It’s good news for most of us today, but not for the scalpers. Normally, when Nvidia launches a new graphics card, it’s all chaos and the GPU is out of stock for a while after the initial release date. Scalpers are to blame for that, at least in part, because they buy out the GPUs and then send them back into the wild at an elevated price. This happened in the case of both the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080.
However, the RTX 4080 doesn’t seem to be quite as popular a pick as the Nvidia flagship. Based on eBay sales data, scalpers might actually be struggling to make a profit on the new GPU, and the GPU market as a whole might have something to do with it.
Nvidia’s RTX 4080 was released just last week, and of course, both regular users and scalpers were ready to buy the GPU the moment it hit the market. However, when a new Nvidia GPU first drops, it will often have inflated prices and scarce availability for a while. This time around, the GPU is readily available at online retailers such as Newegg and Amazon .
The prices depend on the model; there are some crazy options priced at $2,400 and above, but there are also cards near MSRP that are available from regular retailers as opposed to scalpers. This seemingly lower interest in the GPU is sure to take a hit on scalpers, who often capitalize on the fact that customers want to get their new GPU right now and don’t want to wait for restocks.
Tom’s Hardware looked into the sales numbers on eBay. The platform is a scalper’s go-to, and while these numbers won’t tell us the whole story, they still speak volumes about the kind of hype the scalpers can be counting on as far as the RTX 4080 goes.
According to the data, the RTX 4080 is not selling well at all on eBay, especially if you compare it to the RTX 4090. The flagship is outselling the RTX 4080 3.4 to 1, and only eight RTX 4080s per day are being sold in the U.S. This is the first week since the launch of the card, so we can compare that to the RTX 4090, which sold around 64 units per day during its first week.
On average, an RTX 4080 sold on eBay costs around 30% more than the recommended list price. In contrast, the RTX 4090 skyrocketed to 54% over MSRP during the first week of sales. As it stands now, scalpers are not making much of a profit on the RTX 4080.
The RTX 4090 is doing better than its younger sibling. Both cards were expensive (and arguably overpriced) from the get-go, but given the pricing of the RTX 4080, the RTX 4090 can be viewed as a better deal even though it’s expensive. If anything, the launch of the RTX 4080 might be pushing more people to buy an RTX 4090, driving the sales of the flagship up instead of down.
On the other hand, perhaps people just don’t want to buy GPUs right now — that’s certainly what it seems like if you look at the latest GPU sales report prepared by Jon Peddie Research. The GPU market as a whole is seeing some big losses this quarter.
The sales of graphics cards, both integrated and discrete, dropped by 10.5% quarter-to-quarter and a massive 25.1% year-over-year. Sales of desktop GPUs dropped by 15.43%. The worst drop of all affected the shipments of notebook GPUs — with a 30% decrease, this was the most significant drop since the 2009 recession.
While this is bad news for the market at large, it’s good news for those of us who are hoping to build or buy a new PC sometime soon. With the GPU shortage long gone, we’re now looking at an abundance of cards, and previous-gen offerings are reasonably priced. As for the current generation, Nvidia’s GPUs are expensive from the start, but AMD may be able to shake things up with the upcoming RX 7900 XTX.
