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There’s been a drumbeat of news lately about GPU prices slowly falling back to earth. The cause of this decline has been somewhat hard to pinpoint, as it’s the result of several factors. Now however, Asus has announced it will be lowering Nvidia GPU prices across the board. This confirms what we all hoped would be true: this is actually happening, and not some kind of supply chain anomaly.
According to Tom’s Hardware, Asus will begin lowering prices on its Nvidia GPUs starting on April 1st. Now, we know what you’re thinking given the target date. It’s all ruse, and it’s definitely not funny. We thought the same thing, but it does appear to be legit. The reductions will be “up to 25 percent,” though, so that could mean a lot of things. For example, the RTX 3050 could get a 25 percent price cut, while the rest get five percent. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the real world once it goes into effect.
Another promising sign – EVGA GPUs actually available for purchase.
Asus says the reason for the cut is the recent rollback on import tariffs from China. As you may recall, in January 2021 the United States imposed import tariffs on a wide range of items made in China. This included printed circuit boards (PCB), which impacted GPU and motherboard pricing. The tariffs ranged from 7.5 to 25 percent on a wide range of goods, and came at a time when GPUs were already impossible to find. If this is the case, then it’s not clear why Asus only mentioned Nvidia cards in its statement as it also sells AMD GPUs.
An Asus rep confirmed the news to Tom’s Hardware, stating, “As a result of the latest tariff lift on Chinese imports from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Gamers and PC enthusiasts will see lower prices on ASUS GeForce RTX 30-series graphic cards starting on April 1st, 2022.” The rep stated the price cut would apply to RTX 3050, 3060, 3070, 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. It’s unclear if the rep was just using general terms though, but it’s notable they didn’t list any “Ti” variants. It’s also not clear if the RTX 3080 is the original 10GB card, or the updated 12GB version.
Asus’ announcement follows several months of precipitous declines in GPU prices. They are still above MSRP in most situations, and midrange cards are still difficult to find though. Higher-end GPUs like the RTX 3080 and 3090 are finally available at close to MSRP. Looking at the trends, along with Asus’ announcement, we might have GPUs available at MSRP soon. Of course, that’ll be just in time to buy one before almost instantly regretting it when the 40-series GPUs launch in Q3. Normally there’s not a huge performance delta from one architecture generation to the next. That might not be the case this time though. A ton of rumors have all indicated Nvidia’s next-gen will be absolute monster GPUs, including a 600W flagship part.
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