In the midst continued pricing problems for graphics cards around the world, a new rumor has surfaced surrounding Nvidia’s upcoming next-generation 2000 series architecture. Purportedly, Nvidia could raise the traditional manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) of top-end cards from $700, to as much as $1,500 at launch.
2017 was a difficult year for anyone hoping to upgrade their gaming PC. Although Nvidia’s GTX 10 series and AMD’s Vega graphics cards offered the best gaming performance we’ve ever seen, they were almost impossible to find and even when they were, reasonable prices were nowhere to be seen. And blame the cryptocurrency miners all you like, the problems aren’t likely to end anytime soon.
Indeed they may even be exacerbated in the short term, as Nvidia could cement the insane price hikes by setting its MSRP for the next-generation 2000 series graphics cards much higher than past generations. TweakTown is reporting that in order to prevent it losing out with direct sales, Nvidia could raise the price of its flagship GTX 2080 from $700 to around $1,500.
Although anonymous sources kick-started this rumor, it’s also based on speculation linked with the existing common cost of around $1,200 for the GTX 1080Ti. It could be that Nvidia opts for a more conservative price hike and aims for just north of $1,000 — it would be hard to maintain its claim that it puts gamers first by encouraging huge price tags — but with no official announcement as of yet, it’s hard to be sure of anything.
What we do know though, is that Nvidia is looking to mitigate some of the impact of ethereum miners buying up graphics card stock, by launching miner-focused graphics cards. AMD is doing the same, with both manufacturers looking to debut cards without video ports with much shorter manufacturer warranties at some point in 2018. Whether that will be enough to give gamers access to reasonable graphics card prices again remains to be seen.
That’s an important step to take, as even though cryptocurrency mining helped propel both major graphics card manufacturers to strong revenue in 2017, it could lead to fewer PC gamers in the long run, which both firms consider their graphics-card bread and butter. Without a viable upgrade path, gamers may opt to switch to 4k-capable consoles like the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro instead.
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