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Could high prices be here to stay?

When people are willing pay nearly £600 for a 2060 all these online company`s are loving it things will never go back
 
I think over time things will balance itself out, prices will become "affordable" again, unless AMD/Nvidia decide to artificially create shortages.
 
I don't see how the current pricing levels are sustainable personally.
GPU prices are having a negative effect here as we have seen new PC sales slow right down over the last couple of months, as a lot of people are just leaving it and making do with what they have.
Still pretty busy on repairs and smaller / lower cost upgrades though.
 
High prices are only here due to miners. If crypto prices dives, then nobody will be buying GPUS at high prices and prices will fall.
 
Hopefully not and prices are only high due to lack of stock and high demand. Once they can make more cards to meet the demand and crypto prices drop then hopefully the prices will drop as well. If they were to remain at current ridiculous prices then that would be me done with PC gaming once my 1070 fails.
 
As I've explained before, there are many aspects to the current pricing. There are price increases on pretty much every component, from VRM, VRAM, chokes, capacitors, PCBs etc as raw materials run short and increase in cost...all the way down to sodding cardboard and foam used for the packaging! On top of that shipping costs are still increasing due to demand exceeding container space. Containers that used to cost $1200 to reach Europe are being charged at ten times that. Add to that large factories, distributors and resellers having to cover their overheads with a fraction of the usual product volumes meaning that everybody then has to make a higher profit margin on each item to break even. It all adds up.

There's a complexity to the reasoning behind the BOM (bill of materials - i.e. build cost) of the cards increasing. It's a mixture of high demand - car manufacturers, consoles and other electronic manufacturers all experiencing a surge in demand - and reduced supply - stockpiles which existed were eaten up during the COVID lockdowns whilst factories were closed, and since demand is still higher than production capacity, deliveries are being made almost hand to mouth. The inability to stockpile and build in bulk increases costs further.

Eventually, whether it's through reduction in demand and/or investment in more production volume, there will come a time when these costs drop.
 
People have shown what they are willing to spend so the manufacturers wont rush to bring down prices. Things like Intel Dg and rdna3 might drive them down through competition though.
 
I cant see the prices staying high.
When crypto starts to drop, and all those cards tide up in mining rigs start to hit the used market, demand for brand new cards will be lowered.
If anything, I think all this has shown gamers they dont actually NEED new hardware to play games well.

The 3 friends I game with most regularly are rocking GTX960s and 1060s... cards 4 to 6 years old. They all got them last year as UPGRADES to the cards they where still running prior to that.

Aside from these forums, its exceedingly rare to find PC gamers willing to spend even £500+ on a GPU. And I think that in turn will mean these cards are 'less needed', as game devs want as many gamers as possible to be able to play the games they make.
There is no point making a game that needs an RTX3080 or upwards to play...so few gamers can enjoy that.
Its the same reason the arguments around "is 10G vram enough" are so funny to me... of course its enough. 99% of gamers probably have less than that. So even the newest of new games needs to be able to run with LESS! (Yes, you may not be able to max the game to make it work...)
 
I doubt they'll return to pre-crisis highs, because demand will drop and supply increase. But I reckon Nvidia and AMD will engage in a bit of nod-nod-wink-wink price fixing and we'll be paying more than we were.

The real wildcard is whether Intel manage to get their GPU out this year and whether it'll be any good. I can imagine them aggressively pursuing market share through low pricing if so.
 
TL;DR: Prices will fall once supply is resolved, but the ceiling will stay at a similar height.

I think there are two factors to high prices:
  1. There is a definite short-fall in supply of all electronic components, and an increased demand, leading to high prices through the free-market.
  2. GPUs have been steadily increasing in complexity, i.e. the size of dies, the current & power requirements.
IMHO, #2 is enabled by the mainstream adoption of gaming as a large portion of people's lives. More people place more value on having a powerful computer, and so NV and AMD will continue to push this trend.
As an example the RTX20 series GPUs provided less rasterised performance per transistor than GTX10 series. Die's got significantly larger, memory more expensive, power limits higher. RTX30 series is a further extension of this trend, although I don't know the performance per transistor figures...

#1 means that there is no financial reason for NV or AMD to deliver entry-level or even mid-level performance, which generally come at lower margins and require far more product optimisation to be workable.

So long term, I believe there will be a more segmented market, but instead of being a lower entry, it will be a higher ceiling. The only move to combat this is AMDs ever improving APU's, where I'm hoping the move to DDR5's high bandwidth will further this movement.

Prices will fall if and when supply vs. demand is improved. A crash in crypto or the HUGE investment in fabs will eventually sort it out.
 
HangTime said:
To be clear by 'here to stay' I'm not talking about ongoing mining influences and low supply boosting prices through next year, I'm talking a 'permanent' realignment to a position where people can't just drop £300 every couple of years and get a big upgrade.
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If Nvidia and AMD try it with their next series of GPUs I think they'll get a very unpleasant surprise. People have spent heavily for this generation and will simply not buy the next if they're priced high because this generation will be seen to be more than good enough.
 
CuriousTomCat said:
Considering the consumer is so desperate to overpay, it's obvious that high prices are here to stay.

Lol if you think £649 for a 3080 is a bargain. Your mind has already been moulded into a new normal.

I remember when the high end was £250. That's what normal really is.
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The high end has never been £250, I have been buying computer parts for over 33 years and high end gpus with inflation added have never been that cheap, also this shortage thing I have seen many times over and prices of components have gone threw the roof many times in my life time and anyone that has been into computers or works in I.T as long as myself has seen this too. I remember the great shortage of 3.5" disks at one time and they were worth their weight in gold.

I will bring out some of my high end gpus from the past and show you what they cost back then at msrp and with inflation added and you will be shocked what they really cost and was rare to get them at msrp too and most times cards were sold as OEM not retail packaging in a brown padded envelope they came, because there were so few made for retail as they were expensive and aimed at system builders.

£650 for a 3080 is a bargain for the technology you get today at that price, you clearly have never purchased enough high end computer parts to understand the pricing at that level. Making up £250 as a high end price for a gpu is just silly to people that are in the know, 2D cards in the past cost more than that and if you wanted 3D you would add in a 3D card and link it to your 2D card and if you think that cost £250 ?, you are not a computer user/builder from the past clearly and seen this shortage mess before and the silly pricing.


I will take some pics of some of the classic gpus I have and even ATI's first ever dual GPU crossfire on a single card, which I have and that sells even today for over £300-£400 as a classic GPU for retro builds.
 
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Andythe Random said:
Not just computers and cars, anything with chips in it. I have been waiting for a camera lens I ordered a while ago, shops just aren't getting stock.
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Same with musical instruments and equipment, everything is shooting up and especially anything high end or desirable.

Explain to me why mobile phones even before the covid issues were £2k for the high end ? Why are people not complaining about that, high end phones use to cost £500 now they are £2k normal price without scalping. Things are going up and anyone that believes the MSRP for these GPUs sold by Nvidia or AMD direct for their FE and Reference models were real from day one are not living in the real world, it was a PR stunt to make them look like the good guys and the AIBs are scalping, honestly the AIBs should be taking them to court as they are basically selling so called MSRP cards either at a loss or cost to make.

It has made the AIBs look really bad this time and damaging their brand names and their reputations.
 
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