As Cryptocurrency Values Plummet, Graphics Card Pricing Improves Dramatically (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: In recent months, the cryptocurrency industry has taken a sharp downturn in valuations of virtually all major currencies, from Bitcoin to Ethereum. As a result, cryptocurrency mining itself has become significantly less lucrative for the average miner. In addition, demand on GPUs from the major OEM suppliers like NVIDIA and AMD, has fallen off dramatically as well. Cryptocurrency miner demand for graphics cards has fallen so much so, that pricing of board partner brands like EVGA, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and others, has returned basically to MSRP levels. This is compared to the sharp price gouging that was going on earlier in 2018 and late last year, when demand was far out-stripping supply. In fact, reports are emerging now that another approximate 20 percent price drop could be coming to GPUs this month, especially as NVIDIA is expected to launch its next generation gaming graphics card very soon. Whether or not this is indicative of some sort of cryptocurrency bubble burst remains to be seen. However, for now, gamers and PC enthusiasts are likely breathing a sigh of relief, as better supply/demand dynamics are clearly in sight.

Comments

Other price-raising strategies?

[sheramil]

So, what other essentially pointless activities can video cards perform that might raise their prices again? How about... deep learning? What's wrong with video rendering? Buy a whole bunch of them and send them to Ian Hubert so he can get the next episode of "Dynamo" out of the way more quickly.

Re:Other price-raising strategies?

[religionofpeas]

Join the Leela Chess Zero project, and help create the world best chess program.

http://lczero.org/

Re:Other price-raising strategies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Joke all you want. In the meantime I was in the market for a new workstation and my buying strategy is now going to strip out the 3D card for a while and just go with whats on the board and wait 6 months to buy. You could say I'm shorting Bitcoin in a way heh. I'm thinking the extra cash goes to a threadripper.

Re:Other price-raising strategies?

[dohzer]

Just stop making as many now that demand has dropped.
Too simple?

Re:Other price-raising strategies?

[AHuxley]

5K and 8K computer games. Ray tracing.

Re:Other price-raising strategies?

[thegarbz]

What's wrong with video rendering?

What kind of rendering are you talking about? The slowest part of any video production is usually compression, and that task isn't embarrasingly parallel and doesn't lend itself to video card speedups.

"Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is compared to the sharp price gouging that was going on earlier in 2018 and late last year, when demand was far out-stripping supply.

So which one is it: price gouging, or legitimate supply and demand?

Price gouging only occurs in two cases. When prices are raised artificially regardless of how low demand may be, or (more controversially) when it's an essential human need like water and there is a disaster or other emergency. Of course in the latter case a judgment call needs to be made about whether shortages are more desirable.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't ask what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you! Demand that your social security programs contain compensation for all for buying the insurance. If there are pricing guarantees for the companies, make your government pay for them.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not living in a free-market society.

I don't live under the sea either but, there it is. Just because we do live under a corrupt, logically bankrupt economic theory doesn't mean genuine free market forces have been dissipated with a wave of a wand. They are still out there simmering under the surface and they will not go away, unlike Bernanke, Yellen and their ilk who, thankfully, have. The time will come.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[Junta]

Well, it's also possible to induce scarcity. If it were a truly competitive market, then a competitor would have probably do a crazy production ramp up to mitigate.

As it stood, nVidia limited their production ramp up (precisely because they expected the bottom to fall out of the market and didn't want to be stuck with a glut when it fell) and instead did various things to try to throttle customers buying GPUs (although they explicitly gave crypto-mining an exemption to some of those, because they had such mixed feelings on it).

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Price gouging only occurs in two cases. When prices are raised artificially regardless of how low demand may be, or (more controversially) when it's an essential human need like water and there is a disaster or other emergency

Thank you for letting us know what your personal definition of price gouging is. You should probably be aware that just because that definition works for you, letting a term with negative connotations only be used when it describes something you have an ideological problem with, that doesn't mean other people use that definition when they either use or hear the term.

The term actually has a wide range of definitions. In common use, Wikipedia probably best sums it up by describing it as "Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an unethical extent." Wikipedia also notes that it is sometimes used for more specific examples, for example, laws against price gouging tend to only outlaw price gouging of essential goods during emergencies.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Price gouging only occurs in two cases. When prices are raised artificially regardless of how low demand may be, or (more controversially) when it's an essential human need like water and there is a disaster or other emergency

Thank you for letting us know what your personal definition of price gouging is. You should probably be aware that just because that definition works for you, letting a term with negative connotations only be used when it describes something you have an ideological problem with, that doesn't mean other people use that definition when they either use or hear the term.

The term actually has a wide range of definitions. In common use, Wikipedia probably best sums it up by describing it as "Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an unethical extent." Wikipedia also notes that it is sometimes used for more specific examples, for example, laws against price gouging tend to only outlaw price gouging of essential goods during emergencies.

So you basically agree with the GP, but wanted to be pedantic.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Sique]

There is as much of a free market as there is of pure vacuum. The free market is a valuable tool to explain many things in economy. But in reality, there is no such thing as a free market, and there never will be, because no one of us has instant complete information and the ability to decide only on the information given. We constantly have to make shortcuts in our decisions because we have only limited information and only limited time to decide, and thus all our decisions are made under duress, running afoul the very idea of a free market. Sometimes, it would be nice if the free market zealots would at least know about Buridan's ass or Laplace's demon to understand some of the general limits to a free market.

The only thing we can do is create a very good model of a free market by setting up rules and limits to its scope and to the agents acting within the market. And if we get the design right, we will indeed get a vibrant market conforming quite well to the predictions of the economic theory, and actually coming close to the optimum in price determination and product evolution. But like a real market, it only works if in general, everyone agrees and adheres to the rules set for everyone. But like a real market, if someone is out to destroy the free market for instance by poisoning some of the offerings or by just conquering and plundering the market with his gang of thugs, there is not much you can do except for raising the walls around the market and increase oversight and control, which adds costs to do business on the market, also known as fees and taxes.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Price gouging isn't price gouging if it goes on for a few years.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the allocation of taxes is. The government pays. The money could be used for something else as well, you know.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[ravenshrike]

No, because last time around they did just that and when the bottom dropped out of the crypto market they(and AMD) were left holding the bag

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[blahplusplus]

Price gouging only occurs in two cases.

No free market theory is a myth, according to rational actor theory - lets take the videogame industry - it's not in your rational interest to ever buy an mmo for instance. During the late 90's company CEO's were trying to find new ways to exploit gamers they took normal rpg's with single and multiplayer combined in one game and rebranded them mmo's and amped up the PR to get people to pay monthly for a game they never own. That is the definition of getting fucked.

I'll give you another one, before it was taken down Tranformers Fall of cybertron by Activision was selling for 50-60$ 5 + years after release. How is that possible under "supply demand" theory? AKA if activision doesn't need your money they won't lower the prices, they have billions of dollars to sit on to wait. So supply and demand is bullshit otherwise everything that isn't bought in terms of software would be near zero price because supply is infinite.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Jason1729]

The people who rush volunteer to have the government pay for things are rarely the ones actually pay taxes.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[lgw]

That depends what you mean by "free market". You could choose some unrealistically idealized definition, just so you can complain that it's unrealistically idealized, if you were a fool.

By any reasonably definition, the US commodities markets are free markets. The government does not set prices, not choose who's allowed to participate. Most of the market rules are set by the market itself, not the government.

The only thing we can do is create a very good model of a free market by setting up rules and limits to its scope

That's exactly what most people would call a "free market", of course. You need rules to prevent fraud and enforce contracts, but that in no way makes it less of a free market. Prices are still set by supply and demand.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Holi]

And where is the government doing this in the graphics card market?

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[HornWumpus]

You're wasting your time. 'No free market' is just leftist derp. He will be posting the same nonsense tomorrow.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[GuB-42]

Free market still works withing the videogame industry. Supply in software isn't infinite because there isn't an infinite number of people that can run your software. With that taken into account, it works.

For example, imagine a AAA PS4 game, costs $100M to make, 100M PS4s in the wild. It means they can't sell for less than $1 (all inclusive) or they are losing money, so they need to increase the price to the most profitable point, by whatever mean necessary, maybe around $70, or $20 + $10/month, or whatever. To have the price drop, increase the market size, and therefore supply. It is apparent in mobile games where there are billions of devices, and sure enough, mobile games are usually cheaper. On the other side of the spectrum, highly specialized professional software is ridiculously expensive due to the small market. That's opposite the usual way of thinking (people create supply, companies create demand) but ultimately, it is the same thing.

The reason some games are still expensive long after release may be because they studios think they can still sell it full price, or they want to avoid competing with themselves (they want you to buy the new game instead), or they don't want people to delay their purchase of new products in hope the price will drop later.

As for rationality, it is perfectly rational to pay monthly for a game if the alternative is not playing the game you want to play. In economics, rationality is limited to economic decisions. For example, no rational being wants to be addicted to cocaine. However, cocaine addicts still make rational economic choices, they won't pay $100/g if the next guy has the same stuff for $50/g, other things being equal. As a result, supply and demand works.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[mesterha]

That depends what you mean by "free market". You could choose some unrealistically idealized definition, just so you can complain that it's unrealistically idealized, if you were a fool.

I assume one would pick an idealized definition so one could more easily prove stuff about markets. Whether one captured the right stuff to actually have anything interesting to say about reality is the big issue. Kind of like Turing machines. They don't actually exist, but they do tell us interesting things about real machines.

By any reasonably definition, the US commodities markets are free markets. The government does not set prices, not choose who's allowed to participate. Most of the market rules are set by the market itself, not the government.

Can you give one, or even more interestingly, several of these reasonable definitions. What you give here allows monopolies which by any reasonable definition are not free markets.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all pay taxes you fucking idiot,

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[jpaine619]

You think the commodities markets are free? Do you have any idea how much money the federal government gives out in the form of subsidies to manipulate those exact same prices?

Why the FUCK is there still a sugar subsidy?!? Something like 80% of all farms are owned by large corporations and we are still subsidizing certain products (corn/sugar/etc).

Maybe if sugar was just a little bit more expensive, under a real FREE market for sugar, we'd use a little bit less of it.

As near as I can tell, the Mexicans figured out how to properly use sugar in sweetbreads.. They put a little bit on the OUTSIDE where it hits your tongue instantly.

We, on the other hand, put it on the inside and have to use so much that bread might as well be called sugar/flour cubes.

We know too much sugar is bad for us, but lets keep the price down artificially so that we can continue to use it as a filler for everything....

There is absolutely no sector of the US Economy that has anything that even resembles a free market at the present time. I can't think of any sector that doesn't have at least one large player being given chunks of cash to manipulate the pricing, even if it's only in the form of tax breaks.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[Solandri]

That's not price gouging though because Nvidia didn't raise the wholesale price of their GPUs. Even when retail high-end GPUs were ridiculously overpriced, it was still possible to buy a pre-built system with a high-end GPU at a reasonable price because the company building it was able to get the GPUs at uninflated wholesale prices. eBayers would buy these systems and part it out, selling the GPU separately from the rest of the system (which they resold as using integrated graphics), to take advantage of the discrepancy between the system price and component market price.

What most people don't seem to understand about market pricing is that prices for a commodity do not rise because sellers raise the price. It rises because buyers buy out all the inventory of sellers offering the item at a low price. That leaves only sellers offering it at a higher price with inventory, which buyers then perceive as an increase in market price. Sellers can then take note that the items are selling out at the lower price, and may choose to raise the price at that point (the sweet spot is when you're just barely able to keep an item in stock). But it's the buyers who cause the price increase (by depleting the market of lower-priced inventory), not the sellers.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Jason1729]

Yeah the people who collect welfare pay part of that back to the government as taxes. That really counts. You're the idiot if you believe that.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[blahplusplus]

Free market still works withing the videogame industry. Supply in software isn't infinite

This is utter nonsense, the supply of any game IS effectively infinite - aka therefore the price should approach zero for game software but that doesn't happen. A 5 year old transformers game should not be selling for 60$. You can't just ignore facts that don't fit your theory. You're basically acting irrational at this point. If supply demand theory were true the price of the software would approach zero but it never does.

Re:"Price Gouging"?

[blahplusplus]

How does "the number of people that can run your software" correlate to "supply in software"? It would seem to me that the former number has to do with the demand, not supply.

So, if you offer a product that is a digital download, you might theoretically have an infinite supply of copies. But that supply side would actually be limited by your server uptime, bandwidth, the time window in which the file is served until you EOL it or your business goes under, etc. So no supply is infinite, not even for intangibles.

Your whole post is gobbleydook typical of free marketeers - bandwidth costs pennies, so the marginal cost apporaches zero so supply is effectively infinite. So yes charging 60$ for a 5 year old videogame disproves market theory because technically you want to sell the maximum # of copies then the price should go down over time it shouldn't be sitting at 60$ 5 years after release.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That money came from other taxpayers, so yes, it does.

It's like you have no idea how the economy works.

Re: "Price Gouging"?

[Jason1729]

Which is exactly what I said. So not everybody pays taxes; their "tax money" is given to them by other tax payers so they can pretend to pay taxes and pretend to feel all good about themselves.

It's basically someone gives you $20 to buy a meal and you go out and buy it, and then you lie to yourself and say you paid for the meal yourself because you physically went out and bought it.

You're pretending that if someone gives you $1000 and then you pay back $100 you're a wonderful person who gave them $100 when the reality you're pretending doesn't exist is they gave you $900.

It is total bullshit. Takers are takers, pretending they make any form of useful contribution is pathetic

MSRP should have gone down too!

[Mishotaki]

MSRP of the release price of a 2 year old card is not what i call a good price... we're still being gouged by the overpriced video cards that made their MSRP stay the same for so long..

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

MSRP of the release price of a 2 year old card is not what i call a good price... we're still being gouged by the overpriced video cards that made their MSRP stay the same for so long..

What needs to happen is that companeis should manufacture more cards geared specifically towards bitcoin mining, the ones based mostly around ASICs that don't have video output ports. These could come with a higher mining performance per watt compared with more general purpose GPUs (at any serious level, power consumption becomes a real issue here). This would help avoid pissing off your customers who are gamers. Any other industry would call this market segmentation.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Gavagai80]

The development this article is about is exactly why that doesn't happen. Nobody's going to re-purpose their factory to specialty cards for a market that can virtually disappear by the time you're ready to go to market.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[MoarSauce123]

True, especially since there are now plenty of FPGAs available that cost less and do a better job at mining.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be patient. A few more months and you'll be picking up titans on ebay for a pittance.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[cre1mer]

The Gigabyte 1050 Ti 4GB that I paid $100 on sale at NewEgg peaked at $200 and currently list for $180. Not much of an improvement.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[war4peace]

Some altcoins and their algorithms are ASIC resistant.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[cre1mer]

I'll have to stop buying skinny vanilla lattes for a month to buy a $100 video card. A grave sacrifice every three years.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, with that vast array of explanation and supporting citations, you've convinced me.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Junta]

FPGAs would not do a better job than ASICs at mining. An FPGA is however at least vaguely useful after a crash in the cryptocurrency for other things, whereas ASICs would likely be utterly useless.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[DigiShaman]

we're still being gouged by the overpriced video cards that made their MSRP stay the same for so long..

"Gouging" isn't the right term. There is zero collusion going on between all the GPU re-sellers (Newegg, Amazon, etc). Yes, the prices ought to be lower in a normal market. But this supply/demand market is hardly normal thanks to cryptocurrency.

Make no mistake about it; nobody wants to be holding onto inventory that devalues overtime. This is especially true in computing technology. If you haven't turned a profit on old hardware, you never will. At worst, it's actually costing you money to warehouse it. In fact, some will just take the loss and sell it below cost just to free up space for other inventory.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be awfully bored. Why don't you kill a little time with spelling exercises? Two birds, one stone, and all that.

Protip: Start by learning how to spell "loser".

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[war4peace]

Convincing only needs to happen for ideas, not facts. So no, I don't need to convince anyone. But to lead you to the right path, please look up Vertcoin and MonaCoin. Also please look up Lyra2RE and Lyra2RE2 algorithms.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Jason1729]

Yeah, ones that have been running 24/7 for 18 months with crappy cooling. Whatever you do, don't ever buy a used 9 or 10 series card.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro-tip: If you can't communicate except by obscure memes you have to explain an that makes you feel supeior...you're pathetic piece of shit who needs to get out of your mommy's basement and get a life.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[rkordmaa]

What's there to explain, different cryptocurrencies have different algorithms with different restrictions on why you can't mine more with the hardware you have. Some are memory bandwidth constrained, these are the ones graphics card is most optimal solution for. The original Bitcoin is constrained by how fast you can do cryptographic operations, there ASICs wipe the floor with any other solution even if they are cheap to develop low end chips, nobody uses PC-s to mine Bitcoin anymore. Making an ASIC for memory constrained altcoin would be ridiculous, graphics cards already have fantastic memory bandwidth. ASIC board would have marginal improvement at best at the ridiculous cost of developing your own high end chip and keeping the design up to date with the times. There is no point.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know that cre1mer is too dumb for that. Even though he budgets to the penny it's never occurred to him that he could pick a cheaper phone plan, split wifi with his neighbor, and make lattes at home and have $100 of extra discretionary spending every month. Every fucking thrift store in San Jose is full of high end espresso makers that someone used twice and got tired of cleaning.

Also liquidating novelty investments to pay off his credit cards and start using a rewards card and high interest savings account. At $55,000 a year - 20% taxes that would work out to 50 extra dollars a month for breathing air. Not to mention whatever the interest is on his current credit card debt.

Cre1mer, Why don't you go on camelcamelcamel and other price alert sites? (There are some for ebay and craigslist too). If you want a new video card set up alerts for 100 acceptable video cards, 100 acceptable cell phones, etc. Odds are that one of them will end up on sale for a ridiculously low price every once in awhile and that's when you upgrade. You'll often pay less than half price for all your biggest purchases.

I'm sure if we went through all of cre1mer's expenses we could easily iron out an extra 300 dollars of spending cash a month because he's dead horrible with money.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

" A grave sacrifice every three years."

Maybe if you made a gravy sacrifice you wouldn't look like an animated puddle?

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Start by learning how to spell "loser".

Chris.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Anonymous Coward]

besides that, we haven't seen the natural decrease in price of existing cards as a new generation of chips is introduced - which also hasn't happened, either. they're actually delaying the next chips because sales is still strong on existing product.

simple example: the lower-end 1030 should be $45, 1050 $70 and 1050ti $90... and a new low-end 11-series chip would be taking over the 100-150 price range by now.

the 1050-1050ti debuted with a $109-139 msrp but barely had a chance to sell for that as cards above it disappeared and people 'settled' for these instead, then you have the gpu and card makers producing higher margin cards instead of low end cards. still sells for $170 after hitting a peak of over $200..

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[Holi]

Are you saying that is not the case, that coins like Ethereum, Zencash, Xmr and the like weren't designed to be ASIC resistant? It's not like what he said was controversial.

Re:MSRP should have gone down too!

[delt0r]

I hope so. I am a year overdue for a new PC that can play doom. I only got 9 hours out of that game before my last PC died.

NVIDIA stock price

[tommeke100]

Now that was a good investment 5-4-3-2-1 year(s) ago. Not only do you speculate on higher demand through cryptocurrency mining, you also get the whole AI and machine -deep- learning crowd and the gamers.

Yawn...

[Freischutz]

As Cryptocurrency Values Plummet, Graphics Card Pricing Improves Dramatically ....

Tulip bulb market crashes, flowerpot pricing improves dramatically ....

Re: Yawn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad Analogy crashes, so does a car.

Re:Yawn...

[MadCat221]

More accurate analogy: Flower pot hat fad craze subsides, Flower potting enthusiasts rejoice as flower pot prices improve dramatically

Re:Yawn...

[samwichse]

Cool guys don't look at [market] explosions.

Re:Yawn...

[Freischutz]

Cool guys don't look at [market] explosions.

So, you guys have invented a new word for 'bubble' ...

Re: Yawn...

[delt0r]

A good post wasted to that wanker AC!

What about DRAM prices?

[evanh]

Time for DRAM to return to normal too!

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's about half the cost of a new computer for us. 128GB RAM costs a fair penny now...

Re:What about DRAM prices?

[thegarbz]

Why? Did the bitcoin price change the number of mobile phones being shipped?

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I bought my 486 system, it was about $600 for the motherboard and processor and $600 for the four 4mb simm modules.

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you overpaid or bought a non standard setup. Let me guess, EISA?
Decent motherboards have never started above $200, I think even my 386 build was only $150 for the mobo.

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Type44Q]

Yep; I was going to say the same thing: 4MB of RAM was never anywhere near $600 U.S. during the time of the 486; he's off by at least a factor of four.

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[hazardPPP]

Parent AC said "$600 for the motherboard and processor". Not $600 just for the motherboard.

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Immerman]

Try again. They said $600 for 16mb of ram (4x4mb), putting them exactly in line with your "counter-" estimate.

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the recommendation of some others here, I finally broke down and got a refurb HP z620 with 96gb ram (could have got 128gb, but I've been running on 16gb for so long that I couldn't really justify that jump). I'd recommend that path to just about anyone... it's quite a solid machine, even if it's pretty damn old now, and you get way more ram for the buck than any other way I could find.

And thank you to those buying new machines with 128gb ram... I suspect those will eventually reach the refurb market where I can get my next upgrade :-)

Re: What about DRAM prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep; I was going to say the same thing: 4MB of RAM was never anywhere near $600 U.S. during the time of the 486; he's off by at least a factor of four.

Reading comprehension is hard, when you're fat and stupid.

Old tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the fact that it's still over MSRP 2 years after release, shows that there's a problem. It should've gone down long ago, if it wasn't for the miners.

PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[enriquevagu]

Public blockchains that rely on Proof-of-Work (PoW) should be outlawed. They encourage mining, which is basically wasting energy in HUGE amounts (in the case of cryptocurrencies, to generate virtual coins out of thin air). They are such an inefficient way of implementing the technology, in terms of energy consumption, that they should never be considered as a viable option. If you are considering blockchain-based technology, please think of the planet for a moment when architecting your solution.

Remember the Energy Star program? Well, that program should be extended to forbid certain technlogies. Such as Bitcoin.

For more info, see the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. Bitcoin is wasting more energy than many countries in the world. At least, now we have GPUs back to normal prices.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[aliquis]

The Energy Singularity law?

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[religionofpeas]

Should we also outlaw video games which are also wasting energy in huge amounts ? Think of the planet, and play a board game instead.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[afxgrin]

It's inefficient as a database but it's efficient for a multi user trust system.

Bitcoin by design was to encourage mining so its economic eco-system would grow. When the bitcoin lottery payout is gone completely all that's left is the transaction fees to mine for, the payout will be lower and the number of competing miners should drop quite a bit.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

We should outlaw facebook. it wastes huge amounts of energy to run all their datacenters.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

which is basically wasting energy in HUGE amounts

Internet shitposting should be outlawed. It encourages dumbasses to spew their nonsense as if anybody cares, which is basically wasting not only energy, but also bandwidth, in HUGE amounts.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

At which point the system will be massively vulnerable to 50% (actually 30%) attacks and collapse.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

I love that pseudo-news blurb. I never get tired of hearing it. "Crypto currencies use more power than X".

You know those numbers were just rough estimates, right? You DO know that, right? RIGHT? No one actually went out and freaking measured how much power a warehouse full of GPUs was consuming. You do realize you sound like a mindless git when you just repeat dub-ass blurbs like that, don't you? DON'T YOU??

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wahhh, we should ban things I don't like

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

We should outlaw facebook. it wastes huge amounts of energy to run all their datacenters.

Facebook is like the ultimate enabler of tribalism, and all the evils that that brings about. Too many people want power, not to make their and others lives easier, but to make various people act in certain ways. Being enable to manipulate tribes of people by their one or two well labeled knobs and even to have them all presorted, more or less, makes that kind of thing easier to achieve.

I'd very much like facebook to die, but I can't see any legal reason against it, other than as a means to prevent people from behaving stupidly, which is their right and trying to stop people from using facebook would be the exact same thing as trying to stop the wrong people from marrying and all the rest.

Freedom means that people can do things you don't like and you generally have to get over it. That is the problem with the republican party. They don't want freedom. They want, well they want their version of religious law to be forced on everyone, and are more than willing to make Faustian deals with characters of dubious repute to get it.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of the planet, and play a board game instead.

Ah yes, those Monopoly memories. There's nothing quite like the explosion of rage that often results when your opponents finally start landing on your Boardwalk and Park Place hotels and have to start mortgaging all of their properties to you.That's usually about the time that the board and all of the pieces are scattered by a frustrated rage quit. Energy efficient perhaps, but not so good for the relationship.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but the energy waste is nowhere close, plus they provide entertainment which, arguably, is something people require.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell me, what game is anyone playing that caps out racks and racks of GPUs 24/7/365? Oh, people only play a game for at most a few hours and it is uncommon for it to completely max out a single card as doing so kills the framerate? Huh, they don't appear to be similar at all, do they?

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[q4Fry]

Think of the planet, and play a board game instead.

A game made of tree pulp? I dare not. Think of the planet!

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[crtreece]

Wahhh, we should ban things I don't like

No, you have it all wrong. I like those things and they should be mandatory. The things *I* don't like should be banned.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[drinkypoo]

Should we also outlaw video games which are also wasting energy in huge amounts ?

Cryptocurrency is wasting energy for nothing, there are better ways to go than proof-of-work. Video games can't be implemented any other way.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Child thinks his video games provide more value to society than a value transfer system that doesn't rely on centralized authorities.

Very little of the money being pumped into crypto-currencies is actually providing a net benefit to society. It's mostly just speculation, moving money around without producing anything.

Maybe Venezuela should feed themselves with Call of Duty.

Venezuela is currently in a special hell. Some people with enough money to invest in bitcoin equipment can mine bitcoin using heavily subsidized electricity, and use the money it to import goods. But it's not like they could adopt this as a general solution to uplift the entire population.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[religionofpeas]

So tell me, what game is anyone playing that caps out racks and racks of GPUs 24/7/365? Oh, people only play a game for at most a few hours and it is uncommon for it to completely max out a single card as doing so kills the framerate? Huh, they don't appear to be similar at all, do they?

There are only a few people using racks and racks of GPUs for mining. There are millions of people gaming.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[religionofpeas]

Cryptocurrency is wasting energy for nothing, there are better ways to go than proof-of-work.

Problem solved then. If there are better ways, they will soon take over.

Video games can't be implemented any other way.

But you don't have to play them.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[drinkypoo]

Cryptocurrency is wasting energy for nothing, there are better ways to go than proof-of-work.

Problem solved then. If there are better ways, they will soon take over.

You're ignoring social inertia. It's like Facebook. There are better alternatives, but it's already popular and that popularity breeds more popularity.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[supercell]

Only the ones women play. I want to be on the right side of history.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[enriquevagu]

Exactly.

Bitcoin is using 1M times the power per transaction compared to other systems (e.g. VISA) and this will get much worse, but it provides multi-user trust. Is the lack of trust on a central organization (bank, card payment system), even protected by heavy economic & financial laws, sufficient to justify the huge energy cost of Bitcoin?

Note that regulation forbids unefficient implementation of devices (e.g. vacuum cleaners). PoW-based blockchains should be forbidden too. Devise another implementation which does not rely on PoW.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're serious, you're just as zealous, short-sighted and authoritarian as any big-state surveillance junkie.

You just said to ban certain kinds of math.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[rkordmaa]

Don't just bash, come on, offer up an alternative on how to keep a trustworthy distributed ledger. What are you supposed to do if you can't have a trusted third party? And you can't with something like currency, it's been tried endless times, nobody has enough trust to back up a viable virtual currency, not even entire nations. Especially not nations now that I think about it. Entire point with cryptocurrencies is that you have immutable monetary policy that nobody can muck about with. That's a bloody tall order and PoW is a genius way to achieve it, if there are alternatives I sure can't think of any.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[lgw]

Cryptocurrency is wasting energy for nothing, there are better ways to go than proof-of-work. Video games can't be implemented any other way.

The only freedom is freedom for me to do things you find useless or harmful. Would you prefer the communist ideal where each of us work each day to the limit of our abilities to meet the needs of others?

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[DontBeAMoran]

Video games can't be implemented any other way.

Sure they can. Nobody needs 4K videogames running at 120FPS. We could all return to 2010-era 3D graphics and developers would be forced to make fun and entertaining games instead of the sugar-coated-visuals crapfest they're making now.

If that still requires too much energy, how about going back to SNES-era graphics? Still too much? How about Intellivision-era graphics? It's still videogames.

Can you imagine how low power a 2018 Intellivision system could be? It would probably run on a CR2032 battery for over a month.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[DontBeAMoran]

Actually, if the power required is much lower along with the payout, this means the big players will stop mining and will be replaced with thousands of single miners that will mine for the sake of the network and not for the profits.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

FALSE. You have NO idea what you're talking about.

Decentralized Cryptocurrencies are More Efficient than all Government Fiat Worldwide combined...

ALL the redundant and inefficient Government Workers, the Bank Workers, the cost of their buildings to build and maintain, heat and cool, their datacenters, their salaries, their insurance, their cars and fuel back and forth, all the office computers and lights and paper, and energy to create support ship and store all those things, their FatCat CEOs and Politicians, all their Regulations artificially stifling Free Market efficiencies...

Completely eliminated by the Efficiency of Decentralized Cryptocurrencies.

And Centralized / Non-Mineable Shitcoins (all such coins are shitcoins) are even more efficient, but you'd never want to put anything important on them due to eventual censorship... if you can Sue or Regulate or Jail it, it's a shitcoin.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[thegarbz]

Should we also outlaw video games which are also wasting energy in huge amounts ?

But are they? They are providing entertainment for many. What is bitcoin providing? Won't someone think of the drug dealers?

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[drinkypoo]

The only freedom is freedom for me to do things you find useless or harmful. Would you prefer the communist ideal where each of us work each day to the limit of our abilities to meet the needs of others?

No, nor do I share your apparent preference for a world in which I can shoot you in the face without repercussions. The only difference between proof-of-work cryptocurrency and shooting someone in the face is that when you shoot someone in the face you only harm one person, while proof-of-work cryptocurrency needlessly harms all people.

If you do prefer a world where it's OK to shoot people in the face, could you please shoot yourself in the face now and save the rest of us the trouble of having to deal with you? If you don't, then you cannot logically support proof-of-work cryptocurrency by definition.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone call my Nanny and she'll make a rule!

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means it is more vulnerable to a 50% attack...
Protection against 50% attack does not revolve around good feelings and whether miners are doing it for the sake of humanity or not, its a pure numbers game.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

... says a government shill pushing the reservation of all crypto to proof-of-stake (which only benefits the already-wealthy) by the big banking cabal.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

nano ftw
Fast as fuck.
No fees.
Green as a motherfucker.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[DontBeAMoran]

But it takes a big miner to implement a 51% attack. So the more big players drop and the more they are replaced by individuals, the more secure the network will be.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you cannot be this stupid? Are you being deliberately misleading in the hopes that people will misunderstand?

The smaller the overall hash rate of the network the easier an attack, pure simple mathematics. Made even worse by all the oodles of spare hash power that will be up for grabs after all the "big miners" drop out.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[jpaine619]

Are you high? Are you one of those nutjobs that thinks energy is finite? It may be, strictly speaking, but practically it is infinite. We just need to make more of it.

Wanna use renewables? Fine, but quit acting like any energy generation is a finite supply. You can always add one more solar panel to the array (or build another array).

You are failing to understand, or take into account, the fact that what YOU might consider a waste of electricity, others may not. And what you might consider a perfectly good usage, others may find wasteful.

I, for one, think that televisions are a blight on society. But, I'm not so egotistical that I'm going to suggest that they should be banned. I see no net positive benefit to them, but I'd rather live in a society where YOU can waste your time/money/electricity, sitting on a couch, getting stupider and fatter. I value freedom.

So, please take your holier-than-thou sentiment, and cram it up the back pipe.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

What a gross simplification. You should be ashamed.

Freedom to do things others find harmful? Nah son, that's being an a-hole. at best.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

While a good use of reductio ad absurdium, unfortunately it was on a false equivalence, so your point is null.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-energy-consumption-explained/

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[drinkypoo]

"You are failing to understand, or take into account, the fact that what YOU might consider a waste of electricity, others may not. "

If you can accomplish the same thing without the energy expenditure then it is by definition wasteful. Paragraphs of bullshit won't change that.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[bill_mcgonigle]

Freedom to do things others find harmful? Nah son, that's being an a-hole. at best.

He's talking about the socialist idea of communal-harm. Like you arguing on /. instead of volunteering at the soup kitchen. It's harmful to society.

Get thee to a reeducation camp!

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Comrade Ogilvy]

No, the big miners move to greener pastures to build up their crypto muscle with more and newer rigs. Then someone figures out that their old rigs may no longer be economically viable to run in the big leagues, but they are powerful enough to rape and pillage these hobbyist networks run by many individuals.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Comrade Ogilvy]

There was a time circa 2014 that the protocol bounty dropped too low relative to real world prices, and you could not get a transaction processed in a timely manner without ponying up a bounty out of your own wallet. This is a factual scenario that already happened. Big miners did not go away, they just became pickier.

This scenario will happen again, but the big run up in Bitcoin prices pushed it into the future.

Of course, it is possible that Bitcoin value collapses in the future, which might drive away all miners. But that would not be the kind of accomplishment in democracy I think you are thinking of.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[DontBeAMoran]

What part of "replaced by individuals" do you not comprehend? If one big player leaves and is replaced by enough invididuals to match the hashing rate of the big player, the network strength stays the same but is less centralized than before.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Public network security in a trustless decentralized network has to come from somewhere. Other forms of consensus lead to centralization - different strategies will be required in the long run imo.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

OK- so no more slashdot for you. It is by your definition wasteful and you seem to think it should be banned. There are other less energy intensive ways to be social with other geeks than slashdot after all. Some GULP don't even require a computer!

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[Anonymous Coward]

Good lord your grasp of economics is as poor as your grasp of math.

If the Bitcoin value massively collapses the overall hashrate will be substantially lower, it will be substantially more vulnerable to attack, the network strength will not magically stay the same.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[lgw]

Freedom to do good entails freedom to do evil. There are thousands of books of theology on the topic, in nearly every human language.

Re:PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawed

[drinkypoo]

"OK- so no more slashdot for you. It is by your definition wasteful and you seem to think it should be banned. There are other less energy intensive ways to be social with other geeks than slashdot after all."

There are no non-computerized ways to carry on a conversation of this scope with distributed participants, especially in real-time. You are going to have to put in substantially more effort than that if you want to catch me out. Good luck!

Researchers release DEDA to anonymize laser printe

[Anonymous Coward]

" DEDA is a new tool for Linux that researchers have created to read and decode the forensic information, and to anonymize information to protect against tracking.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered in 2008 that nearly all major color laser printer manufacturers added tracking dots to any printed document. The yellow tracking dots were invisible to the eye and apparently added to printouts on request of the U.S. government."

Earlier discussion of this and more sophisticated printer tracking codes [src]

Rule #1: All Economies are Cyclical

[Anonymous Coward]

And, the cryptocurrency economy is no different. There have already been several boom-bust cycles in crypto, and there will be many more.

I am taking advantage of this "downturn" to add to the Ethereum mine for sure. My mining shares have actually been going up, too, as people who are paying residential prices for electricity are leaving the network. It's a good time to be in mining.

btc year over roi 125%

[Anonymous Coward]

plummeting upwards then?

Re: btc year over roi 125%

[Anonymous Coward]

Stagnating. Not the 'boom' needed to maintain the hype campaign.

Slowed the progress of new cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphics cards companies would rather keep making more current gen cards instead of working on next generation cards because they know they have a guaranteed market for them from miners instead of the standard moore's law cycle.

Over-production

[The Cynical Critic]

I've personally been following GPU prices pretty closely for the last year or so and from what I've seen the drop-off hasn't even been that dramatic since the start of the year and there's still plenty of air in prices, particularly for AMD cards. You can find plenty of Nvidia cards for about MSRP, thou that's not all that unusual as there's been the occasional MSRP special trough the whole craze, but AMD cards still go for well above MSRP almost all across their range and there's actually a reason for that.

The last time there was a mining craze and then a bubble burst AMD, who like this time had the hardware best suited for this, and their board partners ended up badly over-producing and when the bubble burst almost over night finding themselves with a significant stockpile of unsold hardware. Not only that, a lot of miners also either intentionally broke their cards by wrapping them up so that they'd fail out of heat so they could return them for a refund or then flooded the second hand market with their cards, significantly reducing the demand for that surplus hardware and AMD and their partners needed to shift. The end result of this was that there was suddenly a huge amount of second hand top-end 200-series cards and really big discounts on new cards, which as you may be able to guess didn't exactly do wonders for their bottom line.

What seems to have happened this time as that AMD and their board partners were cautious and deliberately under-produced during the craze and now that things have died down they don't have the surplus stock Nvidia has. Nvidia has reportedly even had to resort to delaying the launch of their next generation of cards just so that they can shift their existing inventory without having to resort to fire sale prices.

Re:Over-production

[Mindragon]

It is likely that Nvidia will discontinue graphic card production over the long run. Their focus on long term productivity gains will be in AI-based markets.

Re:Over-production

[CanEHdian]

The whole point is that, before all the mining craziness, the MSRP was about that maximum price (a few exceptions like "Golden Sample" super-overclock cards) you'd see. The so-called "street price" was under MSRP and as soon as the next iteration of cards hit the market, the previous generation went for well under MSRP. 2-year old cards went for clearance prices.

Re:Over-production

[Anubis IV]

AMD and their board partners were cautious and deliberately under-produced during the craze and now that things have died down they don't have the surplus stock Nvidia has. Nvidia has reportedly even had to resort to delaying the launch of their next generation of cards just so that they can shift their existing inventory without having to resort to fire sale prices.

Great points all around, but I wanted to draw special attention to this statement of yours in particular. The summary is suggesting that Nvidia’s next cards are coming soon, but Nvidia’s President said last month at Computex that we won’t see the new cards for “a long time”. People reading the tea leaves are expecting an announcement or leaks to start in earnest next month, but with word straight from the horse’s mouth and rumors about them having far too much inventory seeming to bear out, we have no good reason to expect new cards to be released anytime soon. At best, we may see something, but we shouldn’t expect to have it in ours hands anytime soon.

Re:Over-production

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is suggesting that Nvidiaâ(TM)s next cards are coming soon

Some rumors suggest that they will release late in September, though a healthy dose of skepticism is never a bad idea.

Re:Over-production

[thegarbz]

That's not universal. The RX550 and RX560 are still lingering around the high point. The RX 570, 580 and VEGA based cards have fallen. The same nonuniversality applies to NVIDIA. The 1050 through 1070s have dropped but are not back at MSRP levels. The 1070ti and 1080 dropped quite significantly.

There's some decent trends on this page: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/tr... and it seems mostly in line with general prices at newegg. There are plenty of places you can pick up various models back at MSRP without any "specials".

Re:Over-production

[Raenex]

but with word straight from the horse's mouth

Can't take anything they say at face value. They have to balance building hype versus not undercutting their current sales.

Re:List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump tax cuts

On overreaction.

[h33t l4x0r]

BTC vs USD is down maybe in the past month, but certainly still up int he past year. Don't exaggerate, people.

Re:On overreaction.

[religionofpeas]

Graphics cards aren't used to mine Bitcoin.

Re:On overreaction.

[h33t l4x0r]

Did I say they were?

Re:On overreaction.

[religionofpeas]

You made it sound like BTC vs USD was relevant for graphics card price.

Re:On overreaction.

[Voice of satan]

It is since the alt coins which ARE mined by GPU's have values depending in part of the BTC value. ETH is down too.

Re:On overreaction.

[h33t l4x0r]

No, the headline did that. I'm saying BTC isn't really down on any timescale that counts. Day-traders aside, BTC has been a damn good investment.

Re:On overreaction.

[DRJlaw]

I'm saying BTC isn't really down on any timescale that counts.

It's odd how timescales of up to 6 months suddenly don't count, and BTC speculators have suddenly become buy-and-hold investors praising Saint Warren Buffett. It's especially odd considering BTC is touted as a currency, and thus should have a relatively stable value.

2018 counts, oh great pumper of snake oil. It counts bigly.

Re:On overreaction.

[religionofpeas]

Headline doesn't mention Bitcoin. Plenty of alt coins are down much more than BTC, and it's some of those alts that are mined on graphics cards.

Re:On overreaction.

[Anonymous Coward]

2018 is not over, and it will count bigly. Lots of people are going to regret not buying (or -- worse -- selling) in the first half of 2018 for the rest of their lives.

Re:On overreaction.

[Anubis IV]

1 BTC = $6,574.50 USD right now
1 BTC = $6,199.80 USD one week ago
1 BTC = $7,717.00 USD one month ago
1 BTC = $16,041.00 USD six months ago
1 BTC = $2,649.60 USD one year ago

So, yes, you're correct about the prices, but so is the summary. Prices are far down from where they were before, but they're also up from where they were before, depending on how far back you look. Even so, it's the recent downturn that is having an immediate effect on reducing prices in the GPU market, just as the upward swing had an effect on the market a few months back. Moreover, the summary doesn't seem to exaggerate anything. They even explicitly acknowledged that this recent downturn does not necessarily indicate any sort of cryptocurrency bubble bursting.

Re:List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

The DNC primary process.

Re: List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Black History Month

I mean seriously... An entire month dedicated to outdated farm equipment?

Re:WRONG!

[cre1mer]

The 1990's called and want their blink tags back.

Re: PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawe

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you were punched in the nuts a lot as a kid by girls. right? RIGHT??

Re:WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1990s called and said you can come back home to Slashdot. In 1998. 2018 doesn't want you.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:it's the economy which is causing crypto to fal

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is there were a shitload of people on hearing claiming that as the economy went bad everyone would be fleeing TO bitcoin skyrocketing the price as bankers and investors would trust crypto currencies more than shares or gold or property. Hell you still find predictions on websites this week claiming bitcoin will be 50-100k by the end of this year.

Is it really a currency?

[baenpb]

Every article regarding cryptocurrency (this one included) refers to the product as a "currency," but it seems like that use case has been abandoned. It is strictly an investment commodity, like oil futures. Bitcoin was popularized with the internet black markets, with purchasing drugs and prostitutes. Is that still happening? Years back I started seeing posts about graphic designers who would accept payment in bitcoin. Weeks ago I saw that there were cryptocurrency machines set up in Schiphol airport, where you can convert euros to bitcoins. Discussions now are about which coin to invest in. There is little interest in buying coffee or lambos, just interest in how to maximize my (real-world, real-currency) money.

No need for graphix cards with APKoin

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:No need for graphix cards with APKoin

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw APKCoin, I want AppCoin, because only Appers know that Apps that App AppCoin can add AppCoin to you! AppCoin for Appers who app apps, other coins for LUDDITES!

Re: List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Black History Month

I mean seriously... An entire month dedicated to outdated farm equipment?

shortest month of the year too, but that's ok... if they're good for a few years they get an extra day. messed up.

Cryptocurrency

[DaMattster]

The whole thing is a mania. There are a few people that got wealthy and the rest will be caught holding the bad as it plummets.

Re:Cryptocurrency

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole thing is a mania. There are a few people that got wealthy and the rest will be caught holding the bad as it plummets.

Just like the stock market...

Re:Cryptocurrency

[eepok]

Kinda, but not "just like" the stock market. While the market is obviously flawed, it's not completely based on asserted and unrecognized value of an product's hypothetical potential to do something important in the future. That's cryptocurrency. People invested in cryptocurrency because other people invested in cryptocurrency. Very few believe it's the immediate future of financial transactions, but they know the value's going up and they're not going to miss out!

On the other hand, the majority of the stocks traded are of appropriate value to each other. And while irrationally high investment into the stock market in general can irrationally inflate all stocks ("a rising tide raises all ships"), there are some genuinely over-valued stocks that are more akin to cryptocurrency. Tesla and Uber, for example, have massive values (noting that Uber's not publicly traded) for having never turned a profit. People (investors, venture capitalists), however keep pumping in money because others are pumping in money and there is hope/expectation that they will both become dominantly profitable Soon(tm).

So, if you have companies that have shown consistent profits at 20% above what they "should" be and the market as a whole drops because of sudden loss of confidence (general bubble burst, major political event), those companies will maintain similar relative values to others (... the tide goes out). Over-valued stocks and things with no rational value (cryptocurrencies) will drop much more than the rest of the market because their investor make-up is significantly more saturated with short-term and opportunist investors who are much more likely to sell off at the drop of a hat.

Re:Cryptocurrency

[Anonymous Coward]

The logic here fails. Crypto currencies are an excellent means of conducting transactions locally and abroad. New Hampshire has an increasing number of users and businesses taking and using crypto currencies. It's reduced transactions costs relative to credit cards and who knows how much compared to cash (which is expensive to produce and maintain).

Re:WRONG!

[cre1mer]

Good point. Slashdot was still popular in the 1990's. Unlike today.

All cryptocurrencies and ICOs are scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Are (any) fiat-currency and (any) cryptocurrency really equivalent, as cryptocurrency fans claim?
For example, US Dollar and Bitcoin are really equals?
Value/validity/authorization of US dollar is provided/guaranteed by US Government (and in-turn whole US Public)!
Also, not to mention, US Dollars in any US Bank is insured by US Government!
What authorization/guarantee/insurance is behind Bitcoin? Nothing!
Sorry but that is the end of discussion then!

Why do you think Satoshi Nakamoto is really hiding his identity, if Bitcoin is really such a great innovation?
He is just someone does not like media/fan attention?
Or, could it be really because Bitcoin (and all cryptocurrencies followed it) are actually Ponzi Schemes?
(So he knew very well that law enforcement would come after him sooner or later?!)

If so-called cryptocurrencies are really good innovation, why they attract so many criminals/criminal activity?
Could it really be because, all cryptocurrencies themselves are scams, and that is why they attract all kinds of criminals/criminal activity?

If so-called cryptocurrencies are really currency, why no company/store can use Bitcoin as currency anymore?
Because the price of Bitcoin proved to be extremely unstable to use as a currency?
Would the result be different, if Bitcoin replaced by any other "cryptocurrency"?
Aren't all work the same way?

If so-called cryptocurrencies are really money; isn't people issuing their own money, illegal already, in all countries?
If so then, why they are still not banned in all countries?

Or, they are not actually virtual currency but virtual investment?
But, if they are actually investment, why we need/want them?
What would happen to world economy, if people invested in virtual investments, instead of real investments?

Or, all so-called cryptocurrencies are actually just a modified (made decentralized and paying variable interest) Ponzi Schemes?
(Price of cryptocurrencies would keep increasing in the long term (by their design), so it is equivalent of paying variable interest to all long term investors.)

Also, since all so-called cryptocurrencies are actually financial scams (Ponzi Schemes), that means, they cannot be the solution for any of existing financial problems of our world!

As more and more people invest in cryptocurrencies, it will become harder and harder to ban their trading everywhere (because people invested in cryptocurrencies, would try to stop anyone trying to ban cryptocurrencies)!
All cryptocurrencies need to be banned globally before it is too late!

Re:establishment shills

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot you are such a worthless pile of shit in recent years. all you do is shill for the establishment. this is a stupid little tech news site and still you go that route? its just unbelievable.

And yet here you are, posting.

Happens all the time

[sjbe]

So which one is it: price gouging, or legitimate supply and demand?

Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have situations where normal market dynamics of supply and demand allow for price gouging. Happens all the time in medicine. It also would happen in certain other industries like utilities where there is a monopoly if the vendors weren't regulated. While you can certainly argue that drug prices are a function of legitimate supply and demand, the fact is that price gouging routinely occurs as well because they are taking advantage of people who have a weak BATNA. Any time you need (not want but actually need) something and there is a bottleneck on supply controlled by someone else there is a strong chance of price gouging occurring. Particularly when discriminatory pricing is not prohibited.

Re:Happens all the time

[ravenshrike]

I'm sorry, but did you just try to argue that medicine was subject to normal market dynamics? Really? Price gouging occurs when access to a product is restricted, either through an emergency, or entirely artificial constraints.

Re:Happens all the time

[lgw]

"Price gouging" just means "a price I don't like", so it can happen in any kind of market.

Elsewhere...

[Voice of satan]

I still read the French speaking internet and this is what i see there: People are selling theirs rigs at stupidly high prices. I see personal ads in forums and second hand sale websites. I do not see any sign of anyone buying them. And they sell their whole rigs, not the individual GPU's mind you.

Even at half the price, i wouldn't buy the cards. They have mined 24 hours a day for months or worse. Their lifespan must be well reduced.

Thinking of the high prices of electricity there, i wonder how many of them mined for a loss hoping the cryptos would skyrocket.

In a gold rush the ones getting rich are the ones selling pickaxes...

Re:Elsewhere...

[phantomfive]

Thinking of the high prices of electricity there, i wonder how many of them mined for a loss hoping the cryptos would skyrocket.

With bitcoin, it's typically either "win" or "lose." If you manage to find one bitcoin, then you win and it will be enough to pay for your entire rig and more. But there's also a chance you won't find anything, and you eat the entire equipment purchase.

Re:Elsewhere...

[Voice of satan]

I get your point. But what you are talking about is solo mining.

Those people i alluded to mined alt-coins, not BTC. Usually ETH. And they did it via pools and were remunerated by the hash.

Re:Elsewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking of the high prices of electricity there, i wonder how many of them mined for a loss hoping the cryptos would skyrocket.

With bitcoin, it's typically either "win" or "lose." If you manage to find one bitcoin, then you win and it will be enough to pay for your entire rig and more. But there's also a chance you won't find anything, and you eat the entire equipment purchase.

So you have no idea how mining works then? A comparatively microscopic portion of the people mining do solo mining, especially for BTC. Everyone else is in a pool. One of my favorite parts of the crypto hate is people don't have a clue how things actually are but talk like they do. The level of continued ignorance after nearly a decade and trillions of USD worth of transactions is truly astounding. But then most people just sit around yell how everyone is going to lose there money when I did mining on a single 1080 in downtime only (bought retail around launch of less than MSRP) and paid for it many times over after power.

Re:Elsewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Pascal card is fine mining for months on end, they don't get that hot. If they ran them 24/7 they have been through less thermal cycles than someone casually gaming. Most miners undervolt their cards because it improves profitability. These aren't 290's that have been run at the ragged edge in a milk crate rig with barely any cooling for months like during the first bitcoin boom.

Re:Elsewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares about the finer points of farming gold in WoW either

Re:Elsewhere...

[mysidia]

If you manage to find one bitcoin, then you win and it will be enough to pay for your entire rig and more

That's actually not how mining works.

Re:Elsewhere...

[phantomfive]

That's actually how mining works.

Re:Elsewhere...

[mysidia]

Bitcoin mining does not work that way at all. You do not find or fail to find 1 Bitcoin.
Even if you were working alone for entitlement to 100% of the reward which nobody does; the block
reward has never been 1 Bitcoin.

Miners work in Stratum Pools, and receive proceeds through pay-per-share, pay for last N shares, or
another proportional method. Statistically speaking, every proper pool DOES find multiple blocks.
There is variability in how long it will be, and how many work shares are completed before a block is found,
so this assertion is false:
If you manage to find one bitcoin, then you win and it will be enough to pay for your entire rig and more. But there's also a chance you won't find anything

Because ALL the recognized pools find many blocks at a certain rate.

The basic mining process and rewards are coordinated like this:

You setup an account with your pool with a username and an address for payouts

Your pool communicates with your miner over the stratum protocol; your miner establishes a connection using your specified credentials and the pool address, and the pool server supplies your miner part of the block to be solved and your share of the search space.

Your miner works on its share of work, and at certain intervals delivers a response proving that it has completed a
certain amount of work.
            Eventually one of the working miners working on your pool finds a block which contains a block reward;
However, the lucky miner is finding a block for the POOL, not themself ---- The contents the block had regarding payout was defined by the server, which the miner has no ability to control or change, so there is in general no extra compensation for being the lucky miner that found the block.
The proceeds of the block are paid out in different proportions to MULTIPLE miners owed a share of a block reward for working the pool with
excess and the pool fee paid to a Pool reserve address for further distributions of shares owed to miners, and finally
to the pool operator.

In this manner: With bitcoin, it's typically either "win" or "lose." is FALSE.
Every worker gets paid in relation to the amount of work they contribute to the pool ---- and it's not a huge amount per block to any one operator, certainly not a whole BTC, unless you have a MASSIVE amount of hashing power on the order of many hundreds thousands TH/s available.

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Re:establishment shills

[MojoKid]

And you're an anonymous coward pile of shit. Beat it troll.

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threadripper does not have on board video or ryzen

[Joe_Dragon]

threadripper does not have on board video or most of the ryzen desktop line.

Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[Junta]

I presume he meant some sort of motherboard with a graphics chip on the board, which I'm guessing exists still, for a ThreadRipper socket...

Alternatively get one of those unwanted low end, but still discrete...

DDR4 RAM!!! I really can't care about GPUs

[Anonymous Coward]

The price of RAM has prevented a new build to replace my (3) 10 yr old computers. A single new Ryzen would provide more compute power than my 3 older computers. They all use DDR3 RAM, so new RAM is mandatory, but the prices are about 4x higher than I can stomach.

I'm running VMs. No gamming. No cryptocurrenies crap.
CPUs are well priced.
Motherboards are well priced.
I can reuse everything else, except RAM.

DDR4 RAM is the only price gouging issue remaining.

Supply and Demand

[JBMcB]

If demand shoots up and supply doesn't catch up and you complain about prices going up, then you need to decide which is preferable - having something expensive but available, or cheap but unobtainable.

Re:Supply and demand

[Raenex]

Of course medicine is subject to normal market dynamics just like any other industry. The laws of economics are not suspended just for medicine. It tends to be regulated precisely because of the ease with which price gouging can (and does) occur but supply and demand still applies to medicine. This very fact is why those who argue against government involvement in health care are so very wrong. Normal market dynamics work but they often function in a way contrary to the benefit of society and individuals.

You've got it backwards. The reason there's such a high price for medicine is because of the government-granted monopolies on drug patents. It's debatable whether the cost of patents are outweighed by the benefits of patent-seeking research.

Re:establishment shills

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? Let the kiddies buy up their graphics cards and waste their lives on stupid games. I'll just stack up the Bitcoin while it's still cheap.

Miner Miner Forty-Niner

[Anonymous Coward]

KryptoKurrency

FTFY.

I want an ThreadRipper severboard with ipmi but

[Joe_Dragon]

I want an ThreadRipper severboard with ipmi but there are none or even amd ryzen boards with it so I can get an AMD board that is like intel xeon e3

Re:I want an ThreadRipper severboard with ipmi but

[Anonymous Coward]

coming soon: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12962/tyan-tomcat-ex-the-first-am4-ryzen-motherboard-with-management-control

I want an opensource or bto card

[sjwest]

I am not paying $1600 for a out of date gpu from two companies [of which nvida is shady] which comes with a proprietary driver. Just because nvida thinks that is what i want - no thanks

I would rather buy a pci card, load it with the ram myself and fit a gpu

Until then i shall stick with the one on my mobo.

Re:I want an opensource or bto card

[GuB-42]

Not buying a powerful GPU is a perfectly reasonable choice if you don't need a powerful GPU.

But if you need it, then you have no other choice. If you think you can design your own GPU, feel free to do it, there is definitely a market. However, none of the attempts so far managed to touch AMD and nVidia. Even Intel, with all their money and expertise can't pull it off.

Re:I want an opensource or bto card

[Anonymous Coward]

That is straight nonsensical bullshit. Aside from the "nVidia is evil" part, of course.

Decent video cards normally in the $150-$400 range were going for 1.5X-2X normal prices. At no point was any mainstream card selling at the $1600 level.

Re:I want an opensource or bto card

[sjwest]

how about a numeric coprocessor model - ok its going back to the early i386 , say a board with multiple sockets and ram sockets.

So you buy the card, a processor, the ram module

My thoughts are flawed here with multiple cores now but thats my concept.

Supply and demand

[sjbe]

I'm sorry, but did you just try to argue that medicine was subject to normal market dynamics?

Of course medicine is subject to normal market dynamics just like any other industry. The laws of economics are not suspended just for medicine. It tends to be regulated precisely because of the ease with which price gouging can (and does) occur but supply and demand still applies to medicine. This very fact is why those who argue against government involvement in health care are so very wrong. Normal market dynamics work but they often function in a way contrary to the benefit of society and individuals.

Price gouging occurs when access to a product is restricted, either through an emergency, or entirely artificial constraints.

While your are quite correct that those are the most common times we see the practice it is by no means limited to those two conditions. Price gouging can occur any time there is a breakdown in a competitive market. The constraints do not have to be artificial nor does there necessarily need to be an emergency. It often is used to describe the practices of a coercive monopoly. (before you respond, monopolies do not have to be artificially constructed) It also can happen with suppliers taking advantage of short term changes in the demand curve.

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Re:List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Seen the crypto currency articles this morning? $40 billion increase in two days, Seeking Alpha saying $100,000 for Bitcoins. Unlike other currencies that can be printed on demand, Bitcoins are not going to be any more common, and a deflationary currency is a good thing, as opposed to a currency subject to running the printing press and QE.

If BTC is bad on the long haul, then why are the bigwig banks still throwing their might behind it?

Price-Tracking Data - PCPartPicker

[eepok]

https://pcpartpicker.com/trend...

That's what I'm watching to track prices. It doesn't look like anything has gone down to pre-July 2017 prices. It's better now, but not appropriate.

Re:establishment shills

[Anonymous Coward]

He has to do something to pump up the value of BTC back above $17K where he bought in...

Re:DDR4 RAM!!! I really can't care about GPUs

[RocketSW]

This! The 16GB of DDR3 RAM that I purchased for $85 two years ago on Newegg is now listed at nearly $200. DDR4 RAM is just as bad.

Re: establishment shills

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant wait for bitcoin to crash and all the investors commit suicide. The digital purge.

No need to outlaw

[rsilvergun]

legalize drugs, crack down on money laundering and ransomware. That's basically that. The base line value of Bitcoin comes from it's use to trade illegal goods. In that market the crazy volatility doesn't matter since you're selling a plant for 100x what it cost to grow or you're laundering money you couldn't use anyway so the lost money is just transactional fees.

Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are already impractical to use as daily currencies because of transaction times. If you find a way to drop those times you'll probably also find a way to drop mining times and eliminate the artificial scarcity that keep the currency from collapsing. But you need proof of work or your currency becomes open to various forms of attack. You can do centralized proof of stake, but that's just a fiat currency. If you're going that route why not just whatever your country's local currency is?

It's all about transaction cost

[sjbe]

Is the lack of trust on a central organization (bank, card payment system), even protected by heavy economic & financial laws, sufficient to justify the huge energy cost of Bitcoin?

Easy answer to that question. Which is more expensive? Transaction infrastructure (including trust related ones) and processing costs money. The currency that will win is the currency with the lowest all-in transaction costs. Right now that is clearly NOT bitcoin outside of a few corner cases (mostly for illegal goods). Risk adjusted transaction costs for bitcoin are substantially higher than for the lowest priced alternatives. I see no credible evidence of that changing any time soon. Find a way to make bitcoin transactions actually cost less than using dollars as a general proposition and then it can be a discussion.

Re:establishment shills

[KixWooder]

I'll do you one better. I avoid crypto and graphics cards.

Any gaming I do is on my Switch. My PC doesn't get used for games.

Re: List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Go scam somewhere else. All your btc will be worth nothing soon.

Re: You member that..

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump's tarrifs will increase your cost of living 40% over the next 5 years.

All current GPU have equivalent of Intel ME.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have onboard processors (Xtensa MIPS, possibly replaced with a Cortex in Vega+ (Marketed as Secure Processor, same as Ryzen chips) in the case of AMD and Falcon in the case of Nvidia, both now utilizing mandatory firmware signing (although AMD leave, or left the clocking/voltage tables unchecksummed, so you could still do permanent overclock mods.)

Free, or even just flexible GPU hardware they are not. Given that RISC-V is making headway towards being an available open-source processor IP, maybe it is time for the same to be done with GPUs. There was an open source processor that should be IP unencumbered in progress a few years back. Not the AMD VLIW one by the college students, but another also hosted on gibhub produced by a single individual. It had an llvm toolchain as well as a single compute unit reference core available in vhdl or verilog, synthesized for a Virtex 7 or similiar. Maybe some open hardware guys can add their mindshare to his own and help get the job finished up to OGL 2.1/3.3/4.x, or Vulkan 1.0 levels of functionality.

Too late

[HalAtWork]

Switched to consoles for gaming and am quite comfortable to get off the upgrade treadmill. One purchase every 5+ years is much better (and no troubleshooting games/OS/drivers is great too).

Re: threadripper does not have on board video or r

[Anonymous Coward]

probably Ryzen 2400g which includes a decent APU and good CPU power for a Mobo that will also support threadripper

Re:establishment shills

[bn-7bc]

Hey they get value outof gaming, you might get it out of say watching N movies/mouth at the cinema (or in your living room with your a/v setup that you spent a lot on), thing is you both get to enjoy your down time. Imho they are no more wasting their lives then you or even that stamp collector that finally gets that stamp he has hunted for a long time. Will i ever collect stamps, probably not because I don't have the patience for it, do I consider that i wasted his time, nopes he had a good time while doing it,. Could he have used his tim and monye more productively? Certainly, but is everyone supposed to be productive all the time? This is not an attack on you, I just got curious about how you could decide what is an is not a waste of time. The ting is the main purpose og graphics cards is to render graphics, now for a time a secondary use (crypto currency mining) has vastly inflated prices for graphics cards, is ir any wonder that the primary user group is now happy the the secondary user group is rapidly disagreeing so that graphics cards are mor affordable to them. I suspect most gamers would not have cared about crypto currency mining if it had not inflated the gpu prices. I mighty be wrong on this but i suspect 99% of gamers could not care less iff someone made a killing wit (crypt mining)as long as the mining did not affect them negatively (which yhe incresed gpu prices well might have)

Oh, now I understand!

[Qbertino]

This Cryptocurrency thing was a scam initiated by Eve online and CoD players to get the next upgrade for cheap so they can go on and play their second jobs and continue collecting virtual in-game currency in 8k.

Nice move.

IMO, $600 for a GPU is dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

unless (i) you're a professional, (ii) you're an enthusiast with cash to burn, or (iii) the GPU has some novel tech that grabs me for some reason.

Even $500 is pushing it for me. Maybe I'm just cheap.

Re: Wumpus sucks cock

[HornWumpus]

Drunk again (still) drinkypoo?

Price Gouging?

[jpaine619]

price gouging that was going on earlier in 2018 and late last year, when demand was far out-stripping supply.

Price gouging? Does the author not understand how supply and demand works?

If you have a product in demand, and you cannot meet all of that demand, you raise your prices until the demand equals the supply. i.e. you REDUCE the demand to equal the supply.

That's exactly how the system is supposed to work. What the fuck are they teaching you people in school these days?

I've long had a problem with the price controls that are put in place during "emergencies". They encourage hoarding. I understand SOME controls on essentials (food/water/fuel) but the prices should be allowed to rise, at least to a reasonable level, during a crisis the prevent the exact situation that happens during every little minor bump, when uneducated morons flood the stores and sweep the shelves clean.

If you can afford to buy 200 AA batteries, you can afford to buy 100 at 2x the price and leave 100 for other people who need them....

Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[jpaine619]

Right... because no motherboard with a threadripper socket has an integrated video chip..... Think before you speak...

1080TI price has not changed for 1 year now

[D,Petkow]

I bought a MSI Geforce GTX 1080Ti Gaming X (Twin Frozr VI edition) and the price (€880) has not moved down since last June, when I got it.

Invalid Headline - Linked Article Is *Predicting*

[ytene]

This just in from the check-your-facts department: In writing the headline and the OP for this particular linked news article, slashdot have mis-read the linked article.

What the HotHardware piece actually says is:-

"According to Taipei industry publication DigiTimes, there has been a definite "mining chill" that's going to positively affect GPU pricing, with its sources claiming a drop of "around 20%" in July. That's significant, and should hopefully mean that more GPUs can be had at their actual MSRP, or perhaps even a bit under soon enough (remember when sub-MSRP prices were common?)."

Well, we're in July now [albeit only just]. I've checked my preferred GPU retail channels and... no. In fact, there are small month-on-month prices increases, not price drops.

Sadly, then, this would appear to be the case of hoped-for or planned-for price cuts. The article most certainly does not cite any real-world examples - and my cursory checking suggests that none exist - yet.

Re: PoW-based public blockchains should be outlawe

[Anonymous Coward]

It is mostly used for illegal activities like drugs, weapons, extortion, money laundering and many other things that we really do not want to know about. The illegal transactions dwarf the legal ones (speculation excluded).

Why would anyone want to associate themselves with that?

Now if only DDR4 prices could come down

[yorgasor]

The real killer is DDR4 memory. I can't put together a decent ESXi server without a ton of memory. To build my latest server, I had to pick Xeons that still used DDR3 memory, since I could get that at a fair price.

Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[Joe_Dragon]

server boards have there own lowend video chip as part of the ipmi not cpu video.

Refuse to play

[DarthVain]

I refuse to play that game. Video cards have been ridiculous for awhile now. Even with this dip, it is hardly reasonable. This reminds me of the HD (hard drive) scandal years ago. There was that flood, that jacked prices up. Then prices stayed up for a couple years beyond the flood as the highly consolidated HD market decided to artificially keep it that way for fun and profit. Sound familiar? There is basically two companies, AMD and nVidia, and a bunch of re-brands. Screw that.

I mean I got an MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB that came with two free games (which admittedly I never really played) in 2013 (so 5 years ago!) for 190$. Not only cannot I not buy a card that good for 190 bucks now, but I would pay more now and get a card with less performance. After 5 years of technological advancement...

On top of that it had a 40$ MIR (Mail In Rebate), so it really cost me 150$... (though as per usually I think it took months to actually get the MIR).

Anyway it's brutal and I refuse to play these stupid corporate games. If they want to start selling video cards again at reasonable prices then sure, I just wouldn't hold my breath anytime soon as no doubt they will milk this for all it is worth. I just hope my 'ol 7850 is up the the task of Fallout 76 when it comes available...

Re:Refuse to play

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesnt affect just games, it affects everything

come next month, if im able to do what im intending to do with this 2008 computer, im staying on it for another 2 years. I will only know it for sure when the day comes, but if it the "thing" loads im staying put, and its not that i dont have the money, its just that im pissed at the prices im seeing for 16 gigs of ram and 1060 cards in particular, so because of them, all the other component manufacturers in the computer itself wont be selling anything to me, that is if the "thing" loads at all and i think it will, if it doesnt load then ill buy a computer, its about time anyway, but if it does load im staying put, which means no sale for the power supply guys, no sale for the case dudes, no sale for the mobo manufacturer, no sale for intel or amd, etc

everytime someone FUCKS with the prices, they all pay the price, even the people that are not guilty

normally, just for gaming, i would already have a new computer, i almost bought one 4 years ago, but the thing is this: I can go to twitch and actually see what the games look like vs the hype, which means i can see with my own 2 eyes that something like fortnite, thats apparently an online "sensation", its just a turd, at least for my tastes, so theres no point in fancy new pcs if the games released are turds, and they ARE turds. Its amazing how quickly videogame industry turned into hollywood

Completely Agree

[ytene]

And where are the regulators and competition watchdogs?

Wherever they are and whatever they are doing, it certainly isn't investigating flagrant market abuse like this...

Re:Completely Agree

[DarthVain]

Unfortunately history has shown, that while these things do occasionally come to light, it typically takes forever, goes to court takes even longer, and then typically ends in a token settlement.

What it amounts to is market collusion, which is not only hard to prove, but takes a lot of time. As mentioned the Hard Drive industry went through it. Before that it was the LCD monitor market. Before that it was Memory.

The underlying problem being that at certain points when the market was fragmented the competition keeps companies in check more less. However more and more you see companies consolidating until there are only a handful of players in the market. Once that happens the temptation and opportunity become rife. Another commonality seems to be that typically it starts innocently enough due to some unforeseen circumstance, be it a flood, or a scarcity of some raw material, or in this case unusual demand due to a hereto unforeseen use for video cards... Then at some point it just becomes profiteering, more less because they can. Perhaps in 10 years or so it will eventually end up in court and a settlement for a couple hundred million. However that is a drop in the bucket when over that time they were able to make billions more, and none of that will help you or me as most of that money will go to lawyers, government, and maybe a few poor souls who somehow managed to keep a receipt for a video card or other proof of purchase for over a decade to enable them to collect 40$.

Re:Completely Agree

[ytene]

And the frustrating thing would be [at least in the case of graphics cards] a handful of very sternly worded letters to the likes of nVidia and AMD and maybe even Intel, basically putting them on notice and demanding transparency in terms of things like the amount of raw materials and/or components being purchased, prices being paid, volumes being manufactured and prices being charged...

It wouldn't even take the regulators a large amount of time to spin up a massive monitoring program - all it would take would be the threat of legal action to remind them to play by the rules.

The business-friendly governments and the completely ineffective regulators won't even do that.

Typical

Re:DDR4 RAM!!! I really can't care about GPUs

[jonwil]

Same here, I really really want to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB for my Skylake i5 system but the prices here in Australia for the needed DDR4 sticks are just obscene :(

Too bad the governments don't have the guts to take REAL action to stop the collusion and bring down DRAM prices (none of the fines currently being talked about will be enough to cause Micron, Hynix or Samsung to change their behaviour so the only solution is either much bigger fines or some kind of sanctions or the like)

Maybe the Chinese will have the guts to go further and hit the DRAM manufacturers enough that it actually forces them to change :)

Re: List of scams

[Anonymous Coward]

My dookie with extra corn is just as limited after my switch to a high fiber diet, and yet nobody has offered to pay anything for it. Iâ(TM)d even wrap each loaf in tinfoil, just for you.

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Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the only one stuck on this. No one said CPU video but you.

Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[Tough Love]

That's nothing. Get into Epyc and you won't have onboard sound either, and you probably won't care. You will have a 9 pin serial port for power management.

Re:threadripper does not have on board video or ry

[Tough Love]

I presume he meant some sort of motherboard with a graphics chip on the board, which I'm guessing exists still

I haven't seen one.

crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

ssssssssss