If you don’t want to spoil your day as a gamer, you’d better avoid the graphics card market on Ebay. However, for professional reasons we ventured into the depths of the auction offers in order to be able to offer you an update on our first price analysis – and the numbers are not only unpleasant, but also very interesting.
While researching, we even came across photos of our graphics card test system that were sold several times. The same applies to the sale of real graphics cards: Regardless of which GPU it is, the costs have increased significantly compared to our last price check.
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The average price increase is unprecedented: On average, it has been 27 percent since the end of January 2021, compared to the end of November 2020 it is even more than 56 percent. Among the most expensive models in absolute terms, the Radeon VII, which appeared in 2019 and was only on the market for a few months, stands out.
Graphics card prices on Ebay
Average of 30 offers sold
Geforce RTX 3090
Nvidia
1968
1902
1738
Geforce RTX 3080
Nvidia
1570
1221
1089
Radeon VII
AMD
1466
908
773
Radeon RX 6900 XT
AMD
1361
1291
1320
Radeon RX 6800 XT
AMD
1182
1051
1135
Geforce RTX 3070
Nvidia
1096
761
672
Geforce RTX 2080 Ti
Nvidia
1000
771
677
Radeon RX 6800
AMD
1000
805
832
Geforce RTX 3060 Ti
Nvidia
962
670
0
Radeon RX 5700 XT
AMD
767
510
383
Geforce RTX 2080 Super
Nvidia
712
597
554
Radeon RX 5700
AMD
653
438
334
Geforce RTX 2080
Nvidia
644
525
494
Geforce RTX 2070 Super
Nvidia
590
519
453
Radeon RX 5600 XT
AMD
568
387
302
Geforce GTX 1080 Ti
Nvidia
561
467
391
Radeon RX Vega 64
AMD
530
356
271
Geforce RTX 2060 Super
Nvidia
525
432
369
Radeon RX Vega 56
AMD
496
304
226
Geforce RTX 2060
Nvidia
458
361
290
Geforce GTX 1080
Nvidia
394
355
257
Geforce GTX 1070
Nvidia
350
292
203
Radeon RX 580 (8 GB)
AMD
333
257
145
Geforce GTX 1060 (6 GB)
Nvidia
241
207
140
Radeon RX 570 (4 GB)
AMD
165
122
96
Older Radeons are significantly more expensive than when they were released
The Radeon VII is an example of a development that affects almost all older Radeon models: its price on Ebay has recently increased significantly more than the average.
The following overview shows the price increases of over 20 different player GPUs since the end of November 2020. The top 6 exclusively contains older graphics cards from AMD, which have become almost twice as expensive or which have increased in price even more.
For example, while the Radeon RX 5700 XT officially cost 419 dollars when it was released in September 2019 and was available for an average of 383 dollars on Ebay at the end of November 2020, there are currently costs in the range of a proud 800 dollars.
The RX 580 with 8.0 GByte VRAM, which was officially released at the beginning of 2017 for 259 dollars, was still available on Ebay for around 145 dollars at the end of 2020; it now costs over 300 dollars there.
It is also interesting that these extreme price increases at AMD tend to be a somewhat more recent development, as the following graphics show. At the end of January 2021, it was mainly older graphics cards from Nvidia that rose particularly sharply in price, while AMD’s GPUs moved into focus between January 2021 and the current point in time.
What makes the Radeon cards so attractive?
One possible explanation for this development is mining, which is becoming more and more popular due to steadily rising prices. The current models from AMD (RX 6000) and Nvidia (RTX 3000) offer very high performance, but they also cost a lot of money.
AMD is doing better than Nvidia: In the previous generations, however, AMD has advantages in terms of mining performance compared to Nvidia. In the case of older models such as the Vega GPUs or the RX-500 series, there are also disadvantages in terms of power consumption to be considered. The good mix of price, mining performance and power consumption could make the Radeons particularly attractive for miners.
The more expensive the cards get, the easier it is to put it into perspective. But there is still no end in sight to the price increases. You can read why we are to blame for the extremely high prices in the following column at GameStar Plus:
more on the subject
Insane prices for graphics cards: The biggest problem is ourselves
Ethereum 2.0 as hope for gamers?
An important change to the very popular cryptocurrency Ethereum could improve the situation somewhat, at least in the medium term. It has long been planned to switch from a so-called “proof of work” approach to a “proof of stake” approach with version 2.0.
What will change with the new Ethereum version? In simple terms, Proof of Stake eliminates the mining associated with a high consumption of resources (or the increasingly complex calculations with suitable hardware).
The first phase of the changeover has already started. However, it cannot be expected until 2022 that the final steps have been taken and that the changes will have a stronger impact. This also suggests that the year 2021 will remain very unpleasant from a player’s point of view in terms of hardware (prices).
