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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.

13 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Abandoned PC gaming long ago for this reason by idontusenumbers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But... mouse and keyboard =/

  2. Used Cards by Ailicec · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better, when will the big operations start dumping cards by the thousands onto Ebay? A plentiful secondhand market + crypto not buying new cards should deepen the effect. I'm fine with used stuff, but do wonder how much life a GPU that has run flat-out 24/7 for a year or two has left.

    1. Re:Used Cards by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is called an extensive burn-in. If silicon lasts through the initial burn-in and was not operated in an abusive environment, it's better than a random new card fresh from packaging.

    2. Re:Used Cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually I believe the trend is to underclock them for best performance / watt.

    3. Re: Used Cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Rejected shares

  3. 700 for a gaming card?? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Jesus. I remember in the good old days when $200 was a good chunk for a great GPU and $350 was for the very fastest ones.

    Wtf happened? Nvidia monopoly and gamers ready to open their wallets because of the Nvidia label seem to be destroying the market. The comments on how the 1050ti is God on YouTube when referring to AMD products and the xboxoneX verify this brainwashing and monopoly.

    Hey PC masterace just don't be shocked when us regular peasants switch to consoles where you can get the same performance for cheaper.

    1. Re:700 for a gaming card?? by gman003 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  4. This is just market lag by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

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  5. Re:No. by Sir+Holo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For me, gaming peeked at Quake3. Get off my lawn and all that.

    Try Far Cry 5. It has multiplayer FPS deathmatch and such, just like Quake (and Unreal Tournament, the true pinnacle, or how about Avara, the FIRST truly 3D internet-multiplayer game).

    Far Cry 5 rocks. Offline or with a friend, you can play through a campaign that has a very interesting and sometimes unpredictable AI, simple random events colliding in the open world for unique situations. Puzzles. Fishing. Prince-of-Persia-like parkour and climbing puzzles. Meaningfully diverse weapons set. Player specialties. NPC specialties. Command-able AI companions.

    Run it on a GTX 1080 Ti for 1080p 60 fps gorgeousness. 4k at 45 fps or so. !!! A Ryzen probably gets you the same.

  6. Re:Depends which GPUs you're talking about by Xenocrates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe because gamers are budget constrained. If I have 300$, I can't buy a 500$ card that will run my games the way I want, since the original 300$ MSRP is inflated due to demand. Because I can't buy that card in the first place, I can't mine with it. Or, I happen to not live in one of the areas where the power costs make that break even. Perhaps my computer can't be left on at night because the fans/lights keep me awake.

    I don't like miners because they are mostly wasting a shit-load of electricity, stealing CPU cycles, or hardware, driving up prices of anything with graphics hardware (GDDR and generic DRAM shortages), and functioning as essentially a high-tech form of scrip, or perhaps monopoly money, with little to nothing backing it (See the open question about if tether actually has the cash to back their tokens that they claim to, since they printed a few hundred million since declaring their bank transfers in and out had been blocked, or perhaps any of the other scams, like Bitconnect, or Pincoin). The vast majority of the "Value" of these currencies is in coins that have never been traded for cash, many of which are out of circulation. Thus the fantastic value numbers are more representative of the last few dozen coins trading price multiplied by the total sum of coins. Logically, because the exchanges never took in sums in the billions of dollars, they can't pay it out. So it's all an illusion of worth, even more so than fiat currency or a standard bank account, because you can't pay nearly as many vendors with it, so it's utility is less, especially since most people don't understand that they are pseudonymous systems, rather than complete anonymous setups. Even the big names in privacy, like Monero, have had it breached. Most are less private than a credit card, because those at least are bound not to release all your info to anyone who calls to ask.

  7. Wait Until Summer by mentil · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't think you should wait much longer to pull the trigger on a purchase

    Actually, rumor is that Nvidia is going to release the 1100 series GPUs in June or July. They're expected to have about 40% higher performance than the 1000 series. Also, the Etherium ASICs are dropping in July; assuming there's not a hard fork that makes them useless (and even if there is), there will be a sharp price drop in Etherium at that time, leading to lower GPU demand by cryptominers.

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  8. Re:Depends which GPUs you're talking about by ThePyro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He may be referring to the practice of embedding Javascript mining code in web pages in order to "steal" CPU cycles from client browsers. No hacking required.

  9. Re:Depends which GPUs you're talking about by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

    You do know that was debunked back in the 1990's. The difference between 144fps and 300fps is noticeable, if you don't think so go buddy up with someone who works at an imax theater and give it a go. The visual acuity of fighter pilots is in the 480-620fps range, just to give you an example. Conscious i.e. direct focus for most people is in the 50-90fps range, but your brain is 'discarding' unimportant information unless you train it not to.

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