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I am in the "i hate this" group, but man, I would be lying if I didn't say I'm tempted to sell my 1080 for a tidy profit.

I've had enough. Bought Xbox One X last week. This maddness is going on for too long. And RAM isn't cheap as well.

What a bad time for PC gaming.

gargar wrote:

I've had enough. Bought Xbox One X last week. This maddness is going on for too long. And RAM isn't cheap as well.

What a bad time for PC gaming.

If I were looking for a new gaming setup, I'd probably do the same thing. What a bonkers situation.

Kougar wrote:

Used R9 380 4GB cards are now selling quickly at $275 on ebay, and are about to hit the $300 listings. For a used, non-X, three year old rebadge of a five year old meh AMD GPU. Boggles the mind.

To be fair, the 380 was at least introduced in 2014 as the 285, a replacement for the 7970 / 280(x) series. It's still a scandalous price, and I say this as a guy who felt lucky to grab a 2 gig Radeon 7850 for $95 earlier this week... This is all ridiculous.

gargar wrote:

I've had enough. Bought Xbox One X last week. This maddness is going on for too long. And RAM isn't cheap as well.

What a bad time for PC gaming.

And you wrote one of your 8 posts in the past 13 years to say it.

Yeah, it's nuts. Fortunately all the games I play still behave fine on the hardware I have, but I'd probably do the same otherwise.

Massdrop is intermittently selling blocks of graphics cards for around MSRP. If you are subscribed, they send an announcement email. And if you're not actually browsing your email when it's sent, they're all sold old by the time you can click on the link. Today was a 1080 Ti for $749, Yesterday a 1070...

gargar wrote:

I've had enough. Bought Xbox One X last week. This maddness is going on for too long. And RAM isn't cheap as well.

What a bad time for PC gaming.

Yeah... I don't think people realize just how much of this is going on. I've seen a lot of posts on the EVGA forums from people that have said they gave up and bought a console instead. Seen it in Telegram groups, Reddit, and even from two of my own friends. Admittedly one was already a console gamer and just wanted a GPU to play a new PC game, but still it means console gamers cannot even switch to PC gaming had they wanted to, and it's been this way for over six months with no end in sight.

Crazy about the Massdrops for GPUs. I don't suppose there is a way to see if any GPU drops are happening in advance? That site is a pain in the ass to browse, or even search with.

Kougar wrote:

Crazy about the Massdrops for GPUs. I don't suppose there is a way to see if any GPU drops are happening in advance? That site is a pain in the ass to browse, or even search with.

No offense, but I typed "GPU" into the search box a single time and it brought up all the recent GPU drops. I'm not sure I would call that a PITA to browse. I'm not saying it is the best organized site in the world, but PITA might be stretching the truth a bit. And no, there isn't really a way to see future drops. Just request GPU drops as often as you can and eventually they'll get there.

DancinJack wrote:

I am in the "i hate this" group, but man, I would be lying if I didn't say I'm tempted to sell my 1080 for a tidy profit.

Yeah... Even the old stuff commands a premium. I had an HD7970 laying around after I upgraded last September (turned out to be a good "window" to upgrade!). Went on ebay for about $40 less than I paid for it new in 2013 (not counting the tax I paid when buying new).

DancinJack wrote:

No offense, but I typed "GPU" into the search box a single time and it brought up all the recent GPU drops. I'm not sure I would call that a PITA to browse. I'm not saying it is the best organized site in the world, but PITA might be stretching the truth a bit. And no, there isn't really a way to see future drops. Just request GPU drops as often as you can and eventually they'll get there.

Type your search into the box. It gives you a popup results list. That list vanishes the moment you click a single listing. You have to retype the query and click search again, and again, and again, just to check every result you are interested in. If they don't want to give users a static list to browse then that's fine, but at least allow users to ctrl+click links into a new tab without forcing them to repeat the search query five times over. It's a really stupid design.

Thanks for answering the question though. Another one occurred to me, are drops secheduled at for a set time in the morning, or do they go active randomly throughout the day? Didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

Kougar wrote:

Thanks for answering the question though. Another one occurred to me, are drops secheduled at for a set time in the morning, or do they go active randomly throughout the day? Didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

There are timers on them, though IIRC they're usually listed in time of "X days left." Obviously it's different when the drops are so popular that they run out of the items though. Just keep requesting GPU drops, and you'll get notified if and when they actually do them.

For those of you thinking about buying stuff on Massdrop. Just be aware, the process is longer than you would want for the most part. The drop lasts a few days or a week, then there is an in-between time where Massdrop gets stuff ready (can be a while), then they finally ship stuff, usually a while later, and it's not always super-fast shipping. So if you're looking to get a GPU from Massdrop in five days time like you could from Newegg or Amazon, be prepared to, y'know, not get that.

DancinJack wrote:

Kougar wrote:

Thanks for answering the question though. Another one occurred to me, are drops secheduled at for a set time in the morning, or do they go active randomly throughout the day? Didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

There are timers on them, though IIRC they're usually listed in time of "X days left." Obviously it's different when the drops are so popular that they run out of the items though. Just keep requesting GPU drops, and you'll get notified if and when they actually do them.

For those of you thinking about buying stuff on Massdrop. Just be aware, the process is longer than you would want for the most part. The drop lasts a few days or a week, then there is an in-between time where Massdrop gets stuff ready (can be a while), then they finally ship stuff, usually a while later, and it's not always super-fast shipping. So if you're looking to get a GPU from Massdrop in five days time like you could from Newegg or Amazon, be prepared to, y'know, not get that.

With these drops lasting less than half an hour, no more than 2 weeks on average.

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... cy-miners/

Miners are ruining everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

DancinJack wrote:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/now-even-youtube-serves-ads-with-cpu-draining-cryptocurrency-miners/

Miners are ruining everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

Holy smoke, it has recently infected Youtube servers like a cancer. Any video with 50K or more views or 5K or more subscribers have been infected by Crypto-currency mining non-sense. My Vega RX 64 for some strange reason goes up to 1.6Ghz and GPU utilization is through the roof, while my private youtube videos (no subscribers and a few views) barely make a hit. Coincidence? I think not. A week ago the same popular videos barely utillize my GPU.

Someone I know just started mining over the last week, apparently already made ~$130 off of it. Cost him ~5.5% to convert his coins into digital funds. I point this out only because of all the credit card talk... anyone can receive credit card payments via paypal for 2.9% plus $0.30 USD and it's then free to transfer to a bank. I have yet to find coins that can beat that rate digital payments into fiat funds. Which is why I don't see cryptocurrency ever fulfilling its former goal of free, or cheap micro-payments, or at least not in any of the current incarnations.

DancinJack wrote:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/now-even-youtube-serves-ads-with-cpu-draining-cryptocurrency-miners/

Miners are ruining everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

If scammers can profit off it, they will do it. At least Google got it resolved in two hours.

Kougar wrote:

Which is why I don't see cryptocurrency ever fulfilling its former goal of free, or cheap micro-payments, or at least not in any of the current incarnations.

People who were claiming it would be free were either lying or delusional, as the costs of operating the network need to be covered somehow. Cheap may yet be achievable; but probably not with anything that relies on proof-of-work.

These prices are killing me. I currently have a HD7950 and just bought a new Ultrawide Freesync monitor. I was hoping to find a card that supports freesync until I can afford to buy a vega 64 but I can't find any cards for a reasonable price.

Gandolf wrote:

These prices are killing me. I currently have a HD7950 and just bought a new Ultrawide Freesync monitor. I was hoping to find a card that supports freesync until I can afford to buy a vega 64 but I can't find any cards for a reasonable price.

But dude, who are you to deprive these guys of making marginal profits by screwing up multiple industries? Let's have some heart for these idiot miners please.

You guys will have to excuse some of my ignorance and lack of knowledge here, but I have a couple of questions, and then a proposition. First...

1. Which specific cryptocurrencies are causing the run on GPUs?
2. Of those currencies, who controls or has the ability to make changes to, the algorithms used, the difficulty increases, if/when they change from PoW to PoS, etc??
3. How would we go about contacting them?

Here's where I'm going with this: Someone (ideally a group of people) ought to appeal to those in charge of the most problematic currencies, and make them aware of the damage they're causing to the GPU and gaming industries. They also need to be made aware of how their intent behind making currencies ASIC-resistant has completely and utterly failed (as proven by the current cost of GPUs, and complete destruction of their supply).

While it's true that there's no law requiring them to listen, it's still worth trying, and it doesn't cost anything to ask. It's possible that many of these guys are off in their own little bubble, and aren't even aware of some of the stuff that's happening (or the extent of it).

I'll pretty much guarantee you that they are already aware of the effects they are having on the GPU industry, and don't care.

As far as they are concerned, it is someone else's problem.

just brew it! wrote:

I'll pretty much guarantee you that they are already aware of the effects they are having on the GPU industry, and don't care.

As far as they are concerned, it is someone else's problem.

My response would be that they all "cared" enough to go out of their way to make the algorithm ASIC-resistant (which caused the problem in the first place), so they did care about the philosophical differences; at least initially. There's also a large difference between being vaguely aware of a problem, and hearing from the people it's directly affecting. Even if it's only a 1% chance, it's worth a shot.

Gandolf wrote:

These prices are killing me. I currently have a HD7950 and just bought a new Ultrawide Freesync monitor. I was hoping to find a card that supports freesync until I can afford to buy a vega 64 but I can't find any cards for a reasonable price.

Looks like used HD 7950's sell for up to $150 shipped on eBay. Not going to put much of a dent in the cost of a new card, but it's still something

The Egg, it's well beyond that point now. There are 1494 cryptocurrencies already. They utilize a range of different hashes and I assume the vast majority were created by different people and/or groups. Ethereum is the latest favorite coin behind the craze, but there are others.

The Egg wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I'll pretty much guarantee you that they are already aware of the effects they are having on the GPU industry, and don't care.

As far as they are concerned, it is someone else's problem.

My response would be that they all "cared" enough to go out of their way to make the algorithm ASIC-resistant (which caused the problem in the first place), so they did care about the philosophical differences; at least initially. There's also a large difference between being vaguely aware of a problem, and hearing from the people it's directly affecting. Even if it's only a 1% chance, it's worth a shot.

The whole point of making it ASIC-resistant was to level the playing field by making it possible for people with widely available consumer hardware to participate on an even footing, instead of letting the ASIC miners have a near-monopoly. The use of consumer GPUs is a feature, not a bug!

just brew it! wrote:

The whole point of making it ASIC-resistant was to level the playing field by making it possible for people with widely available consumer hardware to participate on an even footing, instead of letting the ASIC miners have a near-monopoly. The use of consumer GPUs is a feature, not a bug!

I know. And now that "widely available consumer hardware" is no longer widely available, and prices are in the stratosphere, meaning the average person can no longer participate on an even footing. It's no different than if they were using ASICs, except for the unintended side-effect of destroying the GPU and PC gaming industry.

Kougar wrote:

The Egg, it's well beyond that point now. There are 1494 cryptocurrencies already. They utilize a range of different hashes and I assume the vast majority were created by different people and/or groups. Ethereum is the latest favorite coin behind the craze, but there are others.

Understood, but I imagine that the majority of those currencies occupy a very small percentage of the pie, and there's probably 3-5 currencies causing 85% of the GPU mining problem (random numbers used as an example).

Further, if we were to convince 1-2 of the big players to make changes due to the damage they're causing, others may follow suit.

The Egg wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

The whole point of making it ASIC-resistant was to level the playing field by making it possible for people with widely available consumer hardware to participate on an even footing, instead of letting the ASIC miners have a near-monopoly. The use of consumer GPUs is a feature, not a bug!

I know. And now that "widely available consumer hardware" is no longer widely available, and prices are in the stratosphere, meaning the average person can no longer participate on an even footing. It's no different than if they were using ASICs, except for the unintended side-effect of destroying the GPU and PC gaming industry.

I disagree that it is "no different". The cryptocurrency designers achieved their goal -- they got a lot more people to participate in their networks. So why would they want to go back to making it easy for the ASIC miners?

There's no other viable alternative to GPUs for massive quantities of cheap, widely available compute cycles.

just brew it! wrote:

The Egg wrote:

I know. And now that "widely available consumer hardware" is no longer widely available, and prices are in the stratosphere, meaning the average person can no longer participate on an even footing. It's no different than if they were using ASICs, except for the unintended side-effect of destroying the GPU and PC gaming industry.

I disagree that it is "no different". The cryptocurrency designers achieved their goal -- they got a lot more people to participate in their networks. So why would they want to go back to making it easy for the ASIC miners?

There's no other viable alternative to GPUs for massive quantities of cheap, widely available compute cycles.

Well, I guess you could say.......now that the GPU supply has been exhausted and cards are unobtainable at any reasonable price, they've effectively capped the number of users able to participate via that method. If ASICs were allowed back into the fray, they'd probably come in at lower prices than a couple $1400 cards, and allow the userbase to grow again (not to mention alleviate the pressure on GPU demand, thus lowering prices and allowing possible new user growth again).

I'm not saying this isn't a longshot --- it is for sure. At the same time, I can't see any drawback to asking. At worst they just say no. It's kinda like they say with women....if you don't talk to them, you have a 0% chance.

The Egg wrote:

Well, I guess you could say.......now that the GPU supply has been exhausted and cards are unobtainable at any reasonable price, they've effectively capped the number of users able to participate via that method.

Uhh... it's not like the video card vendors have completely stopped producing cards.

If cards are still unavailable and/or stupidly expensive, then that means the miners are still soaking up all of the available supply, and adding them to the mining pools. In other words, the crypto designers' strategy of making ASICs uneconomical to promote broader participation is still working.

The Egg wrote:

If ASICs were allowed back into the fray, they'd probably come in at lower prices than a couple $1400 cards, and allow the userbase to grow again

See above. The userbase is still growing at a healthy rate, otherwise video card availability and pricing would've returned to normal already!

And if the ASICs are allowed back in, they're not going to undercut GPUs by a large margin; otherwise the ASIC sellers would be leaving potential profits on the table.

The Egg wrote:

(not to mention alleviate the pressure on GPU demand, thus lowering prices and allowing possible new user growth again).

Lower GPU prices would probably slow new user growth, since more of the cards would be going to PC gamers instead of miners.

The Egg wrote:

I'm not saying this isn't a longshot --- it is for sure. At the same time, I can't see any drawback to asking. At worst they just say no. It's kinda like they say with women....if you don't talk to them, you have a 0% chance.

Go ahead and ask, then. Nobody's stopping you.

But as I've already said, from the crypto designers' viewpoint, the current situation is a feature, not a bug.

The Egg wrote:

You guys will have to excuse some of my ignorance and lack of knowledge here, but I have a couple of questions, and then a proposition. First...

1. Which specific cryptocurrencies are causing the run on GPUs?
2. Of those currencies, who controls or has the ability to make changes to, the algorithms used, the difficulty increases, if/when they change from PoW to PoS, etc??
3. How would we go about contacting them?

Here's where I'm going with this: Someone (ideally a group of people) ought to appeal to those in charge of the most problematic currencies, and make them aware of the damage they're causing to the GPU and gaming industries. They also need to be made aware of how their intent behind making currencies ASIC-resistant has completely and utterly failed (as proven by the current cost of GPUs, and complete destruction of their supply).

While it's true that there's no law requiring them to listen, it's still worth trying, and it doesn't cost anything to ask. It's possible that many of these guys are off in their own little bubble, and aren't even aware of some of the stuff that's happening (or the extent of it).

No offense but, are you 12? Because the world doesn't work like this.

Gee guys, if we just go and tell the bad people to stop doing this thing we don't like then they'll cut it out!

The Egg wrote:

You guys will have to excuse some of my ignorance and lack of knowledge here, but I have a couple of questions, and then a proposition. First...
.

The ACTUAL PROBLEM with crypto currency is the abject SPECULATION of INVESTORS. Blockchain technology and crypto currencies built around them is not the problem per se.

As with anything if everyone wants one and there is a finite number of it available it's value goes UP. There is massive investor speculation in crypto currencies currently, which makes mining it extremely profitable, which make whatever can mine it extreme expensive/valuable also.

Also in response to your questions... too many crypto currencies with algorithms that can only be mined efficiently by GPUs...

GPU makers or someone willing to design silicon more efficient than current GPUs, will be needed to move miners from gaming GPUs. Processors that are just giant number crunchers and XXX amount of memory (Ethereum has a DAG file of approx. 2.3GB) https://investoon.com/tools/dag_size
without ROPs, TMU and all the extra stuff needed for traditional GPUs. I wouldn't be surprised to find numerous chip designers besides AMD/Nvidia working on designs for it or anyone with massively parallel math processing silicon designs...