GPU price rise: graphics card MSRP reaches 5 month high, but decent availability

Graphics card shortage to continue? AMD Radeon GPUs now 83% over MSRP, Nvidia GPUs 72% above MSRP

Aaron Ritchie

PC Tech & Gaming News

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Are we about to get hit with another GPU price rise right before Black Friday 2021? Following (and perhaps partly because of) Lisa Su’s announcement that she believed the global graphics card shortage would continue for at least H1 2022, GPU prices have increased once again, both for AMD graphics cards and Nvidia GPUs.

Read below for more info.

AMD GPU prices 83% above MSRP, Nvidia GPU prices 72% above MSRP

The good old boys at 3DCenter continue to do their great work in mapping both graphics card availability and the retail prices of both AMD GPUs and Nvidia GPUs throughout 2021. Their latest update covers the period from January 17, 2021 to October 10, 2021. Although these only reflect Austrian and German graphics card market prices, they can still be extrapolated to give us an idea of GPU pricing and availability across the Western world, particularly in Europe.

As you can see in the below graph, AMD Radeon prices in particular have increased gradually since the lows reached in July, reaching 183% MSRP as at October 10, 2021. It’s a similar story for Nvidia graphics card prices since August, though less pronounced, Nvidia GeForce graphics cards standing at 172% MSRP as at October 10, 2021.

Graphics card availability, GPU supply

Despite continuing concern over the lack of GPUs that are available for consumers to buy, according to 3DCenter’s data, graphics card availability (represented by the dotted purple line) remains better than it has for much of 2021, certainly up to the end of May. Whether or not your average gamer will want to pick up these GPUs at the elevated prices, or if, once again, crypto miners will take up a big chunk of the demand remains to be seen.

There are unfortunately several potential headwinds for graphics card supply however that may have yet to hit the retail supply, but which could begin to bite between now and the end of the year. Global labour supply issues, precipitated by the COVID pandemic, combined with increasing gas and oil prices, have created a knock-on effect throughout global supply chains in all sorts of products. Government-imposed Chinese power shortages have also threatened the supply targets of electronics manufacturers.