Prices are falling, that could perfectly be the headline, but at the same time this is not a surprise as such given the global situation and the disarray that the two main cryptocurrencies in the market are having where speculators are scared leaving the market. Prices have a more than interesting crash that makes us think: is it a good time to buy a GPU?
It is a complicated answer that we will try to solve at the end of this article, but first we must see the data to understand it. And it is that the average of the prices and their fall becomes approximately 20% as a round figure to highlight, with drops from 10% to 34.8%.
Graphics Card Price Crash: Enough?
Not at all, quite the contrary, it is insufficient especially if we are talking about the newest GPUs. Why do some cards go down so little and others so much? Well, because it seems that once again mining is behind this.
The Ethereum DAG file needs at least 4 GB of VRAM in order to function properly or just function depending on its version, so the GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 3 GB fall out of this equation directly.
The latter stands out because it is the minimum performance per watt required to be really profitable, but its VRAM is what it is and therefore the collapse is now greater than in other models with less VRAM even if that were the case. The drops in the GTX 10 and RTX 20 series are higher percentage-wise than in the RTX 30 and this is once again an indication that everything is governed by mining, since many players would willingly accept buying a GTX 1080 Ti or RTX 2080 Ti for modest prices, but it is not.
The RTX 30 only registered falls equal to or greater than that 20% in the case of the RTX 3090 (21.9%), but its price was completely off the script. The average here is about 15%, so it's not much to write home about where the smallest of the series is still for 642 dollars at the moment, almost double its MSRP.
Is it a good time to buy a new GPU?
Needless to say we are talking about full speculation from here and the failure rate is huge, but there are signs that Ethereum crypto mining has few hours left. For example, China will condemn cryptomining with up to 10 years in prison, the change to POST of Ethereum is approaching, Russia wants to collect in a big way with this practice, Europe is considering a similar measure or the prohibition directly... And all this why?
For the energy war and CO2 emissions. The countries are in full transition to gradually limit and even zero emissions, so mining and its high consumption are not consistent and the countries that promised gold with this to attract investors like El Salvador are at the point of look at users and contributors.
If we add to this the imminent presentation of the RTX 40 or RX 7000, as well as the launch of Intel ARC, then we have a cocktail that otherwise can only reduce the price of graphics cards in a collapse that should be growing. So in principle and seeing these arguments, it is not a good time to buy because the price should continue to fall and we do not see any indication that this will not happen, since the crisis of high-performance semiconductors is gradually ending.
Perhaps if we find an affordable second-hand price, we could consider it, because the market should soon be flooded with GPUs due to the low profitability that should arrive in not too long. Of course, we can be wrong, let's not forget that it is a highly speculative market.
