Lori Grunin/CNET
The past two years has been a frustrating mess of scalpers, bots and expensive Best Buy Totaltech memberships actings as intermediaries between GPU buyers and a shiny new RTX 3080. Well, after months of frantically clicking “Add to Cart” buttons to little avail, the GPU shortage might finally be coming to a close.
Websites such as Best Buy, Overclockers and Micro Center are showing the latest Nvidia and AMD GPUs in stock, as reported earlier Monday by PC Gamer. This means that as long as stock is available for buyers near their local stores, they can go in and pick one up.
Not only that, but board partners such as Asus have said that they will begin cutting prices by 25% starting in April.
“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,” an Asus representative told Tom’s Hardware.
Asus didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Unfortunately, current prices at Best Buy for GPUs remain high. This is likely due in part to tariffs, but also added cost from Nvidia board partners who have also been struggling with supply chain shortages. For example, an Nvidia-branded RTX 3080 reference card has an MSRP of $699. For board partners such as Gigabyte and MSI, both can slap on any power delivery and cooling solution it’d like and charge whatever feels is appropriate. A Gigabyte RTX 3080 carries a price of $1,249. That’s a 79% increase. For this reason, many GPU buyers have been holding out for reference Nvidia cards to come back in stock, which has made demand for these cards among the highest. It should be noted, not all board partners charge as high as others.