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GPU prices are coming to earth just as RAM costs shoot into the stratosphere (arstechnica.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [M] to c/hardware@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

You can finally get an RX 9070 (non XT), for under $600 MSRP now.

NewEgg has the ASRock 9070 at $530 right now.

You can even find 9070 XTs at $600.

The next closest GPU from Nvidia in terms of performance per $ is the RTX 5060.

Which is about half as performant as a normal 9070.

The Nvidia 5070 TI is a bit more performant than a 9070, a bit less than a 9070 XT... and its at $750.

https://bestvaluegpu.com/

It would be extremely wild if a techtuber did a 'lets revisit price per performance' for GPUs right now.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Where I live the cheapest 9070 (non XT) costs USD 635, and this is sort of a special price (albeit it could become base in a few months). Median competitive price is closer to USD 700+.

    Cheapest 5060 (8GB) is around USD 340 (median competitive is close).

    5060 Ti (16 GB) is around USD 550 (median competitive is close).

    AMD in my country is no go outside of some older, super low end SKUs (but you can also get better Nvidia cards second hand).

    I don't care about brands, but where I live AMD is not really competitive (assuming like for like software support).

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Ah, sorry, I should have specified I was talking about US prices. =X

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago* (1 child)

    No worries, I get that.

    I am just saying globally prices are more variable. I can't speak for EU specifically, but our prices generally track EU (more so than US).

    AMD needs to compete directly with Nvidia, but they won't since GPUs are a (US) government backed oligopoly.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago*

    For the most part, I really do think AMD is trying to compete with Nvidia as best they can, in as many ways as they can, but Nvidia is simply utterly dominant and huge.

    They have very usable alternatives for almost everything Nvidia does, their cards are way, way easier to use on Linux due to being way more open with their drivers and such...

    Maybe, maybe, depending on exactly how the coming implosion of the US AI bubble plays out, they might be able to gain some ground against Nvidia... but that is an exceptionally complicated scenario to try to predict in any real detail.

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    • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Of course I just bought a 970 xt for a lot a month ago, I did buy RAM before it shot up tho so thats nice. Slowly building a new PC thats not jank on Linux.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Slowly building a new PC thats not jank on Linux.

    Sounds like you've done it. Unless you've got an unfotunate wifi card or something, still

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Its literally just a GPU and the RAM. I need every other part as my kids are going to continue playing their smaller games on my current build like they do now. I can buy about 1 part a month thats under 200 dollars. I gotta sell one of these servers or something to get the CPU Idk lol I have a power edge r740 I dont really want to let go of but could.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    This isn't a 'great' suggestion (and if you got a home server you're probably aware already), but there's a ton of cheap PCs right now that aren't Windows 11 compatible but are still relatively new.

    Might not be a bad deal to pick up an mid-tier business PC like an Optiplex or HP or whatever and 'upgrade' it with the GPU? As long as the power supply supports it, that is.

    I'm looking at one for a family member and its $125 for a pretty decent PC, more so once its running Linux.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    I appreciate the suggestion lol I am going to take it slow though. I'll need time so I can also build a new desk to hold two desktops on too. Its a whole project in the game room that I dont make nearly enough money for. But life, uh, finds a way.

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    • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    GPU prices coming down are an indicator of the overall market sentiment around buying and building PCs with parts.

    5090 are still not anywhere at MSRP though reliably. Seems like 2800 is the lowest on a shelf near me. 9070xt comfortably under 600 now though.

    Memory prices are hitting the news everywhere but even at 200% or 300% of normal price you're still saving money over buying a gaming GPU in the first 6 months of the year when GPUs were chronically sold out. 16GB is kind of tight but 32gb is only $250 for 2x16gb @ 6000mhz CL30 at microcenter right near me. If this is "200-300%" pricing then I don't see what the big deal is.

    News outlets have pointed the finger at "AI" rollouts, but we're several years in to AI rollouts and although HBM memory used in AI cards has had elevated prices, it hasn't affected desktop memory very much until the last couple of months. I suspect pre-emptive hoarding by commercial system builders is more to blame as companies like lenovo have mentioned having 150%+ of normal part inventory levels. Buy and hoard has been a key strategy to handling taco tariffs too for all kinds of nonperishable products all year long.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    You've somehow gotten two downvotes, but nothing you've really said is incorrect.

    Well, I mean, I think $250 for 32gb sys RAM is a bit ridiculous, buuuuut...

    Yeah, yeah, for most GPUs, at least in the US?

    You scammed yourself if you bought one late last year / early this year.

    Nobody (in terms of retailers and GPU mfgers) expected the economy to fucking nuke itself after more or less Trump decided to turn a very, very shaky, almost/maybe "recovery" (really more like 'stabilization'), into a tumbling collapse down a cliffside.

    People also just arent't spending anywhere near as much on video games, the things you use the consumer grade GPU to play.

    (Expect a lot of AAA publishers/studios to either go very, very big into debt/buyouts, or just utterly collapse in 2026.)

    So, the result is, for the large part... demand has cratered, retailers are sitting on too much supply, and storing shit in a warehouse indefinitely costs money, so they've just been ticking down prices to try and induce demand.

    Consumer spending in general is collapsing, so uh... yeah, fairly good time to buy now, assuming you're not in the ~60% of Americans who do not have $1,000 set aside for an emergency.

    I did not know lenovo just straight up said they're sitting on a 150% of regular parts inventory, but uh yeah, if the entire computer industry basicslly becomes hoarders, yeah, yeah, that'd cause a price spike in system ram alright...

    It really is a simple as... system ram is modular and can go into a bunch of shit, GPU ram is already part of the board, and just generally, consumer oriented GPUs are waaaaay more niche than consumer oriented system RAM.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I saw the lenovo thing on slashdot. I would link the articles directly but they all have paywalls for me https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/24/154202/lenovo-stockpiling-pc-memory-due-to-unprecedented-ai-squeeze

    The tariff thing has been astounding. The amount of announcements, exceptions and cancellations has made it nearly impossible to keep up. I think we just exempted brazilian beef and some other thing? Plus I believe semiconductors still have total exemption- sure maybe a GPU has a buck of tariffs on the aluminum in it but that's nothing lol.

    I had friends looking to build computers 6 months ago and balking at GPU prices. The prices overall today are just cheaper, unless you were not buying a GPU. CPU prices have come down a tiny bit too.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago*

    I... am an econometrician, programmer and hardcore gamer, rofl.

    Yeah, watching this has been fucking insane.

    I used to work for a major international logistics company, made the reports for C Suite.

    I guarantee you people at my old firm were literally pulling out their hair when the de minimis exemption got annulled.

    ... anyway, as far as PC builds go?

    Here's the best possible bang for your buck, as far as I can tell:

    Minisforum BD790i se, + RX 9070.

    Put that, a 600W PSU, 32 gb sys ram, 1 or 2 TB SSD, and a big ole fan on top of the cpu, all inside an ITX lunchbox?

    ~$1500, and that'll get you over 60 fps on nearly anything, at nearly any settings level, at 1440p. Most games you'll be over 90 or 120fps.

    Its more or less a Steam Machine on steroids.

    ... presuming you are running Linux, lol.

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    • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    4080 still very pricey nearing $2k and the 5-series is even worse. 3080’s are in the $500+ range, so that’s decent.

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    [–] -2 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    Didn't read the article, but how is the ram on gpus getting cheaper but ram sticks more expensive? Aren't they the same hardware?

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    GPU prices are a lagging indicator. They'll be going back up soon as well.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago*

    Unless demand has collapsed so hard that retailers can't even move whats been sitting in their warehouses for 6 months.

    Then... it could be more complicated.

    Yeah, prices will go up if they have to actually order new GPUs through tariffs...

    But, if they just... think demand has collapsed significantly... they just won't order anything very expensive they don't think they can sell, and then you get a whole bunch of nonsense in secondary, second hand market... kinda like whats going on with used cars in the US right now.

    Oh, are you a used car dealer? You get to buy a 120k truck that has been sitting on a dealers lot for so long that its been repo'd from the dealership... you can get that at auction for 20-30k.

    But god knows what that second dealer is gonna try and charge for it.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    The RAM on GPUs is not getting cheaper. It is actually what is driving up all RAM costs.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Its not that its getting more expensive to produce though, its not like a gigantic typhoon / tsunami has shut down mfgering or that input prices has risen dramatically.

    ... its that US companies are hoarding.

    Like how bitcoin miners hoarded all the GPUs not too long ago?

    US companies are hoarding system RAM, stockpiling.

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