The GPU shortage appears to have
well and truly ended, if market
prices are anything to go by. After
literally years of insane inflation
seeing graphics cards go for double or even
triple their retail value, street prices have fallen
off a cliff in 2022. A combination of factors
appears to be at play, including the longawaited
bursting of the cryptocurrency
bubble and an easing of the chip shortage.
But the end result is that prices for graphics
cards (fave.co/3DOEuWk) have dropped by
almost exactly half in the last year.
That’s according to market data gathered
by Jon Peddie Research and analyzed by
German site 3DCenter (fave.co/3BQnEIx). In
the third quarter of 2021 the average selling
price of a new desktop GPU rose to and

all-time high of US$1,077, more than tripling
in less than two years. The comedown from
that precipitous high hasn’t been quite as
dramatic, but in 2022 the average price
dropped to $643 in the first quarter and $529
in the second. As PCGamer notes (fave.
co/3BQDToP), these figures are for cards
sold from manufacturers to retailers, not to
final consumers, but they’re a reliable
indicator of the market’s direction. At the time
of writing, in-demand cards like the GeForce
RTX 3070 and the Radeon RX 6700 XT are
hovering around their actual MSRP for the first
time in almost three years.
There are a lot of factors at play here (fave.
co/3pkV3oL). As previously stated, the
worldwide chip shortage is starting to abate,
which affects manufacturing from trucks to
teakettles. And the cryptocurrency market is
finally on a major downturn as investors seek
out something less volatile heading into a
possible recession. (Or possibly they just wan