GPU prices go boom

[rs155]

You want BTC to drop in value, what valid reason do you have for that? Other than you want miners to be losing out.
RAM pricing is shooting up also - that isn't due to miners, its due to world wide shortage of RAM (mobile phone demands are the main reason for that). RAM is on video cards - this is the main reason for the price hikes and shortages. Yet you blame miners. There are many factors behind GPU and RAM price increases, but to lay blame on just miners is wrong.

I did not know that phones had GDDR5 ram on them. Learn something new everyday

 

[Frozennova]

I did not know that phones had GDDR5 ram on them. Learn something new everyday

They don't but there's only 4(?) manufactures of ram in the world, that is to cover DDR3/4, GDDR, Phones, Tables, SSDs, Consoles and so on.

They only have so much manufacturing capacity

 

[DragonQ]

I pose a solution for all your Gpu woes.... Don't buy one and make do with what you've got. Let the miners mine and the phone people tweet until things become a little more sensible. Supply and demand or not if you don't like the prices then don't pay them.

The up side to this is that when either the mining bubble bursts, or the difficulty increases such that it's no longer profitable to mine using GPUs, there'll be tonnes of used GPUs on the market for peanuts. GTX 1080 Tis for everyone!

 

[Confuzz]

You want BTC to drop in value, what valid reason do you have for that? Other than you want miners to be losing out.
RAM pricing is shooting up also - that isn't due to miners, its due to world wide shortage of RAM (mobile phone demands are the main reason for that). RAM is on video cards - this is the main reason for the price hikes and shortages. Yet you blame miners. There are many factors behind GPU and RAM price increases, but to lay blame on just miners is wrong.

Yeah your right its not all the miners fault that gpu prices are insain right now. Its probably only about 95% their fault

 

[orbitalwalsh]

I purchased a 1080Ti on Monday, looked the price of the card today and it's gone up £50 since then.

Ti has the plague of ram shortage and chip set being scaled back in production

Double whammy, ocuk stock piled loads and did killer sales in all brands every week for a long while, now holding cards close to chest. Even mentioned they pretty much had highest stock count in UK at one point

 

[Doobedoo]

The up side to this is that when either the mining bubble bursts, or the difficulty increases such that it's no longer profitable to mine using GPUs, there'll be tonnes of used GPUs on the market for peanuts. GTX 1080 Tis for everyone!

The downside is people are getting used to paying over inflated prices and those making them won't want to give free money away.

 

[harney]

Are consoles increasing in price ???

 

[Ace Modder]

the other flip side is that a high end GPU is a luxury item at the end of the day, people act like it is a 100% needed item for life

 

[Freddie1980]

They don't but there's only 4(?) manufactures of ram in the world, that is to cover DDR3/4, GDDR, Phones, Tables, SSDs, Consoles and so on.

They only have so much manufacturing capacity

I would wager that the price increases we've seen are only slightly down to increased demand and more to do with the restraint on supply which is artificially bloating prices. The tech sector is infamous for doing this (think back to how much hard drives went up in price when they claimed factories had been flooded but it turned out they had only been marginally effected) and DRAM industry is notorious for price fixing and ripping people off. If governments were stricter and imposed fines that made companies think again this crap wouldn't happen.

 

[AiiR]

the other flip side is that a high end GPU is a luxury item at the end of the day, people act like it is a 100% needed item for life

Some are being priced out of their main hobby because of crypto, why wouldn't they be upset and slightly bitter about it?

 

[FoxEye]

Some are being priced out of their main hobby because of crypto, why wouldn't they be upset and slightly bitter about it?

It's far from only being high-end GPUs that are unaffordable as well.

The mid-range xx70 and xx60 prices are through the roof as well. A RX580 shouldn't be £300+.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-components/graphics-cards/amd/radeon-rx-580

Notice that the only 580s left in stock are £450. Four-hundred-and-fifty pounds for a mid-range card.

There are no words

 

[x-st]

Surely it has an impact across the entire PC ecosystem? Fewer GPU's and less RAM being sold means less new builds, which would have an impact creating less movement in the sales of other components. Upsetting the balance so that it's harder to get into PC gaming/productivity might well have a long lasting detrimental impact.

 

[Doobedoo]

the other flip side is that a high end GPU is a luxury item at the end of the day, people act like it is a 100% needed item for life

That can also account for a large percentage of "consumer" items it's what the advertising and marketing industry thrives on.

 

[peterhc]

Damn those prices are getting crazy Im glad i got 1080ti ftw3 for 739 *.* could sell it now and make profit ;D

 

[Andrew_McP]

I would wager that the price increases we've seen are only slightly down to increased demand and more to do with the restraint on supply which is artificially bloating prices.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that when you see the racks and racks of high-end graphics cards in warehouses and bedrooms all over the planet, all of which used to be very niche products bought by a tiny fraction of the gaming public, supply has to be being pushed pretty hard.

Manufacturers ought to be making as much hay as possible while the sun shines (or coal burns!) because if cryptocurrently becomes cryptopreviously, there will be a massive glut of high end cards available 2nd hand... or repacked as new via grey Ebay imports, knowing how inventive some Chinese can be.

In this scenario, as a manufacturer I'd want to sit on the next generation of hardware indefinitely, unless I thought it would benefit miners and persuade them to upgrade en masse. But that still leads to a potential glut of second hand cards, damaging the non-mining market, which could lead to a kind of Apple scenario where GPU makers stop caring about the low end or optimising for games at all.

It's hard to see many long term positives at the moment. I've got nothing against folk swapping CO2 for bitcoin (it's probably no worse than meat eaters swapping methane for steak) but mining has distorted the GPU market in a way which could have repercussions for many, many years, even if mining became unprofitable overnight.

 

[almoststew1990]

I've been thinking of upgrading from 8GB DDR3 to 16GB and my 390x (which cost me £250 back Friday 2016) to ??? but the cost of both RAM and GPUs have made me decide that medium/high settings at 1080p isn't so bad.

At this rate I'll let probably be looking at a 2019 upgrade to... whatever CPU gen that will be. I'll have one of those NVMe drives (hooray for no more sata data and power cables!) 16GB DDR5 and the xx80 non Ti card.

 

[Scania]

I bought my 1070 back in the summer, it was on clerance (for whatever reason!) @ £299, I couldn't miss out on that opportunity although at the time I still thought £299 for a mid range card an absolute mickey take.

Fast forward six months and my God, could I make a profit on it! - I won't,perhaps, its now paired with another which I got second hand - luckily - for sub £260 - in SLI and they both rock along nicely @4K.

The PC gaming scene is being killed by these prices, I've just - finally - made my console loving son see the light with regard to PC's being better than his console, but, the pricing makes this point irrelevant.

Will I be buying my son a GPU to complement his Quad core rig? - will I ****.

If anything, I can see myself selling the primary parts of my PC for silly money and just buying a console for my gaming requirements, the base PC (on board graphics will suffice) will still serve me admirably for the other functions a console can't perform.

Shame, the tagline is "PC - the master race" more like, "PC the mug's".

 

[mattyfez]

What bothers me is the environmental impact of mining, I'm sure there are plenty of illegal farms tapping into illegal power supplies, millions of gpu sold that would've never been sold, a bit like illegal cannabis farms and even if they were paying for the power, most electricity is non renewable and reliant on dirty fuel to provide the electricity.

 

[FoxEye]

What bothers me is the environmental impact of mining, I'm sure there are plenty of illegal farms tapping into illegal power supplies, millions of gpu sold that would've never been sold, a bit like illegal cannabis farms and even if they were paying for the power, most electricity is non renewable and reliant on dirty fuel to provide the electricity.

It's a very real concern. Thankfully more people are starting to think about it, at least.

There's even a thread in the crypto mining subforum about it

 

[Doobedoo]

What bothers me is the environmental impact of mining, I'm sure there are plenty of illegal farms tapping into illegal power supplies, millions of gpu sold that would've never been sold, a bit like illegal cannabis farms and even if they were paying for the power, most electricity is non renewable and reliant on dirty fuel to provide the electricity.

This is the issue I have with the whole cyrpto fad. I'm not a environmentalist by any stretch but it has to have an impact on more than just short term hardware price increases. What purpose does it serve other than profiteering? If it's just to satisfy greed then it should be taxed heavily.