GPU prices are dropping, and they have been for months. A new report from Bloomberg shows just how quickly they’re crashing, claiming that prices have dropped by as much as 50% as the market deals with the crypto fallout.
It’s a sobering reality check as the GPU shortage comes to a close. Although multiple factors have contributed to the GPU shortage, the demand from cryptocurrency miners seems to be the main driver. In the first half of 2021, for example, a quarter of all GPU sales went to cryptocurrency miners. Some estimates say miners spent $15 billion on GPUs just for mining Ethereum.
If you feel like it’s impossible to tell the impact of crypto on the price of GPUs, you’re not alone. In May, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined Nvidia $5.5 million for not disclosing the influence of cryptocurrency on its revenue over the past several years. It’s an interesting time for graphics cards, not only because they’re becoming cheap, but also because Nvidia and AMD are gearing up to release new generations. Nvidia is working on its RTX 40-series graphics cards and AMD has its RX 7000 GPUs, and we expect to see both before the end of the year.