Andrew Cunningham
In 2021, the biggest story about GPUs was that you can’t buy one without paying scalper prices on eBay or learning how to navigate the maze of inventory tracking websites and Discord.
The good news is that 2022 has significantly improved our inventory situation. The cryptocurrency crash and his PC sales decline have reduced demand for GPUs, making them less profitable for resellers and improving inventory. Today, you can visit our online store and buy many GPUs for at least near the original list price.
2022 also saw the launch of many new GPUs. Nvidia’s RTX 3050 When AMD’s exciting mediocre RX 6500 XTBut by the end of the year, the very expensive but very powerful Nvidia RTX4090 When RTX4080 cards, AMD’s less-obtrusive but competitive RX 7900 series, and Intel’s flawed but price sensitive Arc A770 and A750 cards.
The bad news is that the effects of the GPU shortage are still lingering, mostly in the form of higher prices. We can expect these to fit into his 2023, but so far there’s little indication of that.
Budget GPUs are in a sad state
If you’re looking for better basic performance than the integrated ones with older, lower-end games that run at 1080p or less most of the time, you can find GPUs under $200.
But performance in this category has moved very For the last three or four years. Nvidia seems content to serve this low-end his slice of the gaming market with the same GeForce GTX 1650 GPUs he introduced in 2019. AMD and Intel both released new cards last year aimed at the sub-$200 market, but these cards can outperform his GTX 1650 at times. However, these cards also have drawbacks that are hard to ignore.
AMD RX 6500 XT was originally a desktop-fit laptop GPU, and as a result supports fewer displays than other GPUs in the RX 6000 series, lacks hardware video encoding support, and performs poorly on older PCI Express 3.0 capable PCs. So it only offers 4 lanes of PCIe bandwidth to begin with. Intel’s Arc A380 has excellent video encoding support (including the AV1 video codec), but like any Arc card, its drivers can be jerky and performance in older games can be spotty.
If good GPUs like Nvidia’s RTX 3050 series and AMD’s RX 6600 series quickly drop into the sub-$200 price range, we’re going to be pretty good about the state of budget GPUs (the RX 6600 is priced very getting closer) fall in the $220-$250 range for some models depending on sales). These GPUs still come with compromises, such as mediocre ray tracing performance and a more hit/miss experience at resolutions above 1080p, but it would be nice to have the GTX 1650 firmly in the rear view.
$1,000+ is the new normal for the best GPUs
Sam McCoveck
Moving to the other extreme of the market, GPUs with four-digit price tags were largely ignored by the public. Halo products like Nvidia’s Titan GPUs certainly perform well, but why pay so much when the cheaper xx80 and xx70 series GPUs can provide most of that performance for a fraction of the price? ?
The story of the mid-range cards of this generation has yet to be written, but so far the high-end cards of the RTX 4000 and RX 7000 series have been listed far more than their predecessors. $1,200 RTX 4080 It’s a big jump from the $700 Nvidia originally advertised for the RTX 3080 and 2080. Newly rebranded 4070 Ti As currently rumored (it was originally planned to be called the ‘RTX 4080 12GB’), it will launch at $900, significantly increasing the launch price of cards like the RTX 2070 and RTX 3070 from $500 to $600. you will have to pull it up. , RTX 3070 Ti.
All of these prices are made even worse by the fact that currently no RTX 4080 or 4090 cards can be found anywhere near the launch price.
On AMD’s part, things look slightly less outrageous. Top-of-the-line RX 7900 XTX It launched at the same price of $999 as the previous generation’s top-of-the-line RX 6900 XT.But if the 6900 XT was accompanied by the RX 6800 XT which offers most of the performance for $649 then the 7900 XTX’s smaller sibling is the $899 he RX 7900 XT and in fact Less than Performance per dollar than XTX. Both cards are still under his Nvidia pricing for the RTX 4000 series, but that’s how much the 4090 and 4080 cost more than the value AMD offers.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Said these higher prices stay here, thanks to the increased costs associated with designing and manufacturing these GPUs. Clearly, Huang is not an impartial observer here. He’s been investing heavily to keep his GPU prices high, especially since his Nvidia finances are deteriorating. But there is some truth in what he says. Cutting-edge manufacturing processes are expensive, Nvidia is battling all sorts of other chip designers over his AMD, Apple, and TSMC production capacity, and giant monolithic chips like the RTX 4000 GPU are , a small and uncomplicated processor outperforms his die.
