THE GRAPHICS CARD market is in a mess. and that won’t change any time soon. Supplies are tight, and every available card is sold the moment it appears. Scalpers scour outlets for stock, and buy everything, only to resell them at inflated prices. And crypto miners are bagging GPUs in bulk. Things have calmed down a little since the summer, but markups of 150-200 percent still sting. According to Nvidia’s website prices for a GeForce RTX 3090 should start at $1,399. Currently, the average on auction sites is $1,000 more than that. Finding anybody with stock is another matter.
The latest graphics card launch was a refreshed Nvidia RTX 2060 12GB and aimed at relieving pressure on the market. It uses a 12nm GPU so doesn’t compete with the newer cards. It was launched with no fanfare and was immediately sold out. It was thought the elderly 2060 wouldn’t be an attractive crypto mining card too, although it transpires it isn’t so bad at it after all.