Skip to main content

Best Buy’s GPU price gouging marks a worrying trend

Best Buy restocked Nvidia RTX 30-series graphics cards today. With some of the best graphics cards up for grabs at list price, Best Buy has been the sole place to buy an Nvidia graphics card at a reasonable price over the past year and a half. But today, hopeful buyers weren’t met with list price GPUs.

The graphics cards sold today were part of an exclusive promotion, one only available to Best Buy’s Totaltech subscribers. This $200 per year membership offers a handful of perks — free two-day shipping and 24/7 Geek Squad support among them — and now, graphics cards are locked behind it, too.

Recommended Videos

It’s a worrying sign for the GPU market in 2022, following hot on the heels of two egregiously bad GPU releases. Signs point to the GPU shortage ending this year, but if Best Buy’s new paywall is any sign, cards won’t be any less expensive.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

A bastion of MSRP

Line outside of Best Buy for RTX restock.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

It’s not impossible to find a graphics card at list price, or at least, it wasn’t. Although few and far between, Best Buy has offered in-store restocks of RTX 30-series graphics cards for over a year, selling the coveted Founder’s Edition models at list price.

I bought my RTX 3090 at one of these restocks, and even its astronomical list price seemed quaint when stacked up against the options on eBay. Best Buy has been the only option to buy a GPU at list price since the GPU shortage began. With the new paywall, it’s now officially impossible to buy a GPU at MSRP.

This isn’t a retailer adapting to a bloated market. It’s a cash grab.

Every retailer is handling the shortage in a different way. Newegg offers a lottery that gives you a microscopic chance to overpay for a graphics card (lucky you, huh?), while Micro Center lists the few GPUs that stay in stock far above list price. Antonline is better, offering GPU bundles for more reasonable prices, but you’re still locked into buying products you may not need.

The situation is even worse for Best Buy. Every other retailer is stocking cards as normal, and prices are subject to the whim of the supply chain (a key reason prices are so high). Best Buy has an exclusive partnership with Nvidia to distribute RTX 30-series graphics cards. This isn’t a retailer adapting to a bloated market. It’s a cash grab.

This has been building

RTX 3080 graphics cards among other GPUs.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends.

The clock’s ticking. All signs point to the GPU shortage ending or at least massively improving by the end of 2022. Crypto is down, AMD and Nvidia are likely releasing new GPU generations, and supply, according to industry insiders, is starting to improve. That’s not good for AMD and Nvidia, which have both become very wealthy during the past year and a half.

AMD’s Radeon and Ryzen business is up 32% compared to last year. Nvidia’s gaming division? Up 42%. You don’t have to look any further than the massively overpriced 12GB RTX 3080 to see what’s going on here. When prices inevitably drop and demand wanes, AMD and Nvidia won’t put up record profits like they have.

For Best Buy, it’s about getting in while there’s still time. There’s no saying if Best Buy will keep up its Totaltech paywall for future GPU drops, but for the time being, it’s a way to squeeze a little extra money out of a cash cow that will dry up soon.

Only a matter of time

Given programs like Newegg Shuffle and GPU bundling, it was only a matter of time before Best Buy found a way to monetize the GPU shortage beyond list price. In this case, it’s just particularly bad. With exclusive access to Nvidia’s Founder’s Edition cards (and likely strict pricing requirements), Best Buy is forcing Totaltech simply because it can.

It’s an early sign of how the next year will play out, following two of the worst GPU releases I’ve seen (the 12GB RTX 3080 and AMD RX 6500 XT). The well of money will eventually run dry, and it seems everyone from chip designers to retailers are trying to find a way to keep it full.

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Don’t upgrade your GPU until you’ve read this
The RTX 4070 sitting on top of another GPU.

We’re on the brink of a new generation of graphics cards. AMD, Nvidia, and even Intel have all hinted that we’ll see new graphics cards this year, and if you’ve been sitting on your GPU for a while, you’ll probably be eyeing an upgrade.

Upgrading your graphics card isn’t as simple as looking up a few reviews and making a decision, though. If you get too eager to buy a shiny new GPU, you could be missing out on extra performance, better value, or even additional features. If you’re looking to upgrade your GPU soon, make sure to follow these guiding principles.
Forget the name

Read more
5 cheap graphics cards you should buy instead of the RTX 4060
Two RTX 4060 graphics cards sitting next to each other.

If you're in the market for a budget GPU, the RTX 4060 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy. It's available for a reasonable price, offers solid 1080p performance, and comes with a suite of Nvidia-exclusive features. Still, it's not the right graphics card for everyone.

As you can read in our RTX 4060 review, Nvidia's value-focused GPU has a few minor issues.  It's still a card to keep in mind if you're shopping for a budget graphics card, but we rounded up five alternatives that fill in the gaps that the RTX 4060 leaves.
AMD RX 7600

Read more
Don’t buy the RTX 3060 in 2024
The RTX 3060 installed in a gaming PC.

Nvidia's RTX 3060 is the most popular GPU around, and it's not even close. According to the latest Steam hardware survey, the 2021 GPU is in close to 7% of gaming PCs. That's a huge slice of the pie. For reference, the second most popular GPU, the RTX 2060, sits at just under 4%. It's easy to see why the GPU is popular, too. You can pick it up for between $250 and $300 -- and for even less used -- and it comes with a critical 12GB of VRAM.

It's the go-to GPU for maxed-out 1080p gaming in 2024, but based on my testing, it probably shouldn't be. The RTX 3060 is a workhorse, and for a large range of games, it's one of the best graphics cards you can buy. When it comes to the latest, most demanding games, however, the RTX 3060 struggles to keep up.
The litmus test

Read more