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GPU Prices Are Falling (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you were looking for a new graphics card for your PC over the last year, your search probably ended with you giving up and slinging some cusses at cryptocurrency miners. But now the supply of video cards is on the verge of rebounding, and I don't think you should wait much longer to pull the trigger on a purchase. Earlier this week, Digitimes reported that GPU vendors like Gigabyte, MSI, and others were expecting to see their card shipments plummet 40 percent month-over-month. The market for digital currencies like Bitcoin and Etherum is losing some of its momentum, and at the same time, large mining operations are pulling back on their investment in GPUs in anticipation of dedicated mining rigs (called ASICs) that are due out before the end of the year. These factors working in conjunction seem like they are leading to more supply, which in turn is forcing retailers to cut prices. For example, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 video card is selling on Amazon right now for $700. Other retailers even have it listed at the original MSRP of $600. These are the lowest prices of 2018 so far.
Actually I believe the trend is to underclock them for best performance / watt.
Ethereum and Monero are the reason GPUs are being snatched up by miners. The value of those coins crashed horribly earlier in the month... to the point where it was barely profitable to mine. But prices have rebounded recently, so you can expect GPUs to start selling out again soon.
When the blockchain "difficulty factor" for ETH and XMR solidly surpasses their record highs, then you will know these ASICs are really rolling out. From there it won't be long until these $700 cards can be found on Ebay for chump change.
You can track the difficulty here: https://www.coinwarz.com/diffi...
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The top-end cards became halo products. Just like few cars on the road are Mustangs, few video cards are 1080 Tis.
Checking the Steam Hardware Survey, about 60% of all cards are Nvidia GeForces in the xx50 to xx70 range - the normal, reasonably-priced cards. (AMD is only 10% of the market right now, with much of that being integrated. Their fundamental architecture was just way better-suited for mining, so their prices spiked even harder than Nvidia's did.)
Also, be aware the GF1xxx series MSRPs were already inflated by mining demand. The "normal" price for a top-end xx80 Ti is $500-$600, and the only-slightly-slower xx80 is usually $350-$400. But the 9xx series was already selling for nearly double MSRP when the 10xx series came out, they'd have been idiots to not bump up the stock prices.