Anyone just given up on looking for a new GPU?

[HangTime]

Hard to say which percentage is miners, but the previous boom in cards in 2017 was the last crypto boom happened.

So I guess the concern is there were way more cards sold in 2017/18 (around 15-16m a quarter) compared to now (about 11-12m a quarter) and yet there was still no flood of cheap GPUs being sold second hand when crypto slumped even back then like some people seem to be expecting to happen this time. Yes prices did fall back and it became possible to buy OK value cards on the second hand market, but it was hardly the massive fire-sale some are predicting.

If you look at that chart in the three quarters between 2017Q3 and 2018Q2 roughly 47.5 million gpus were sold compared to just 34.4m in the last 3 quarters. So supply is currently WAY down on the previous peak, although obviously we'll see how the numbers land in Q2 this year.

In simple turns, there should've been a bigger supply glut in the last crash than is possible this time around around, and that supply glut didn't depress prices to bargain levels.

 

[random_matt]

More given up now than ever after seeing the stock issues surrounding Nvidia's badly reviewed, overpriced and LHR TI cards if even they're selling out in seconds.

Time to wait for RTX 40xx!

These prices won't be that much better come rtx 4000.

 

[silvagti]

These prices won't be that much better come rtx 4000.

Nah, I reckon things will be back to normal next year now that mining has been nerfed by LHR once supply catches up with demand.

 

[KompuKare]

In simple turns, there should've been a bigger supply glut in the last crash than is possible this time around around, and that supply glut didn't depress prices to bargain levels.

What there does seem to be is a shortage which has led to a quadroubling of the whole market by so much price gauging. I didn't pay that much attention but the last boom the prices didn't get this crazy.

Then again there wasn't a pandemic at the time. So gamers willing to pay extra, miners willing to buy to up anything which mines, plus a resurgent AMD (since most of their desktop chips don't have an IGPU so the patient cannot put off buying a dGPU until later). New consoles launching and eating into already constrained wafers/GDDR6 etc. don't help either.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What there does seem to be is a shortage which has led to a quadroubling of the whole market by so much price gauging. I didn't pay that much attention but the last boom the prices didn't get this crazy.

Then again there wasn't a pandemic at the time. So gamers willing to pay extra, miners willing to buy to up anything which mines, plus a resurgent AMD (since most of their desktop chips don't have an IGPU so the patient cannot put off buying a dGPU until later). New consoles launching and eating into already constrained wafers/GDDR6 etc. don't help either.

The boom is worse than any other before it.







There is your answer for the high prices. The Etherium price increase is a higher percentage than the last one. Bitcoin also went up by 6X. Etherium by 7X.

Also in the last boom £160 RX470 GPUs were going for around £300. RX480 for £400. So a 2X increase in prices IIRC.

 

[Drumroll]

I remember when was almost impossible to buy an AMD card when the first crypto boom happened, but at least Nvidia was available for the gamers.
The fact that people are willing to spend their holiday/hobby budget on GPU to at least try to get entertained, has pushed the demand a lot, allied to some issues on production, and to top the chaos mining, that's a perfect storm.
I don't believe that stocks will be plentiful for quite some time.
More likely to be okish for next generation, but 3000 series, or AMD equivalent, is be scalped by the market or simply don't get a GPU.
The last good opportunity was just before XMas when at least the expensive 3090 was available next to recommended price.
Even if mining becomes unviable to normal users, still good business for people who invest heavily.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am not sure I know many who would be spending that kind of money,ie,£600 on a RTX3060 or £700 on a RX6700XT just to game. I know more who would rather buy a console - even a scalped console can be had for "only" £100 more than RRP on the famous auction site. Both the XBox Series X or PS5 even with scalped prices cost less than an RTX3060 now(under £600). The XBox Series S is easy to get now at RRP. Basically it has similar GPU performance to an RX580 at least AFAIK.

However,if you look at the increase in the value of Etherium and Bitcoin,ie,a 6X to 7X increase in price,I think its being driven by miners. Some hardcore,others more casual miners who think they can strike some riches doing it on their main PCs. Hence they justify the higher prices. So in some way mining is making a bad situation worse.

Plus before the mining boom,GPU prices before Q3 2020 hadn't increased that much despite World+Dog scrambling for new PCs due to work from home and the lockdowns.

However,between Q3 2020 and Q4 2020,everything just went up in price and disappeared.

Also even in the 2018 mining boom,Nvidia GPUs eventually got affected too - the GTX1070 also went up in price. The GTX1080 ended up being a similar price in the end as GDDR5X sucked for mining!

 

[jtredux]

Nah, I reckon things will be back to normal next year now that mining has been nerfed by LHR once supply catches up with demand.

I wouldn't have thought so - semiconductor prices are still going up, and next year we've got the server world moving off to DDR-5 to look forward to. Not to mention the 15%/year money printing going on - price inflation is here to stay IMO.

 

[Drumroll]

But just as lockdown effect, was quite hard to find a decent webcam. Some bad ones at 60+ which wouldn't cost more than 15 under normal circumstances. Took a while, but now everyone who wanted/needed a webcam already got one. So prices back to normal, or close to it.
GPU is a much more complicated matter. Demand is high, and they must also compete for silicon with consoles (2 big players launching at the same time) and many other products.
Somehow CPUs are more abundant now.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wouldn't have thought so - semiconductor prices are still going up, and next year we've got the server world moving off to DDR-5 to look forward to. Not to mention the 15%/year money printing going on - price inflation is here to stay IMO.

Then its also going to cause a massive crash in the PC market in the next few years, if tech companies are expecting their mega-inflation to be standard practice:
1.)Most people's wages won't be going up at the same rate.
2.)People will come off furlow worldwide,and there is no guarantee they will have jobs,or will actually have inflation busting pay increases. People are being paid to do nothing at home.You have the big issue if eventually when inflation starts getting bad they can't afford to pay off the mortgage,etc and food prices start going up more. Governments won't have the money to keep paying furlow if there are more lockdowns.
3.)Those in work will be paying much more tax now,to pay for all the extra borrowing. That means less disposable income.
4.)Services might get worse,so you might have to shell out more from your own pocket to compensate.
5.)Companies like Barclaycard are starting to clamp down on credit card allowances. It tells me they are concerned about the first two points,and want to reduce exposure. If this starts giving the credit industry more worries,it will be harder to buy stuff on credit.
6.)Many people and companies will have pushed forward personal and infrastructure upgrades,because of work from home,or being stuck at home. So many people might not be interested in upgrading for a while.
7.)Inflation will start to eat into earnings too,so those who saved nothing during lockdown and spent all of the money,might not have any extra leeway.
8.)Most of the money printed is benefiting large companies,etc not really the average person. This is why companies are going on spending sprees - credit is cheap for them. The issue if the market overheats,its going to also affect them. This is what happened during the Dotcom crash. A lot of these purchases are based on speculative future profits.

The whole tech industry is just part of a speculative bubble,and like with subprime they have not even considered whether people can pay for all of this. Just expecting more and more borrowing is not going to work,as the debts have to be paid off eventually. The 1929 stock market crash hapened because of this! Subprime was because of this! Endless price escalation always leads to a crash. This is when it will become a big problem for tech companies. Either their customers run out of money,or they will have promised too many people,too much and can't fulfill their financial predictions.

 

[ASMB]

I wouldn't have thought so - semiconductor prices are still going up, and next year we've got the server world moving off to DDR-5 to look forward to. Not to mention the 15%/year money printing going on - price inflation is here to stay IMO.

I think the main drive is mining, both the selling of cards to mining firms and to individuals. Also as mentioned above there has been a 15% increase in total wages paid in the USA following covid stimulus payouts, I know of people over there who have gone from earning about $10 an hour while employed to earning about $20 on unemployment as Trump brought in a $600 dollar a week covid payments for the unemployed. An extra $600 dollars a week enables some people to buy extra computer parts

 

[jtredux]

Then its also going to cause a massive crash in the PC market in the next few years, if tech companies are expecting their mega-inflation to be standard practice:
1.)Most people's wages won't be going up at the same rate.
2.)People will come off furlow worldwide,and there is no guarantee they will have jobs,or will actually have inflation busting pay increases. People are being paid to do nothing at home.You have the big issue if eventually when inflation starts getting bad they can't afford to pay off the mortgage,etc and food prices start going up more. Governments won't have the money to keep paying furlow if there are more lockdowns.
3.)Those in work will be paying much more tax now,to pay for all the extra borrowing. That means less disposable income.
4.)Services might get worse,so you might have to shell out more from your own pocket to compensate.
5.)Companies like Barclaycard are starting to clamp down on credit card allowances. It tells me they are concerned about the first two points,and want to reduce exposure. If this starts giving the credit industry more worries,it will be harder to buy stuff on credit.
6.)Many people and companies will have pushed forward personal and infrastructure upgrades,because of work from home,or being stuck at home. So many people might not be interested in upgrading for a while.
7.)Inflation will start to eat into earnings too,so those who saved nothing during lockdown and spent all of the money,might not have any extra leeway.
8.)Most of the money printed is benefiting large companies,etc not really the average person. This is why companies are going on spending sprees - credit is cheap for them. The issue if the market overheats,its going to also affect them. This is what happened during the Dotcom crash. A lot of these purchases are based on speculative future profits.

The whole tech industry is just part of a speculative bubble,and like with subprime they have not even considered whether people can pay for all of this. Just expecting more and more borrowing is not going to work,as the debts have to be paid off eventually. The 1929 stock market crash hapened because of this! Subprime was because of this! Endless price escalation always leads to a crash. This is when it will become a big problem for tech companies. Either their customers run out of money,or they will have promised too many people,too much and can't fulfill their financial predictions.

I didn't say it was going to end well, just that I expect the money printing to continue, if not accelerate and so a £500 GPU this year will have to cost £575 next year just to stand still. The central banks will keep telling you that inflation is 1.5% while the prices of everything just rockets away. Helicopter money is a vote winner, people will love debt forgivness too IMO - US is already talking about writing off student loans...

And long term, tech is going to permanently eat a load of jobs - especially when minimum wages get hiked, we'll just see more self-scan/phone-ordering anywhere where you can drop a body, they'll put in a machine. And it's probably far easier to keep paying folk not to work with freshly printed money than suffer the consequenes of the mass unemployment.

 

[Major774]

Love it… scalpers are desperate and under cutting each other on the Bay (3080 Ti).

But it now prices dropped to £1,725.

 

[Name]

Mad i can sell my 2080 for the launch RRP of a 3080.

 

[The Old School Gamer]

Anyone fancy a trip to Taiwan lol?

 

[Obliter8]

I feel like a lot of the pain, and poor comparisons right now is that nvidia were forced to actually price their products competitively after years of price-hiking (paid over £1000 for my 2080 Ti at launch, I remember thinking I was insane for paying that then).

Then the gouging happened, and now I feel like the pricing bar has been reset higher for both AMD and nvidia. So now both red and green know that the market will tolerate higher prices. Unless intel actually does pull their finger out, and aren't lying about Xe, we're doomed to high prices for the next few gens IMO.

Then, if they add greater capacity, they will want to make sure their product margins offset the investment and risk, so again, rises

 

[KompuKare]

The whole tech industry is just part of a speculative bubble,and like with subprime they have not even considered whether people can pay for all of this. Just expecting more and more borrowing is not going to work,as the debts have to be paid off eventually. The 1929 stock market crash hapened because of this! Subprime was because of this! Endless price escalation always leads to a crash. This is when it will become a big problem for tech companies. Either their customers run out of money,or they will have promised too many people,too much and can't fulfill their financial predictions.

Which is a nightmare metaphor of humanity's relationship with the planet and environment where we are taking tomorrow's resources to consume today (although fossil fuels are actually yesterday's resource but the consequences are tomorrow's).

And of course, mining is a near total waste of energy even if in the winter a bit of extra heat might be useful (certainly I was WfH and had an electric heater on as for one room the central heating isn't worth it).

However,

Helicopter money is a vote winner, people will love debt forgivness too IMO - US is already talking about writing off student loans...

is an important point. One some of the Speaker's Corner threads the Brown messed up, boom and bust keeps coming up, but at the time almost nobody was calling for restraint.

No point in always blaming politicians if any actual measures enforcing restraint would have been very very unpopular. Same thing happened in Ireland in the early 2000s: the ECB cautioned that the Irish economy was overheating and the government should do something about it (mainly tighten borrowing rules), and one or two dissenting economists said similar. The government did nothing and the public were reported to be against restraint, the "Don't kill our new-found prosperity" response.

Point being, restraint is not popular with the public.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I didn't say it was going to end well, just that I expect the money printing to continue, if not accelerate and so a £500 GPU year will have to cost £575 next year just to stand still. The central banks will keep telling you that inflation is 1.5% while the prices of everything just rockets away. Helicopter money is a vote winner, people will love debt forgivness too IMO - US is already talking about writing off student loans...

And long term, tech is going to permanently eat a load of jobs - especially when minimum wages get hiked, we'll just see more self-scan/phone-ordering anywhere where you can drop a body, they'll put in a machine. And it's probably far easier to keep paying folk not to work with freshly printed money than suffer the consequenes of the mass unemployment.

Until you end up in a Zimbabwe, Argentina or Venezuela scenario and people can't afford to buy food due to the Fiat monopoly money being worth nothing.

All this drive for job replacement and low pay is due to speculation. The only way to increase margins is to cut costs and decrease pay. So you have worse pay, lower r and d spend,worse products which are less and less repairable, products which break more, production shifted to countries like China,etc.

This is why we are entering a pollution time bomb,why countries like Japan,SK and China,etc have become economic powers and why we depend on them. Nobody questions why we depend on TSMC and why there is no European or US companies which can be used.

It's short termism which is getting so myopic that Apple spends less on R and D than Huawei. Intel spending billions on vanity purchases instead of node development,etc. Even long-term R and D costs are getting in the way of short-term profits.

The same crash happens - the speculative system is not dependent on the actual profit being made. It relies on the relative increase over time. The financial lot are greedy so expect even greater and greater increases over time fuel by debt. Want to see what stock speculation fueled by cheap debt lead to...the 1929 Stock Market Crash and The Great Depression.
What did you have before that.....The Roaring Twenties a period of affluence.

So it will always crash and the crashes are happening quicker and quicker. 3/4 crashes already in the last 30 years in the UK already. The late 80s crash,issues during the 90s,Dot-com crash and Subprime.

How many food banks existed in the UK and US before 2008 when compared to now?

Another crash is going to happen in the next 10 years and it's going to be bad. Governments due to Covid are at debt levels not seen since WW2.

Which is a nightmare metaphor of humanity's relationship with the planet and environment where we are taking tomorrow's resources to consume today (although fossil fuels are actually yesterday's resource but the consequences are tomorrow's).

And of course, mining is a near total waste of energy even if in the winter a bit of extra heat might be useful (certainly I was WfH and had an electric heater on as for one room the central heating isn't worth it).

However,

is an important point. One some of the Speaker's Corner threads the Brown messed up, boom and bust keeps coming up, but at the time almost nobody was calling for restraint.

No point in always blaming politicians if any actual measures enforcing restraint would have been very very unpopular. Same thing happened in Ireland in the early 2000s: the ECB cautioned that the Irish economy was overheating and the government should do something about it (mainly tighten borrowing rules), and one or two dissenting economists said similar. The government did nothing and the public were reported to be against restraint, the "Don't kill our new-found prosperity" response.

Point being, restraint is not popular with the public.

In one in one of the wealthiest countries in the world you have millions using food banks.

Many countries are at debt levels not seen since WW2. Most of that debt is funneled to prop up private companies.Just look back at 2008.

It won't be because the companies are not profitable...it's because the YoY increases will start to slow down.

The financial lot know the system is not stable. It's a Ponzi scheme so they make sure they increase their assets on the upswing and when it crashes the average person pays for it. The governments don't care as these lot enable a nice retirement package for them.

 

[FoxEye]

I remember when I said, "Fudge PC gaming, I'll get a console instead."

I got nothing so far Everything is pure unobtainium.

Scalpers just want to watch the whole world burn. Miners too.

 

[BobShark]

I remember when I said, "Fudge PC gaming, I'll get a console instead."

I got nothing so far Everything is pure unobtainium.

Scalpers just want to watch the whole world burn. Miners too.

PS5 coming down in price nicely, have actually seen some barely used consoles going for less than RRP for once.

Tempted to bag one and spend the 1k saved from a GPU on a holiday (when we can leave the country!)

True point about the scalpers. They don't give a monkeys what happens to the world as long as they can rip people blind for a quick buck. Surprised lynch mobs haven't formed in any great number yet (obvious joke, just in case someone thinks it isn't!)