And the news is getting worse for people trying to build a new system. Those looking to buy graphics cards compete between scalpers and miners to get cards. Mind you, many claim that NVIDIA sells cards directly to miners. Some might say, I’ll settle for a gaming laptop, but miners also buy gaming laptops to mine crypto. If you go a step down and settle for a console, you’ll be dealing with scalpers as consoles are also resold due to low inventory and high demand.
Tariffs, Chinese New Year, and commodity delivery are all in jeopardy for causing GPU shortages
Last December, I covered data related to the resale market of these products, but decided an update was needed as the problem got worse. Michael Driscoll went ahead and gathered all the data of these products that were resold on eBay in January. Tom’s Hardware worked with him to get updated data on the graphics card market. The new data is disappointing from an observer’s perspective, to say the least, and disheartening from a buyer’s perspective.
Source: Michael Driscoll
Why are we seeing a spike in the pricing of these components? It is not the simplest case here. Most would assume that as the pandemic appears to be more under control, production would return to a normal state, but that just didn’t happen. Many factors have caused this. The most obvious answer to the shortage is the lack of raw materials. The supply chain is disrupted, so production will also be disrupted. AMD has said several times that it has become increasingly difficult to get substrate packaging.
Source: Michael Driscoll
A person who doesn’t have the full picture would respond with if the shortage persists, why do prices keep going up at about the same demand? The most obvious of these would be the rates, but the price jump on the resale listings for lower cards is greater than the price jump on the MSRP of those cards. Certainly a factor, but it is by no means the main reason why the price occurred.
Source: Michael Driscoll
The location of these factories is in Asia, especially Taiwan and China. The reason this is important is because of the celebration of the Chinese New Year. This holiday will halt work in these regions for almost one to two weeks. If stock doesn’t come out of factories, resellers can squeeze the market and people who need or really want a GPU can buy for an even higher price.
Records show that 15,300 graphics cards have been sold on eBay by both NVIDIA and AMD
Let’s look at the data. As of the beginning of January, approximately 15,300 graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA have been sold on eBay. Most of the cards belong to the green team. More than 14,000 NVIDIA cards ranging from the RTX 3060 Ti to the RTX 3090. Approximately 3,000 RTX 3060 Ti have been sold on eBay. The RTX 3070, which had sold some 5,400 on eBay, is by far the most popular card. The RTX 3080 ranks second behind the RTX 3080 with approximately 3,400 sales. The king of the line-up comes last with around 2300 sales.
AMD suffers the same fate, but fewer tickets are sold due to less inventory. The RX 6900 XT had 334 sales. The RX 6800 XT had 448 sales and the RX 6800 is close to 434 sales. Combine all of these and you get a total of 1,216 sales. That doesn’t even amount to selling a single NVIDIA card. That just goes to show what shortages AMD is facing, as the MSRP of these cards versus the performance in crypto mining would be a popular option. AMD only accounts for about 8 percent of the graphics card resale market.
People are not only sold at an incredible price, they are also paying exorbitant amounts for these cards. Let’s take a look at the resale price increase from January to February. I want to remind you that the January price that we compare to the February price is not the MSRP. It is the average resale price of cards that are already well above their suggested retail price. January average resale price of the RTX 3060 Ti was $ 690, the RTX 3070 $ 804, the RTX 3080 $ 1290, the RTX 3090 $ 2087, the RX 6800 $ 865, the RX 6800 XT $ 1179, and the RX 6900 XT $ $ 1,458.
The card that made the biggest jump in February is the RTX 3060 Ti with a 33% increase in resale price ($ 920). It was followed closely by the RTX 3080 with a 24% jump ($ 1,593). This was followed by the RX 6800 with a jump of 18% ($ 1,018). Right behind it sits the RTX 3070 with a 17% jump ($ 940). Then the RX 6800 XT comes in with an 11% jump ($ 1,312). The least affected was the RX 6900 XT with an 8% jump ($ 1,570). The RTX 3090 may not have made the biggest jump at 14%, but the average resale price is $ 2,379. It might as well be renamed to the Titan RTX for this generation.
All of this can make you feel like a console is a solution, but it isn’t. Consoles are also scalped. The data we used was only from eBay, but other websites like StockX have also started adding these cards to the market. The time to buy hardware is over now and the shortages seem to be getting worse. For all consumers who want this hardware, your best bet is to try catching restocks.