Let’s hope these sub-MSRP GPUs in Germany are a sign of things to come
A graphics card for less than MSRP? What’s going on?
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What a strange day it is to see a graphics card selling for less than MSRP. As of yesterday, theAMD Radeon RX 6500 XTcould be found at German retailer Mindfactory’s online store for €169—that’s around 35% less than the recommended retail price.
What’s off about the whole thing, is that thatTom’s Hardwarenoted the discounted price only showed up after some cookie-based shenanigans revealed it, which leads us to minor a warning about purchasing GPUs online. We’ll get to that in a moment.
In the US and UK, the recommended retail price for an RX 6500 XT is around $199/£179. Sadly it doesn’t appear the US is on the same wavelength as the forward-thinking Europeans in terms of GPU prices, as a quick check ofNeweggandB&H Photorevealed.
As for the UK, you can find a single-fanPowerColor RX 6500 XT for £180at Overclockers, and hotukdeals has a dual-fanMSI RX 6500 XT going for £190. That’s a little better, but for a card we scored a 47 in the review you’d think companies would be happy to give a little discount.
What the prices in Germany and the UK might point toward, however, is the start if a downward trend in GPU prices. We’ve already had news that apparentlyNvidia told its partners it will be lowering manufacturing costs, though the respective savings appear to only apply to system integrators (SIs) or PC builders, less so to the public.
Still, we’ve got 2022 pegged as the year GPU prices come back down to relative normality. In January, we already sawGPUs getting cheaper in 2022, and there’s talk thatGPU pricing could drop down to ‘normal’ by the summer.
It could be that we’ll even start to see a downward shift in the price of thebest graphics cards, rather than the alreadysupposedbudget cards of this current generation.
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Either way, Tom’s Hardware encourages you to check around a site before confirming your purchase on a new GPU.
“We visited this special offers section from the RX 6500 XT search results page, which had the same cards listed at a higher price. However, on returning to the search results page (with seven different models available) we noticed the prices had dipped to match the special offers.”
So as tempting as it is to gobble up a GPU the second you find one for sale, be cautious, keep your wits about you. There could be deals lurking in the back pages somewhere.
Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she’s waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.
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