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Concupiscence · Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:45 pm

Below seven thousand as of now. Reddit's /r/hardwareswap is beginning to show a lot of people sheepishly offering nice hardware at prices that are still inflated, but at least the parts are becoming available again. Newegg's still a calamity, but cards are available again, even at ghastly markup.

It's not the turning point people yearn for, but it is a beginning.

Welch · Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:31 pm

Concupiscence wrote:
Below seven thousand as of now. Reddit's /r/hardwareswap is beginning to show a lot of people sheepishly offering nice hardware at prices that are still inflated, but at least the parts are becoming available again. Newegg's still a calamity, but cards are available again, even at ghastly markup.

It's not the turning point people yearn for, but it is a beginning.

I can't wait for that 7k to drop below that 3k mark in like a week or so. Just to see the hardware come flooding in, to have the value cut in 1/2 would put some serious salt in the mining wound. It... Will... Be... Glorious.

Krogoth · Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:13 am

I see what you did there.

rrrhal · Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:49 am

I saw an article that said retailers noticing a distinct uptick in people returning Vega RX 56's

Glorious · Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:19 pm

rrrhal wrote:
I saw an article that said retailers noticing a distinct uptick in people returning Vega RX 56's

I imagine that's going to be a trend, if it isn't already.

Kougar · Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:36 pm

Glorious wrote:
rrrhal wrote:
I saw an article that said retailers noticing a distinct uptick in people returning Vega RX 56's

I imagine that's going to be a trend, if it isn't already.

Guess we will soon be adding GPUs to the list of non-returnable if opened items

Waco · Tue Feb 06, 2018 6:53 pm

Kougar wrote:
Guess we will soon be adding GPUs to the list of non-returnable if opened items

...which means eBay will be full of cheap GPUs. Woot!

ludi · Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:17 pm

Waco wrote:
Kougar wrote:
Guess we will soon be adding GPUs to the list of non-returnable if opened items

...which means eBay will be full of cheap GPUs. Woot!

Gonna take some time. eBay is flooded with new listings but people are still trying to get higher dollar for them, and BTC had a slight rebound today after yesterdays panic sale. Figure another month before the hardware price signals get realinged.

The Swamp · Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:45 pm

I bought an RX 550 card about a month ago for $110.

I just checked prices on the same model. The low price is now $237. New Egg has it listed for $539.99. Out of stock, too.

I'm really, really, REALLY glad I bought when I did. I had no idea card prices were so completely insane.

Redocbew · Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:53 pm

Yeah it's completely bonkers. No doubt the increase in DRAM pricing helps with that also. Nearly a year ago I bought 16GB of DDR4 for $200. The same stuff goes for 280-ish now.

Philldoe · Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:05 pm

Redocbew wrote:
Yeah it's completely bonkers. No doubt the increase in DRAM pricing helps with that also. Nearly a year ago I bought 16GB of DDR4 for $200. The same stuff goes for 280-ish now.

Redocbew · Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:09 pm

Ack, yeah the stuff I got was DDR4 3200, and it had pretty tight timings, so there was a considerable markup on it already. For everything else, it's going to be even worse.

DancinJack · Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:29 pm

April 21, 2016
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz (PC4-24000) C15 Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B3000C15)
Sold by: Amazon.com Services, Inc.
$69.99

That's DDR4 3000 with tight timings. Prices are so insane. It is currently 204.99.

Convert · Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:43 pm

DancinJack wrote:
April 21, 2016
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz (PC4-24000) C15 Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B3000C15)
Sold by: Amazon.com Services, Inc.
$69.99

That's DDR4 3000 with tight timings. Prices are so insane. It is currently 204.99.

Wow, I never really paid that close attention to it, I knew it was more expensive but.. A jump from 70 to 205 is insane. Thanks for sharing Philldoe and DancinJack!

BIF · Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:35 pm

Wow, $1K for any GPU is just nuts.

I want to upgrade my GTX 980s to 1080 TIs, but it's just not gonna happen at these prices.

If this continues, I see competition heating up. Prices will come down, but probably not anytime soon.

NovusBogus · Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:45 pm

BIF wrote:
Wow, $1K for any GPU is just nuts.

I want to upgrade my GTX 980s to 1080 TIs, but it's just not gonna happen at these prices.

If this continues, I see competition heating up. Prices will come down, but probably not anytime soon.

At this point in the release cycle, it makes no sense to not wait for Volta regardless of pricing. The consumer launch is supposed to be pretty soon so it's likely that an 1180 Ti will show up around the end of the year.

Welch · Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:26 pm

I'm curious if Nvidia will do anything on Volta to prevent mining. Either at a hardware level or attempt some special sales tactic.

The only thing I can imagine working would be onboard hardware and possibly software that worked independently of one another to check if the card is trying to be used for blockchain. Perhaps selling gamer version at a cheaper price that don't do GPU computing. Similar to set instructions or ECC being left off of consumer teir CPUs.

Then again, I don't think any of the manufacturers really truly want to stunt sales to miners. They just want the PR that they want to help gamers.

DancinJack · Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:48 pm

They (and AMD) are making money hand over fist from this crap mining situation. It would be insanely stupid for them to do that. There is nowhere else for people to go for GPUs except AMD and Nvidia (for higher end gaming at least). Count on them (and AMD) putting out some BS statements about how they want gamers to get their cards rather than miners, but they won't actually DO anything about it.

Sat Feb 10, 2018 5:59 pm

Remember US corporate law. Companies MUST maximize stockholder value and decisions that don't achieve same WILL be litigated.

IOW, both Red and Green will gladly sell as many cards as they can to the cryptos simply because it increases earnings per share. To "cripple" their cards to leave them useful only for gaming (and forego increased sales prices) would instantly end up in a class-action derivative lawsuit that the companies would lose.

Neither company, at least in the real SEC-regulated financial world, cares squat about who buys their product. All they care about is selling more.

Cuhulin · Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:15 pm

The fact that companies seek to maximize shareholder value does not mean that they cannot do so more intelligently by differentiating markets.

Right now, they can sell to miners but not to gamers, due to price. That also has used up their production capacity in the recent mining increases, but that won't necessarily be the case in the future.

However, nothing prevents them from putting in firmware that checks the card's use and then selling differentiated cards at higher prices for miners and lower prices for gamers, hitting two markets instead of just one. Both Nvidia and AMD already do something like that with their workstation cards. So this would simply be their having three markets instead of two - a way to achieve profit increases rather than losing ground in any one market.

Whether the companies will do this depends on whether they see there being three long-term markets, justifying capacity increases, or just two with a market "blip" right now.

Sat Feb 10, 2018 6:30 pm

NVidia and AMD have a vested interest in the long-term success of PC gaming. Companies (like NVidia) that are swimming in cash ($7 billion of it, just lying around doing nothing productive, representing 69% of the total assets of the company) can afford to make strategic choices for long-term benefit.

Unfortunately, the sort of NVidia strategic choices that come to mind would be trying to parlay their current cash-rich position with the upper hand in the GPU duopoly into a true monopoly so that they could reap even more staggering margins in the future.

BIF · Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:02 pm

The problem with gimping cards planned for use by mining applications is that it's anything but entrepreneurial. It games the card market because it tries to pick winners and losers, based on what the customer wants to do (or is doing) with equipment that's supposedly "general purpose" in nature.

But hey, now if you're doing things we think are "admirable" (gaming; um, yeah), we'll charge you less. If you're choosing our card but you're doing "bad things" with it (trying to make money), then we'll charge YOU more.

There's the other thing: the "bad things" list always seems to grow.

I hate $1400 prices for 1080 TI's, but I hate rigged markets even more.

Redocbew · Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:10 pm

Unless the driver looks for specific filenames, is there any way to gimp mining without also gimping every other GPU compute application? I'm thinking probably not.

BIF · Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:21 pm

I'd guess you can. I'm also guessing that the clever amongst us can mod it away.

Bauxite · Sat Feb 10, 2018 10:30 pm

Welch wrote:
I'm curious if Nvidia will do anything on Volta to prevent mining. Either at a hardware level or attempt some special sales tactic.

The only thing I can imagine working would be onboard hardware and possibly software that worked independently of one another to check if the card is trying to be used for blockchain. Perhaps selling gamer version at a cheaper price that don't do GPU computing. Similar to set instructions or ECC being left off of consumer teir CPUs.

Then again, I don't think any of the manufacturers really truly want to stunt sales to miners. They just want the PR that they want to help gamers.

Nope, volta is a done deal and already amazing at mining.

Serious power efficiency gains (best KWh/hash gpu so far) and tensor cores have absolutely nothing to do with it. That is still on HBM, GDDR6 (ampere? whatever just name shenanigans really) should be even better for popular algos. Hard to find miners that always work properly on it but consumer/mass launch will change that fast.

Watching people lose their minds and think somehow their game hobby can ignore market effects is hilariously entertaining.

Redocbew · Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:22 pm

BIF wrote:
I'd guess you can. I'm also guessing that the clever amongst us can mod it away.

There would have to be something unique about the workload in order for this to work. Otherwise it's the same thing that just happened with the meltdown patch where we resort to reduced performance across the board because of one bad apple.

BIF · Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:22 pm

Bauxite wrote:
...Watching people lose their minds and think somehow their game hobby can ignore market effects is hilariously entertaining.

You're right of course; either we have a free market or we don't. Right now, in this subject, we do. But it's certainly not "hilariously entertaining" to me. I'd call it "very interesting", yes.

I think we have a perfect opportunity to educate people how this stuff works, and why this is the best way, even though BIF really wants a pair of new GPUs and can't get them right now due to availability and price.

If we're silent on the bigger concept of capitalism, or worse yet; we are laughingly "hilariously entertained" on the matter and don't help to educate others, then we'll just end up creating another generation who think we should hand over even more liberties to our respective governments' bureaucrats and politicians.

And that NEVER works, so education is critical.

Cuhulin · Sun Feb 11, 2018 12:48 am

I don't think the market can be ignored.

I do believe that the companies can serve both the gaming and the mining markets by offering a differentiated product.

As to laughing at others' pain....

NovusBogus · Sun Feb 11, 2018 1:41 am

Product segmentation is great when it works, but blacklisting algorithms is a terrible way to go about it. Everyone needs to adapt to a changing market; this is the first true mainstream application of GPGPU, which we* were all told for years is the future of everything, and there will be others. On the consumer level, gamers need to understand that they're not the center of the tech universe anymore and some of the newer entrants could bury them if so desired; be heard but don't burn bridges. Manufacturers, for their part, need to ditch the old man thinking and devote resources/staff to understanding these use cases as they do with gaming. Take it from my industry, getting blindsided by something that should have been obvious yields the orthodox Chinese definition of interesting times.

*well, those of us in engineering anyway. There is a reason I know how to write a CUDA application and it's not because I've done it professionally...yet.

Kougar · Sun Feb 11, 2018 5:01 am

I'm seeing 1080 Ti cards at near MSRP prices, though 1080's are still badly inflated. It's usually the heavily OC'd Ti models that already had a price premium from the manufacturer that get left in stock now.

I don't have to be a miner to firmly think gimping cards against mining or other use cases is a very bad idea. I hope it doesn't happen, but if it does it will probably factor into my purchasing decisions. I also don't see how it's possible to differentiate niche use cases, any hardware changes wouldn't be able to distinguish between folding, crunching, or mining. The moment NVIDIA or AMD try to do it in software someone is going to immediately hack the drivers to undo it, leaving regular users stuck using gimped drivers or visiting dangerous sites to grab possibly tainted download links for hacked drivers.

NovusBogus wrote:
Manufacturers, for their part, need to ditch the old man thinking and devote resources/staff to understanding these use cases as they do with gaming. Take it from my industry, getting blindsided by something that should have been obvious yields the orthodox Chinese definition of interesting times.

I understand what you're saying, but the irony is in some respects this was also the problem. It apparently takes 3-4 months to turn GPU orders into shelf product., yet we live in an age of "just in time" inventory practices where there are no warehouses of stock kept as a supply buffer. If the demand exceeded the forecasts then it's just too bad, and they'll order some extra with the next block order. If it takes three or four months to replace inventory the GPU manufacturers are going to have to reassess how they forecast, store, and order these GPU chips in the first place.

This is especially true for GPU launches. It's almost a sure bet that AMD GPUs will launch at minimal supply, and that anyone buying them can then flip them at a tidy profit just because of the scarcity factor. (I found it absurd how many small site or youtube testers were forced to buy Vega cards at inflated prices if they wished to review them in a timely fashion) Hard launches are so infrequent they're almost a thing of the past as well, but if they don't start happening again people are going to just buy up launch stock for reselling later, mining or no mining. The fault with that lies squarely with NVIDIA and AMD.

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