Graphics Cards Selling for Near MSRP: The Best GPU Deals

Graphics Cards Are Finally Back in Stock

The past 18 months have not been kind to any PC enthusiasts looking to upgrade their graphics cards. GPU prices on the best graphics cards have been terrible, with many cards peaking at over three times their official MSRP. But the long, dark night is coming to an end, as we knew it eventually must. There has been a steady downward trend in 2022 on GPU pricing, and we’re now at the point where many graphics cards are actually in stock at prices relatively close to MSRP. In fact, there are even a few selling below MSRP.

As you might suspect, cards that had higher launch MSRPs are more readily available at MSRP, while those GPUs that had seemingly “too good to be true” prices are still marked up a bit. But paying slightly higher prices for a third-party factory overclocked card isn’t exactly unusual, as those have usually been marked up about 10–20% over the base models.

We’ll provide a rundown of all the latest generation graphics cards, with thoughts on the current price and performance on tap. Our GPU benchmarks provide the performance data for our discussion of overall value, and we’ll list both online retail prices as well as the average eBay price over the past week — both of which are prone to fluctuation, so while the prices at the time of writing were correct, things will inevitably change. The previous-gen GPUs (i.e., Nvidia Turing and AMD RDNA) may also be worth considering if there are any decent deals, though that will mostly be via purchasing on eBay/used.

If you’re looking for the best bang for the buck, we’ve ranked the various GPUs by FPS per dollar spent. There are even a couple of AMD cards, the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600, where you can find some models on sale for less than AMD’s MSRP, and a few other cards are basically being sold with prices starting at MSRP. It’s a big change from just a few months ago.

With cryptocurrency mining profitability on a steady decline and ‘The Merge’ still supposedly coming to Ethereum, we don’t expect miners to support falling prices — unless something drastic happens. The following represents a snapshot in time, as of April 26, 2022, and prices are likely to drop even further unless something changes, like reduced supply due to China’s current Covid lockdown.

Overall Graphics Card Value Ranking

Here’s the high-level overview, ranking all of the current and previous generation graphics cards based on the best prices currently available — that means eBay, where the average price is lower than the retail price, otherwise retail pricing. We’ve sorted the following table based on the FPS per dollar spent, using the 1080p ultra performance. That will penalize cards that only have 4GB VRAM, but using 1080p medium would similarly penalize the faster GPUs since they cannot show their true grit at such low settings.

Prices are in a wild state of flux, so things can and will change quickly over the coming days. We’ll periodically update this table if and when we notice any major swings in pricing.