The prices of graphics cards have been dropping for a while now. Over at retailers like Newegg and Amazon, most GPUs are already going at or below their MSRPs. At resellers like eBay, higher-end NVIDIA SKUs like the RTX 3080 and the 3090 are being sold as much as 50% under their sticker prices. In the first quarter, the price of the RTX 3080 was hovering around the $1,200 mark, roughly 2x over its launch price of $699.
With the price of Ethereum dropping under $1,000, revenue from GPU mining has dropped to unprofitable levels. This means you’re better off buying Ether rather than mining it, even though its value has been consistently dropping. The shift to proof of stake should effectively handicap these compute-heavy rigs. NVIDIA has also decided to cut shipments of certain Ampere parts to avoid excessive channel inventory while also delaying the launch of its next-gen RTX 40 series cards to late 2022 or even early 2023.
