Article is a bit old but still relevant and how gamers are being screwed.
GPU prices suddenly tripled about 4-5 years ago, due to price gouging that was enabled by mining, scalping, and LLM demand. The pandemic made it worse. Prices have come down a little since then, but nowhere near sane ranges.
GPU makers haven’t ramped up capacity to meet the increased demand, and greedflation doesn’t go away easily.
Factory recertified is probably the way to go if you want powerful hardware for (relatively) cheap, new gpu prices just don’t make sense anymore. Even back when RX 6x50 refreshes came out shit wasn’t so cartoonishly expensive
I got an open box 7900xtx from microcenter for a pretty good price. No regrets.
Wish they were more widespread. Closest to me is… 800 miles away? Was nice when I was near one.
That’s a sign you need to move ;)
I agree though
Shame microcenter doesn’t ship GPUs, they’re only reservable for in-store pickup.
I mean my new 7900xtx was $1k, but I still think it was a pretty good price compared to the 9060 and the 9070.
Nice. I think I paid 750 +tax
This is what I did with a Radeon RX 480, which still served me well until I upgraded to 1440p about a year ago. The price was good, and although one of the fans was defective, a replacement fan was quickly shipped and easily installed.
I distinctly remember buying a Radeon Vega 56 in-person at Microcenter on launch day because I must have been worried about price, availability, or both. That was seven years ago.
(That and my 9070 XT – also bought in-person on launch day for MSRP – are the only GPUs I’ve bought in the last decade.)
It’s true, but it was true of every GPU launch for the last three years or so. I’m not trying to excuse it but it’s not exactly news.
It’s still good to be reminded that corporations are not your friend and we should be demanding better with our wallets.
If you show up in person it was not, but the resale market and board partners kind of screwed this up.
AMD and Intel both need to be launching FEs and pushing the price down and making these board partners look bad.
AMD and Intel both need to be launching FEs and pushing the price down and making these board partners look bad.
They do.
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-B580-Limited-Graphics-Card/dp/B0DPM9923G
Looks like the 9070 might not have a reference design card, but previous gens you used to be able to buy a reference design directly from AMD.
Recent reference cards for AMD were actually built by Sapphire from what I was told.
So the Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT was their reference card basically. And it acts like that, a very solid card.
Sapphire has been building/designing their reference cards for a long ass time.
AMD’s website has a picture of what I assume is the reference 9070 and sapphires pulse looks pretty different.
I wish they’d bring back the reference cards. They look so much better than the aftermarket ones, even if the coolers are usually some of the worst.
Buys a B580 at MSRP
Laughs in smooth framerates in 1080p with all that extra money in pocket
Living the dream!
Lol - somebody didn’t pay their graphic designer: “PUKE”.
The S in MSRP stands for “suggested”
I can’t believe this is true. If I’d known, I never would’ve looked at the MSRP.
