TR Forums

defaultluser wrote:

Yup. Those perpetually falling discrete graphics card shipments have finally started rising again.

Well, that's enough to demonstrate I'm wrong about Y-o-Y, but it is still an awfully small peg to hang the hat of "several more years until prices stabilize" on.

defaultluser wrote:

The spikes in retail card demand (month-to-month) are incredibly unstable, but there's clearly more demand than can be met.

It's not even month to month though. Things were completely stable a month ago in regards to 1070s, now, basically this week, they are double the price.

There's more demand than can be met *TODAY*, next quarter, next month, next week, who knows?

defaultluser wrote:

I was with you and thought miners were a complete joke, until the last year of zero availability OF GDDR5 NVIDIA CARDS. A GPU maker that has FIVE TIMES the production capacity of AMD couldn't keep up with miner demand for the entire year.

I don't think the miners are a joke, so I don't know where you are coming from with that...?

I also don't know where "last year zero availability" for "Nvidia GDDR5" comes from. I just told you, I almost bought one at $450 a month ago.

I mean that stuck in my memory because I almost did it, but more vaguely I can still recall it being roughly the same price for months before that: I don't buy hardware without thinking about it for awhile first. I occasionally throw stuff together on newegg just to keep a rough idea of what "new" will cost me, and I wasn't remotely surprised by 1070 at ~450. I'd hazard that it was likely around that for the entire Q4 of 2017, but I don't have any evidence of that off-handedly.

Even previous to that, I think it was around 600 for a custom one in mid-summer? I remember grumbling about that

So....?

EDIT:

https://techreport.com/news/32710/rx-ve ... spot-check

Techreport wrote:

However, GeForce GTX 1070 prices are also in the midst of a re-entry of late. Surveying all of Newegg's GTX 1070 offerings shows that it's possible to get one of those cards for as little as $400 right now, just $20 over Nvidia's suggested price at launch. Most custom GTX 1070s seem to top out at about $450 at the moment, so buyers have a wide range

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3202193 ... upply.html

Mid-October 18, 2017: 400-450
Very Late November: 400-450 (as I probably picked a custom one like TR did)

And the grumbling was in August where people were like "you might as well get a 1080" in reference to 1070, so it would seem that we were in the 500-600 range at that point.

defaultluser wrote:

And if we haven't sated demand after a year, expect another year or two at the very least. Despite shipping a few million cards more than last year, there's lots of room for that graph to grow.

There wasn't a mismatch of demand/supply at (roughly) MSRP just 40 days ago. Today, you cannot find a 1070 anywaynear MRSP. I'm not taking 50-80 over the launch price, I am talking double MRSP+50-80 that.

I mean, this just happened, to say it yet again?

Price histories:
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/v ... e-gtx-1070

meerkt wrote:

Price histories:
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/v ... e-gtx-1070

We need to know availability too, though. There are plenty of $450 cards at Newegg, but only the $900 USD ones seem to be in stock.

Glorious, I think that shows just how much prices have changed. When all of the 1070TI cards that are out of stock sit at under $500 and a number of 1070 TI cards are in stock but sit around $900 shows just how crazy prices are. Even used cards on Ebay are going for extreme prices. Given my RX 390 was giving me fits over the last couple of days (going to black as the screen shut down) I was intently looking at prices/performance. Luckily switching to an older driver seems to have stopped the worst of the crashes so I'm able to hold off on buying a new card at this time. My hope is that when the new cards come out this summer we will see a drop in prices for the existing cards.

Glorious wrote:

meerkt wrote:

Price histories:
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/v ... e-gtx-1070

We need to know availability too, though. There are plenty of $450 cards at Newegg, but only the $900 USD ones seem to be in stock.

Exactly. That graph shows $850 for a 1080 Ti, but that's useless. You can't even buy one from ebay for less than $1,000 today. Retailers are $1,050 or higher. Regular 1080's are now $800 at newegg. How disgusting.

The Egg wrote:

I also disagree that it's "not going away". The bubble could pop at any given moment, or mining algorithms could suddenly change and make GPUs non-viable. This would leave them holding the bag on a huge amount of unsold inventory.

It certainly could happen, but people have been predicting the imminent demise of GPU-based mining ever since the first LTC valuation spike back in 2013. And yes, people were bitching about GPU prices and making hilarious amounts of money selling used Radeons on ebay back then too. I predict that no matter what happens in the next few months, another five years from now we'll be arguing about a slightly different set of altcoins and how they're affecting GPU prices. At least the price jacking won't seem as bad since a stick of RAM will be like $800.

None of this is at all new, it only seems new to PC enthusiasts because they were largely insulated by several years of thoroughly uninteresting product releases from both NV and AMD. GPU boombust has been a thing since the days when Windows XP was still officially supported.

defaultluser wrote:

Yeah, this makes me more-and-more likely to bite on a GTX 1060 6GB the next time the prices fall below the stratosphere. There's no rush to release desktop Volta yet, and still no signs of life from the GDDR6 camp, other than promises of May-ish.

1060s really aren't that jacked up. Lots of them available for $280 to $300, which is only slightly higher than the MSRP.

Glorious wrote:

This is not theory, I am telling you about my own lying eyes.

I totally agree. My point was that prices haven't fallen back to pre-mining-craze levels and I don't think they are likely to do so any time soon. The occasional sale or lucky find of in-stock cards that people like to mention whenever this comes up ("I found a 1070 for $400 on black friday!") doesn't mean prices were back to normal for any significant amount of time. Prices have been inflated consistently for a year now, it just varies how much they're inflated.

Convert wrote:

I kind of laugh because at this point, I'm making more money than the miners!

I sold an RX 470 before the first spike and was annoyed at myself for that. Sold an RX 580 just a week ago to break even and was happy with that. But if I'd held on a bit longer I likely could have made some solid profit.

I think the real ROI would be investing some actual cash in a new cryptocurrency then flipping it. Friend of mine dropped $2000 or so into ethereum over the summer. Prior to that spike in mid-december he'd basically doubled his money. Now? Crap, if I'd bought some eth at $50 each and could exchange them for over $1000, you can bet I'd be cashing in those chips. Sure it might go higher, but when you hit a 20 multiplier, I don't think anyone would say you didn't do well.

If this becomes a regular thing one can get into the used hardware business. Wait for a crash and buy up a truckload of GPUs, then sell them in the next bubble. I could've made some nice spending cash if I'd bought up some of the listings of 4x+ GPU lots being tossed onto craigslist during the market correction a few months ago.

Kougar wrote:

If this becomes a regular thing one can get into the used hardware business. Wait for a crash and buy up a truckload of GPUs, then sell them in the next bubble. I could've made some nice spending cash if I'd bought up some of the listings of 4x+ GPU lots being tossed onto craigslist during the market correction a few months ago.

Risky. A new gen of GPU might come out before the next bubble inflates.

just brew it! wrote:

Risky. A new gen of GPU might come out before the next bubble inflates.

It only took three months for the last one, and 1080 Ti cards used to not be affected. Now they're selling with 50% markups.

If this bubble craziness gets much worse people will get into the hardware side and make it worse by scalping GPUs. Even more so than they already are, because there was a considerable number of people that bought up the first shipment of Vega and scalped them on ebay for a sizeable profit. The more people profit from it the more people are going to do it the next time around.

As for new GPU launches, they have become slow and predictable. AMD already stated Navi won't even be shipping this year.

What is Nvidia's roadmap like for 2018? It sucks that AMD has no replacement planned for the RX580 right now. It's a solid card at the MSRP it should have been at, and a huge upgrade over my 7950. Part of me wonders if AMD isn't doing a process node improvement on the RX580 because they are just milking it.

DragonDaddyBear wrote:

Part of me wonders if AMD isn't doing a process node improvement on the RX580 because they are just milking it.

Maybe they will? AMD is using the process node half-steps on its processors already. The fab is likely capacity limited on its newest proces node, but I wouldn't be surprised if AMD eventually got a shrunk 580 out by the second half of this year. They kinda have to.

just brew it! wrote:

Kougar wrote:

If this becomes a regular thing one can get into the used hardware business. Wait for a crash and buy up a truckload of GPUs, then sell them in the next bubble. I could've made some nice spending cash if I'd bought up some of the listings of 4x+ GPU lots being tossed onto craigslist during the market correction a few months ago.

Risky. A new gen of GPU might come out before the next bubble inflates.

Yup, that's the difficult part. Lots of money was made selling 290s in the 2014 rush, but not so much in 2016 rush because the 480 was so much better. AMD/NV should be able to get reasonably close though, because any company with more than about 100 employees has market analysts whose job it is to predict the future. As much as it pains me to admit it, companies actually do need more than engineers in order to be successful and this is one of those things.

What irks me is that this has indeed being going on long enough with enough impact on sales that a non-trivial portion of design ideas, feature-budget, time etc... is going to be put towards this purpose.

And, from my (ok ok ok yes biased) point of view, any amount of time dedicated to preventing even severe regressions on Dagger-Hashimoto, CryptoNote, Equihash, etc.. performance is better spent elsewhere.

And that's ignoring the insanity it is doing to supply channel.

I repeat:

1) 18 month old cards (that I would totally just buy right now for ~$350 or so, the price they should be at) are being sold FOR WELL OVER DOUBLE MSRP.
2) I can't buy a better card for the same price I spent OVER THREE YEARS AGO.

---

THIS IS MADNESS!

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies!

Rivers and seas boiling!

Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!

The dead rising from the grave!

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

MADNESSSSSSSS!!!!

---

and, yes, I'm mad about it too lol.

plz stop, I want to buy a new card this year.

Glorious wrote:

plz stop, I want to buy a new card this year.

Amen!

Glorious wrote:

plz stop, I want to buy a new card this year.

Me too... I really want to replace my GTX970. Since I play a lot of VR a high end card is a must. I wish I had the money to buy the GTX 1080 back in November. It will be a month or 2 before I have the scratch to buy one, hopefully the mining craze will hit a lull.

Absolute cheapest 1060 6GB @ newegg is now $540.

Edit: Great, 1080 Ti cards a few minutes away from hitting $1,699.99 at newegg. I'm half tempted to buy that last card at $1,200 just to flip it.

In December 2016, I shelled out $260 for a Geforce 1060 6 GB that was on sale at the local MicroCenter. I cringed a bit about the cost (I usually would go in the 1050 price range), and wondered whether it wouldn't just make more sense to wait another six months for prices to drop further. After all, it's computer hardware, prices always fall pretty quickly (barring natural disasters), right?

Reading this, I'm extra glad that I bought the card when I did.

PSA: For the Ethereum miners out there who aren't following the ETH developer news. Ethereum is going to stop being PoW and be PoS with the Casper/Constantinople update "sometime in 2018" which I would predict to be easily in 1H 2018. Not that you can't switch to a different PoW coin once that happens, but the days of mining ETH are limited.

Thank GOD I found a Gigabyte GTX 1070 Ti just before Christmas for $450. If I'd stuck to my original plan and waited until after Christmas, I'd be 100% out of luck.

This is insanity. No other way to put it.

Count yourselves lucky! I've been told Fry's Electronics shelves are bare unless you want a 1050 or 3GB 1060's. There literally are no more direct sellers, just third party sellers remaining. It's become a true scalpers market, any new supply is just being bought up for mining or to be resold at this point.

You know there is a problem when the local PC B&M chain is running out of cards, and has raised prices to match the ebay going rates. The only way this feedback cycle will stop is if cryptomining crashes or NVIDIA releases a massive surge in supply. Neither of which I see happening anytime soon.

Well. Did anyone happen to notice that 4GB 1050ti and RX560 cards are starting to sell for over $200? The miners have started reaching down to the budget cards, it seems.

Not really thrilled about this. Now anyone who wants to buy a new video card, even a "cheap" one, for actually playing games basically can't. If you're sitting on a $400 upgrade budget you might as well buy a console and some games, because your options appear to be overpriced 1050ti or nothing (since 1060s and RX 570s are selling for $500+ now).

At least "closed box" systems like laptops haven't been affected by this, so if you want a gaming laptop or a pre-built PC I guess that's still an option. But if you're upgrading or building your own, it sucks.

Also, NOW I'm a little annoyed that I sold my RX 580 when I did. If I'd waited a few more days I could have likely gotten double for it. Ah well.

The local Microcenter is listing some 6GB 1060s for $300 and EVGA 1070s for $450-470, not gonna lie I kinda feel like going down and getting one. I really want to wait for Volta though, because my 960 still does most of what I need and I'm not into most AAAs due to my DRM stance and generally being more of an RPG guy. Suppose I could mine something with it...it is the right season to be wanting a little space heater, after all, and will be until sometime in late March. Trouble is I'm lazy, plus my innate ability to do it wrong like a boss would guarantee that if I start mining again the entire market segment really would crash and burn. Eh, I'll think about it.

edit: Radeon 580s for $290 for the AMD inclined. MSRP was $230 and this is one of the heavily OC'd Asus models. Seriously guys, just go to Microcenter or get a friend/relative/whatever to do it for you. Their in-store stock is a moving target but I don't think they've ever boosted prices by more than ~$50 during a GPU shortage, only imposed quantity limits.

Looking on the bright side, I no longer feel bad about paying full $499.99 MSRP (with free shipping) for the Radeon RX Vega64 on October 30. Now I feel bad because I didn't buy a dozen of 'em.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xkVBD3 ... 275-02-20g

The insane price run-up on add-in graphics cards caused by the mining bubble will make Intel's pricing on the Kaby Lake G APUs look much more attractive if Kaby Lake G makes it to market before the inevitable crash when the bubble bursts.

Unfortunately, I think gamers are just screwed until the crypto bubble pops. Consumer GPUs are the most cost-effective source of raw compute cycles with access to lots of fast RAM, and this is not likely to change.

If I had more time on my hands, I'd get myself an FPGA and talk to my EE coworkers about the best way to get a bunch of RAM hooked up to it for running the newer altcoin hash algorithms. But that would be loads of effort, and we've established that I'm too lazy to even set up a normal mining rig.

NovusBogus wrote:

If I had more time on my hands, I'd get myself an FPGA and talk to my EE coworkers about the best way to get a bunch of RAM hooked up to it for running the newer altcoin hash algorithms. But that would be loads of effort, and we've established that I'm too lazy to even set up a normal mining rig.

I've done FPGA/DRAM stuff before (on the FPGA programming side... I'm not a EE so I didn't do the board design). It's a moderate PITA but not rocket science, since the FPGA vendors have canned logic blocks you can use to implement the low-level DRAM interfaces (and some FPGAs even come with hard-wired DRAM interface logic). I doubt it would be any more cost-effective than an off-the-shelf GPU though, once you factor in the cost of the custom hardware and the DRAM chips.

Well along the FPGA lines, there are the Xeons which are supposed to be coming in 2018 with an on package FPGA. That wouldn't require any sort board engineering since they're be using existing motherboards. These parts have been in Intel's pipeline for ~4 years as they first talked about it in 2014 before purchasing Altera in 2015. I have no doubts that what Intel is proposing will be faster than a pure CPU implementation but faster than a GPU solution is completely unknown. I don't think miners will go this direction even if it ends up being significantly faster due to the premium Intel will charge for the chip and higher initial platform cost. Cost to run the Xeon + FPGA combo is an unknown too so it may lose in performance/watt too.

Speaking of on-package and GPU solutions, I wonder if the mining craze will start absorbing Kaby Lake-G systems for mining. Clocks and ALU count are both down compared to Vega 64 but the HBM is still there which helps mining.

the wrote:

Well along the FPGA lines, there are the Xeons which are supposed to be coming in 2018 with an on package FPGA. That wouldn't require any sort board engineering since they're be using existing motherboards. These parts have been in Intel's pipeline for ~4 years as they first talked about it in 2014 before purchasing Altera in 2015. I have no doubts that what Intel is proposing will be faster than a pure CPU implementation but faster than a GPU solution is completely unknown. I don't think miners will go this direction even if it ends up being significantly faster due to the premium Intel will charge for the chip and higher initial platform cost. Cost to run the Xeon + FPGA combo is an unknown too so it may lose in performance/watt too.

Yeah, I suspect this will be a non-starter from a bang/buck perspective, but that's just a guess. I could be wrong.

the wrote:

Speaking of on-package and GPU solutions, I wonder if the mining craze will start absorbing Kaby Lake-G systems for mining. Clocks and ALU count are both down compared to Vega 64 but the HBM is still there which helps mining.

I'm sure some people will try it on their laptops when not using them an probably cook the motherboard in the process. I've yet to see any laptops with KLG chips that had a robust cooling system for sustained loads.