If you wait for graphics card prices to even come close to their MSRPs, you surely know that it will be a long road which will surely result in the new RTX 40 and RX 7000 being just overlapping on top of replacing the rest of the models and that only to empty the stock the price will drop. But here there will be a curious paradigm to comment on.
The GPU “normal” pricing problem
Price is always the most deciding factor in purchasing any PC component, of course if the performance is competitive. The RTX 30 and RX 6000 will not meet their MSRP given what has been seen and being the dates we are on and although this is difficult to assimilate, we will not see a generation of competitive GPUs in price due to multiple factors. and save the case of Intel which comes as a new player to be squeezed by assuming losses with its Xe GPUs.
Why aren’t the normal GPU prices from before coming back? Why him I + D, the materials and machines to create graphics cards have exploded and will remain the same for at least 5 years. If you as a business want to offer a competitively priced product, the first thing you need to do is cut costs, but that is not possible today.
The R&D of the first three companies is started to get the best performance, ASML scanners go for more than 400 million units, the price of materials, even if it settles or even falls, is really expensive and the mining market is only a pretext which generates shortages and inflates the price for a time.
The problem with consoles
Plus, there’s the fact that consoles are speeding up and restiles as upgraded versions are coming sooner. This means that given their price and the comfort they assume to occupy the low range of graphics cards, being something totally external to the PC, i.e. they occupy by price what was previously occupied by the midrange.
While all companies will (belatedly) launch low-end GPUs, consoles will also do the same with price as soon as the chip crisis ends and they will start adjusting margins to become profitable and then reducing the price to the bottom. over the years. So the low range is in danger, the mid and high range are not going to lower its price (raising it and seeing people paying that price has worked).
Which of the three players will cut prices with a scenario like this? None of course. As soon as the user pays at the price of gold, it is profitable for him to sell less units, the financial data is there and when the GPU mining is no longer profitable he only has to adjust a minimum the market to pass the unsold stock to the average player.
The problem, as always, is the average user, whether gamer or underage. If a company can sell 50% or 100% more of its product and sell it to the point of no longer having units available … It will apologize in the above for raising GPU prices and not reverting to low prices. “normal” prices. With only 1 in 10 users paying an extra 100%, it is already profitable for them despite a loss of sales of 9, mainly because the number of chips is still limited and there would be no stock for all.
When the market stabilizes the MSRP will be the same or higher in subsequent generations, make no mistake about it and unless a technology lowers manufacturing or design costs the price will continue to rise as it does. been doing since the beginning of the decade. .
