lu of another store told reporters that for the latest price cut, Boss Lu said that in the last week, the RTX 3080 dropped by about 100-200 yuan.
As for the reason for the price reduction, Boss Lu replied: "It's not easy to mine now, so it has dropped." Boss Lu told reporters that the cost-effectiveness of buying graphics cards now is not high, and it may drop by a few hundred more in the future.
High-end graphics cards offer Avalanche 30 series price break
Recently, the price of graphics cards in overseas markets has avalanche.
Among them, the price of the high-end graphics card GeForce RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC fell by 35% in one day in the Australian market. The biggest drop in history, and the recent average drop in the price of other graphics cards has also reached 10%.
In addition, the RTX3090 graphics card in the German market dropped to 1,999 euros (about 14,000 yuan), and it was once hyped to 3,199 euros (about 22,000 yuan) in May last year.
In the Chinese mainland market, it is rumored that ASUS and Gigabyte will cut the price of each graphics card by at least RMB 100, and MSI will follow suit.
The price reduction of graphics cards has actually continued since the Spring Festival.
Currently on eBay, on NVIDIA, the price of graphics cards dropped by an average of 10% from February to March, ranging from 3% to 17%. The most obvious price reductions are RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 12GB/10GB.
For AMD, the average decline was 13%, and most of them exceeded 10%. The RX 6600 fell by 22%, and the RX 6700 XT also fell by 16%.
According to Zhongguancun Online statistics, March was the lowest price of graphics cards in the past two years. Among them, the RTX 3080 Ti even had a "break" that was lower than the official price. On March 22, JD.com did not count pre-sale, spikes, etc. In special cases and including third-party stores, the minimum price of RTX 3080 Ti is 8399 yuan, while the official price of NVIDIA is 8899 yuan.
"Mining" or an important factor affecting the price of graphics cards
In 2020, the price of Bitcoin continued to skyrocket, setting off a "mining wave". The mining giants concentrated on purchasing graphics cards, resulting in a situation where it is difficult to find a single card on the market.
In addition, Ethereum (ETH for short) will be upgraded to Ethereum 2.0 in December 2020, which requires "miners" to introduce more powerful mining hardware, which also makes the latest RTX 30 series graphics cards the first choice.
At that time, ASUS, a major manufacturer of graphics cards and PC brands, publicly announced that its graphics cards and motherboards would increase prices across the board, with graphics cards increasing by nearly 20%, including the RX 6000 series and the RTX 30 series.
Among them, the RTX 3090 rose by as much as 23%.
Today, with the fall in bitcoin price and the standardized governance of virtual currency mining projects by regulatory authorities in various countries, the industry is gradually returning to rationality, and the demand for graphics cards for mining continues to decline. an important factor.
"Actually, there were two main reasons for the initial price increase of graphics cards. One was mining, and the other was that the production capacity could not keep up. Now the price reduction is because the situation has reversed. People don't mine much, and production capacity has kept up."
An industry insider told reporters that the impact of graphics card price cuts on companies will not be particularly large. "The gross profit margin will be lower, and other effects will not be large. At present, the total amount of graphics card shipments is still rising."
In addition, after the "mining tide" receded, the second-hand market flooded into a large number of "retired" graphics cards, which are called "mining cards", and their prices are much lower than ordinary second-hand graphics cards.
The store owner of "Huaqiang Electronic World" also revealed to reporters: "In January last year, many people bought graphics cards to mine, and after 6 months of digging, they can make money and sell second-hand graphics cards."
At the same time, the reporter saw on a second-hand platform that the purchase price of the RTX 3070 "mining card" was as low as 1,900 yuan.
Affected by a variety of factors, graphics card prices still have room to fall
In addition to being affected by the price adjustment of virtual currency, it was reported on March 17 that Nvidia has pushed downstream manufacturers to reduce the cost of graphics cards by 10%, which will take several weeks to transmit to the retail side.
The price of GPU display chips, a key component of graphics cards, is currently in a downward trend. Both Nvidia and AMD GPUs are at their lowest prices in more than a year, further reducing the production cost of graphics cards.
In addition, industry insiders revealed to reporters, "Before, after the chips arrived, each store would distribute them. After June, the chips may open a channel for free orders."
From this point of view, there is still room for further adjustment of graphics card prices.
In December 2021, JPMorgan Chase executive Gokul Hariharan said that in 2023 there will be ample supply of global semiconductors to restore some degree of supply-demand balance, or even excess capacity.
IDC also holds a similar view. Their predictions are even more aggressive. They believe that new semiconductor production capacity will be launched on a large scale in the second half of 2022, and the semiconductor industry may be oversupplied in 2023.
In the past two years, many wafer fabs around the world have announced huge expansion plans. TSMC announced a three-year $100 billion investment plan. Samsung also plans to invest more than 170 trillion won (about 100 trillion won) by 2030. 1 trillion yuan) to catch up with TSMC.
SMIC, the largest wafer foundry in China, also announced a number of new 28nm and other wafer production lines. The investment in the next few years will reach more than 56 billion, and the production capacity will be more than doubled.
In addition, affected by the upcoming launch of the RTX 40 series, the price of the 30 series graphics card may continue to fall.
Securities Times reporters saw on a social platform that many "waiting parties" said they would consider the sale of the 40-series.
Foreign technology media wccftech reminded that the cost of graphics cards does not mean that the supply will be improved at the same time.
Graphics cards are still likely to be in short supply as cryptocurrency mining is still and will continue to be profitable, but several factors will continue to drive down graphics card prices this year.
Statistics agency 3DCenter also reminds consumers that it may not be a good time to buy graphics cards, and the price of graphics cards is still too high.
Marketing data compiled by 3DCenter suggests that Nvidia's RTX3000 GPUs are still 41% higher than MSRP, while AMD's RX6000 graphics cards are 35% higher than their MSRPs.
Author: Zhang Li