GPU prices — is the worst behind us ?

My 9970X build (already have the chip and board) is on hold indefinitely, because it requires RDIMMS (about $4-$5K for 128GB). Instead, I went with a used 5995WX + WRX80 combo from China for $3K, because I've got the DDR4 RAM capacity from 5-6 years ago that I paid less for then, then what a comparable set just went on Ebay for (auction ran up to $1300). Even if I had to buy the DDR4, it would still be cheaper to just get that, than to purchase DDR5 RDIMMs alone.

I'm a bit worried that compute is becoming a luxury...

I've never been affected like this before. I never thought I'd be happy to bring what is now almost 7 year old hardware back online to do some work I need. Not to mention purchase some 3–4-year-old used hardware to add to that too. I'm even using my RoG Z1 Extreme as a mini compute box to delegate more work off to.

(Cloud costs run up way faster than even California priced electricity, for those wondering).
 
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noko said:
Anyone thought that the prepurchase Ram may end up with data centers not built to be fire sold at a discount to get rid of it? Plus, GPUs? I've seen projects canceled with pallets sold at less than 1/10 the cost. Hell, the company I work for had a mega size (for them manufacturing facility) to be built on 100 acres of land, equipment prebought (huge assembly lines) now sitting in a warehouse, over 100 million dollars' worth of equipment becoming a place for spyders to catch their meals. It happens,
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Got pics?
 
El_Capitan said:
Not necessarily. It's a flooded market. Why be in 5th place, when you could be in 1st? They'd be an afterthought in the AI market, and at least 2-3 years behind. Meanwhile, the consumer market is also 2-3 years behind, with higher demand.
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A GPU is no longer a "gaming device" or simply a "3D rendering device". That might have been the primary source of demand when it started, but now it's a general parallel processing compute device. There would be no strictly "gaming GPU" that would be produced, since anyone can technically use it for general compute tasks, and no company will make one for that purpose because there are buyers in the AI space willing to pay orders of magnitude more to own it.

The only way out of this crisis is a surplus of supply. For that to happen, you need enough companies to ramp up production, but more likely you'll need a slowdown in AI related tasks (say, LLM models not needing as much training, for example). In the meantime, there isn't a single company that can justify prioritizing gamers. Consider how many of us almost passed out when the 5090 launched at $2000, with the 4090 already seemingly unreasonable at $1600 a couple of years prior. Now you have the 5090 closing in on $10,000. What gamer is going to pay that for a few extra FPS? Aside from apparently DooKey, who wants you to know how old and rich he is, I can't think of anyone who would.
 
El_Capitan said:
Maybe if said company was involved in AI 2-3 years ago. The AI bubble will one day burst, but consumers will still be screwed over unless some revolution actually happens. Not likely. There's too many consumer products dependent on the graphics card industry. iGPU's will never be as cost effective as discrete GPU's, and those iGPU's are highly expensive. The fastest currently is what, the 358H? It's still about 25% slower than an RTX 3050, while costing at least 4x as much.
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But are we sure there is a bubble here currently that will burst? I think people use the term bubble far too often. It's not a catch all to describe every asset increasing rapidly in value. In a bubble, you can't explain the rapid increase, and the increase exceeds any reasonable timeline for matching revenue. That isn't the case here. Companies are literally burning out these GPUs right now. Investors are also not behaving the way they do during bubble times. Stocks are up, sure, but that's because earnings are up. Look at forward PE ratios for companies like Micron and you'll see that it's really not extreme at all in a lot of notable cases.
 
LukeTbk said:
Yes extremelly but how hard it is, is also how good the competition, in inference you have Grog/Cerebras that started a decade ago, Google/Nvidia has well and the giant Amazon/openAI/meta/SpaceX and so on.

Right now it is hard because you compete with ATI/AMD-Nvidia that have been doing it for 30 years+, if we become a world were everyone that was making gaming GPU leave for doing AI inference with their time and access to silicon, being the best option for a switch become easy, Mediatek would be glad to offer them a version of their GPU for the Switch and they will have the best one in the world, same goes for a discrete GPU if many want to buy one, mediatek would be pleased to make it.

Or a newcomer, they will be day one the best discrete GPU money can buy, for inference the competition will be a nightmare, from design to supply chain access to customer market access, you compete with the biggest company of world history, would be much easier in what had become in that world a niche affair without serious competition.
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Not to mention the number of patents that are held by the incumbents.
 
erek said:
View attachment 827454
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That_Sound_Guy said:
Yeah, He's trying to see what I think about the person selling the PC based on the picture per my comment.

Based on your picture and if I saw it on FB marketplace - It's a straight on shot, with detail/high res, and clean wire runs. It's also obviously custom built based on the fans, motherboard, color matched RAM, Fractal case and AIO. No dust bunnies, no spider webs, fan blades aren't caked with years of buildup. Only mark of question is the hole cut in the grill on the bottom right. Shows hurry versus doing the job 100% as the cuts are uneven with jagged edges. So things like thermal paste, fan filters, etc may be suspect. I would assume two things - You're either an enthusiast who built the PC and takes care of your stuff while showing it with pride for a potential buyer to see what they are looking at. Or, it was built for you and you're just a person who takes care of their stuff while showing detail for a perspective buyer. I also don't think a brand-new build as the fan blades have what looks like a dust layer as one would expect from operation. The hole cut is also not in use suggesting potential case reuse or change in design. Further reinforcing enthusiast. Given the type of PC you have, I would not contact you as you have a high likely hood of knowing its value and asking for it. You represent maybe 5-10% of ads I see. If it was a prebuilt with that type of quality picture, it would get my interest to click for more info. Of course, the price listed in the ad drives a lot in initial interest to the PC.

Add in:
The profile pic of the seller
What else is the seller selling
Title of the for sale ad. "Gaming PC" versus "12th Gen I7, 32GB, 3070 Computer" versus "need gone"

I can get a pretty solid idea with that data group. Now if I saw your PC for sale here in [H]? You have expensive quality components in addition to everything I said above. Been around a long while, high post count, general curiosity with the question/challenge you sent me, 2FA...; I would buy from you.
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That's pretty close to spot on. It's an enthusiast build. Custom build by a 48yo (at the time) software engineer. It's not new, and now I'm almost 50.

The hole in the side fan cage is there to avoid putting too much strain on the 12V-2x6 cable. The cut sucks because I suck at using a Dremel. Just a lack of experience. Probably broke a half dozen cut-off disks on that. Yep, middle aged Dremel noob.
 
DogsofJune said:
Ugh, I bought two RTX 5090's and I am glad I did.
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I updated it. I was thinking of selling one of my 5090's but then i saw 2028 and lets be honest on release those cards are going to sell out for a long time so i am guessing mid 2028 as i just to walk into a store a grab one. So I am keeping both of mine. Like you i have 2 computers. I even got the 2nd one for $2,700 out the door shipped to my house and i thought that was high lol. We are living in some dark times my man. Some very dark times. I wonder what a 5090 will sell for when the 6090 comes out. I am scared of the pricing going forward i am talking like 5+ years down the road due to inflation. what are we going to see in 15+?
 
Epyon said:
I updated it. I was thinking of selling one of my 5090's but then i saw 2028 and lets be honest on release those cards are going to sell out for a long time so i am guessing mid 2028 as i just to walk into a store a grab one. So I am keeping both of mine. Like you i have 2 computers. I even got the 2nd one for $2,700 out the door shipped to my house and i thought that was high lol. We are living in some dark times my man. Some very dark times. I wonder what a 5090 will sell for when the 6090 comes out. I am scared of the pricing going forward i am talking like 5+ years down the road due to inflation. what are we going to see in 15+?
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A couple years from now prices will either be worse or we'll have a massive AI crash, lots of spare HBM all over the place, the return of Vega (sort of - higher end gaming GPUs using HBM), and slow sales for gaming cards because there's a recession and people are broke? Personally I'm expecting this to go like the .com boom. A weeding out is coming. Can't make enough $ off your AI stuff? Get weeded out. So we'll have a crash, then some of the survivors will do really well.
 
zandor said:
A couple years from now prices will either be worse or we'll have a massive AI crash, lots of spare HBM all over the place, the return of Vega (sort of - higher end gaming GPUs using HBM), and slow sales for gaming cards because there's a recession and people are broke? Personally I'm expecting this to go like the .com boom. A weeding out is coming. Can't make enough $ off your AI stuff? Get weeded out. So we'll have a crash, then some of the survivors will do really well.
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Yes, but with how quickly AI has been advancing (and I've been hearing of the resource wall since 2024, which hasn't slowed it down but only caused massive price increases on parts all over the place) it's possibly that the few remaining that do very well, will require even more compute than what is already being used right now by everyone. It doesn't guarantee that anything will become available.

I don't know how accurate this is, because the answer comes from Chat, but it references estimates that currently only ~1% of the entire world's population are using LLMs or other AI tools as "serious work partners" with multi-agent multi-step workflows. (So that doesn't count those who effectively use it as a search engine replacement, which is now a much higher number).

Even if you remove every person on that planet that isn't in work that can be exposed to AI, we're at ~10% right now. We're far from demand saturation still.

I'm just going to assume Chat is ballpark accurate on that, because it surprises me how many people I talk to that still don't use LLMs in any sort of agentic manner.
 
The unfortunate part for gaming is AI isn't some bubble. It's got some pretty amazing use cases that can increase worker productivity immensely. Across so many fields. The only hope is that since margins are so high investment will reach a point where supply can meet demand at lower prices.
 
blade52x said:
Yes, but with how quickly AI has been advancing (and I've been hearing of the resource wall since 2024, which hasn't slowed it down but only caused massive price increases on parts all over the place) it's possibly that the few remaining that do very well, will require even more compute than what is already being used right now by everyone. It doesn't guarantee that anything will become available.

I don't know how accurate this is, because the answer comes from Chat, but it references estimates that currently only ~1% of the entire world's population are using LLMs or other AI tools as "serious work partners" with multi-agent multi-step workflows. (So that doesn't count those who effectively use it as a search engine replacement, which is now a much higher number).

Even if you remove every person on that planet that isn't in work that can be exposed to AI, we're at ~10% right now. We're far from demand saturation still.

I'm just going to assume Chat is ballpark accurate on that, because it surprises me how many people I talk to that still don't use LLMs in any sort of agentic manner.
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Towards (in the not too far) the future I can imagine even like smart home devices coming with local AI agents onboard to handle setup for the user and connection/operation/troubleshooting issues etc - to reduce company/staff that you need to do so and makes it all 'seemless'/'invisible' to the user
 
HockeyJon said:
That's brutal!
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yep and i remember buying a RV770 Radeon 4850 on this very forum from day-1 for about $169… highest end performance and one of the best GPUs of all time in terms of bang for the buck

sheesh, the he rtx 5090 being one of the worst in that category.. feels like a brute forced prototype with that 600W 12vhpwr failure scenario
 
erek said:
yep and i remember buying a RV770 Radeon 4850 on this very forum from day-1 for about $169… highest end performance and one of the best GPUs of all time in terms of bang for the buck

sheesh, the he rtx 5090 being one of the worst in that category.. feels like a brute forced prototype with that 600W 12vhpwr failure scenario
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I bought the 4870 on launch day from newegg. It's my all time favorite video card. Those were good days yall. Chicks didn't have purple or green or blue hair. If they had coloring it was highlights. Even what we considered fat chicks back then would be models now. Chicks were cool too, feminism hadn't taken hold yet. There was no tik tok or e whoring. Dude's were starting families on a modest salary. Vehicles were reliable. Home's were available and affordable. Video games, music, and movies didn't have "strong, lesbian, handicapped, black, trans" bullshit infecting them. I miss those days man. Shit's weird now.
 
TheToE! said:
I bought the 4870 on launch day from newegg. It's my all time favorite video card. Those were good days yall. Chicks didn't have purple or green or blue hair. If they had coloring it was highlights. Even what we considered fat chicks back then would be models now. Chicks were cool too, feminism hadn't taken hold yet. There was no tik tok or e whoring. Dude's were starting families on a modest salary. Vehicles were reliable. Home's were available and affordable. Video games, music, and movies didn't have "strong, lesbian, handicapped, black, trans" bullshit infecting them. I miss those days man. Shit's weird now.
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how much was that 4870?
 
Sounds like Walmart has terrible logistics because I saw a similar post on Reddit this week where someone got two Cyberpower PCs (9800X3D, RTX 5080) via Walmart when he actually ordered only one for $2300, below is the link. Don't know what he did with the second PC.

On a side note, a similar thing happened to me a few years ago when Newegg sent me 5 HDDs when I actually ordered one. I believe in karma and someone probably risked losing their job from the mistake so I contacted Newegg and sent the other 4 HDDs back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RTX5080/comments/1wop60g/ibuypower_pc_came_in/
 
TangledThornz said:
Sounds like Walmart has terrible logistics because I saw a similar post on Reddit this week where someone got two Cyberpower PCs (9800X3D, RTX 5080) via Walmart when he actually ordered only one for $2300, below is the link. Don't know what he did with the second PC.

On a side note, a similar thing happened to me a few years ago when Newegg sent me 5 HDDs when I actually ordered one. I believe in karma and someone probably risked losing their job from the mistake so I contacted Newegg and sent the other 4 HDDs back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RTX5080/comments/1wop60g/ibuypower_pc_came_in/
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But what if you just offended karma by returning it? Maybe the worker was losing the company thousands of dollars, maybe millions, causing the company to fire the more competent workers? ;)
 
El_Capitan said:
But what if you just offended karma by returning it? Maybe the worker was losing the company thousands of dollars, maybe millions, causing the company to fire the more competent workers? ;)
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Yep if the universe hands you something it wants you to have and you reject it you are really asking for bad karma.
 
HockeyJon said:
I hate saying it, but there really is very little business reason for Nvidia to make gaming-targeted products when they can't produce enough of the workstation stuff that sells at orders of magnitude higher in pricing. This doesn't surprise me at all. Even if they launch a gaming card, it'll get snapped up by AI guys and prices will skyrocket. I even see 5060 Ti listings with AI performance advertised.
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I know people say that, but if that's the case, then no GPU maker currently has any business building gaming GPUs.
Nvidia's gaming division still made $11.40 billion in 2025, compared to AMD, which made $34.64 billion across the entire company.

So RTX GPUs alone make 1/3 of the second-place company's total revenue.
11.4 billion isn't a small number, and who in the market could absorb it if Nvidia just peaced out?

So yeah, Gaming may only be 6% of Nvidia's current revenue, which is absolutely insane.... But gaming currently accounts for roughly 7% of AMD's revenue, so by that measure AMD has no more of a business reason to continue with making gaming-related products either.

Sadly, or maybe not sadly. It means the gaming industry needs to shift to fit the product availability. Which I appreciate; maybe it means optimization becomes a thing again, and developers are forced to get the absolute most out of the available hardware. Which, ironically, will be done by AI agents, because hand optimization is a lost art and too expensive to manage at the scale of modern games.
 
At this point GPU prices are only a problem if you don't buy AMD or Intel. Both are selling cards at reasonable prices. The MSRP for a 5070TI was $749. A 9070XT is right now at $790. Meanwhile you've got reviewers telling people don't buy video cards when they could buy a comparable card to it's nVidia competitor at or slightly above nVidia's MSRP. If you jumped on the bandwagon early you made out big time.
 
Lakados said:
So yeah, Gaming may only be 6% of Nvidia's current revenue, which is absolutely insane.... But gaming currently accounts for roughly 7% of AMD's revenue, so by that measure AMD has no more of a business reason to continue with making gaming-related products either.
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That a bit of a end of generation consoles wise for AMD too, PS6 launch could still be good money.

One other way to look at it, if they were making peak 2021-2022 gaming revenues now, it would be 15% of their revenues (and an higher percentage of their current revenues).

Lakados said:
Sadly, or maybe not sadly. It means the gaming industry needs to shift to fit the product availability. Which I appreciate; maybe it means optimization becomes a thing again,
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I think that a bit unfair of the gaming industy was making product for a PS4 (a modest 2013 hardware) up into the 2020, 2021, 2022, Nintendo Switch 1 until recently and now the very modest Switch 2 (PS5 games in 2027 would have been a thing no matter what happened or not to memory pricing, so they would still have made full game fit under 15GB of ram like it was a 2016 middle of the road computer), optimization specially in gaming has never left.

Lakados said:
because hand optimization is a lost art and too expensive to manage at the scale of modern games.
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I am 99.9% sure that a lot of hand optimisation occur in those Call of duty and Battlefield games engine, up and down.

Game dev engine presentation looked like this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nTDFLMLX9k

when hardware was on cheap TSMC 28N and GPU launch looked like Maxwell-Pascal
 
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kac77 said:
At this point GPU prices are only a problem if you don't buy AMD or Intel. Both are selling cards at reasonable prices. The MSRP for a 5070TI was $749. A 9070XT is right now at $790. Meanwhile you've got reviewers telling people don't buy video cards when they could buy a comparable card to it's nVidia competitor at or slightly above nVidia's MSRP. If you jumped on the bandwagon early you made out big time.
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Supply and demand. No one wants AMD GPUs. No demand means low prices. AMD did it to themselves.
 
DooKey said:
Supply and demand. No one wants AMD GPUs. No demand means low prices. AMD did it to themselves.
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AMD cards are better for older titles right now due to rasterization per dollar. The problem is that most next gen titles, and quality(DLSS) is linked to Nvidia drivers and will be even more so in the future. Expect Black Myth Wukong performance results(optimizations skewed in the software development) in more than half of titles in the future. AI integration into titles will be the standard in the future and AMD is very behind at that race. I wish it wasn't the case, but it appears that AMD might have a gentlemen's agreement to keep prices high with Nvidia as well. I have seen troubling statements coming from AMD leadership hinting at price fixing. Prices will continue to increase in my opinion.
 
DaedalusHelios said:
AMD cards are better for older titles right now due to rasterization per dollar. The problem is that most next gen titles, and quality(DLSS) is linked to Nvidia drivers and will be even more so in the future. Expect Black Myth Wukong performance results(optimizations skewed in the software development) in more than half of titles in the future. AI integration into titles will be the standard in the future and AMD is very behind at that race. I wish it wasn't the case, but it appears the AMD might have a gentlemen's agreement to keep prices high with Nvidia as well. I have seen troubling statements coming from AMD leadership hinting at price fixing.
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AMD has less than 10% of the discrete GPU market. They have no agreement with NV. They suck.
 
DooKey said:
LOL. Who wants to price fix to only have a tenth of the market? Seriously?
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Protecting profits, and propping up your only competitor to avoid global anti-trust laws is probably a smart move. It was comments made by Lisa Su after some meetings I had seen recently that had lead me to believe it was probable. I am not trying to roll in the mud with DooKey right now though. I do not have the time to source it all for you so I deleted that comment before possible attacks. Yes, price fixing is really easy to do, and I do not believe these are moral individuals we are talking about. The tech market is driven by greed exclusively right now. You cannot see negotiating with your only market rival in these conditions to protect future profits or safeguarding against anti-trust fees/breakups? I think that they would and the way they interact makes it seem probable in my opinion. Trillions of USD is at stake.
 
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lol, depends on the game. The Last Of Us Part 2 later Nvidia drivers is giving a water bug where the animations stop. The 5700 XT is plowing through that game over 110 to 150 FPS, FSR 4.1.1 Quality looking gorgeous in 4k. With FG over 240 FPS. Since a Sony title, it works extremely well with AMD cards.
 
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