Could we be finally seeing some relief in graphics card prices? With an official Asus price cut en route, perhaps so.
Asus said Monday in an emailed statement that it was planning to cut the official price of its RTX 30-series cards beginning in April. The manufacturer didn’t cite any change in demand or supply, however, just a change in how the U.S. applies tariffs to Chinese imports.
“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,” Asus said in a statement. “Asus is among the first to pass these savings on to its consumers. Lower prices will affect entry level GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3060, mid-range RTX 3070 and high performance RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 graphics cards.”
Even better, Asus actually told us how much it planned to cut prices: “Consumers should expect prices to decline up to 25 percent on different models throughout the springtime,” the firm said.
Consumers will appreciate Asus’ decision to lower GPU card prices — not only because GPUs have been almost impossible to come by, but also that the laptop manufacturer was one of the first companies to raise GPU prices in January 2021, followed by others like eVGA a week or two later. Now we’ll have to see if other card makers follow suit or if they’ll simply use the lower tariffs to squeeze even more profits out of the market. We also don’t know whether the lower tariffs will make cards more accessible to end users.
Nevertheless, the prices for graphics cards are officially falling, and that’s a good thing.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor
As PCWorld's senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.