From February 13 to March 6, the Nvidia RTX 30 series were 41 percent over MSRP as opposed to the previously recorded 57 percent.
PC gamers might actually be able to play games in 4K in the near future
By Tariq Ghanzi, Contributor
Coming out of the pandemic, things like shopping and travelling have been really attractive. At the same time, cars and trucks have been less available while general electronics have seen their stock reduced. If you are a gamer you have been struck with the semi-conductor shortage because the gaming industry is built on the semi-conductor. Both the Playstation 5 and the XBOX series consoles saw their releases suffer big time due to the lack of available semi-conductors to put in the consoles. However, if you are part of the PC master race, the semi-conductor shortage has hit you right in the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
Since the beginning of the pandemic, GPU prices have climbed and climbed some more without a seeming end in sight. It didn’t help at all that people working from home suddenly realized that their home computers or whole setup might not cut it so they scrapped the old for something new. Businesswire reported a 26.1 percent growth in the year-over-year global shipments to a massive 91.6 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2020. That’s a freaking ton of new computer parts being made and sold.
On the GPU side, there has been a long trend of the few units available selling for way over the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). In July 2021, Techspot reported some GPUs in Australia selling for $1800, practically $1000 over the MSRP of $810. Yikes.
But Zak Islam of Digital Trends reported some great news for the PC gaming community: GPU prices are slowly moving back to where they belong! When he analyzed data from 3Dcenter, he found that from February 13 to March 6, the Nvidia RTX 30 series were 41 percent over MSRP as opposed to the previously recorded 57 percent. Though that is still way too high, at least the prices are turning around and heading back to where they should go.
But another big piece of is that some of the necessary manufacturing will be coming back to the United States and hopefully spreading the ability to make semi-conductors out across multiple markets. Because of the way that global production has made every country depend on each other for products, the pandemic shipping delays have hurt us all. CNET reported on February 8 that the US government had proposed $52 billion in subsidies to help Inntel build a massive production plant in Ohio. President Biden was so confident that he even invited Intel’s CEO Pattrick Gelsinger to the State of the Union address so he could highlight the plans they had made.
Though it’s unlikely that gamers will be getting new cards at reasonable prices this year, it is worth hoping that early next year will see some near MSRP prices. However, given the surprises that have blessed us over the past two years, I’m not sure if that’s something to bet on.
