VOUCHER CODE DEALS CONCEPT PLAN!

[Game]

Yes, when the RTX 5070 is out, and they aren't that good any more.

I think I need to just sit this one out tbh

 

[slim01]

I am far from new to the industry, quite the opposite. I assume you believe the mass shortage in chips causing supply issues with various other electronics (cars etc non related to GPUs) to be caused the miners buying up cards, or the fact that many electronics (printers, laptops, webcams etc) were near impossible to buy last year due to a variety of reasons (mostly covid related) are also caused by miners. The fact that prior to the "launch" of the 3xxx series that all of those electronic shortages you believe were all caused by miners. If you can just confirm that is what you believe.

I can tell you that in both previous times where mining "boomed" the stock shortages were never this bad. Both of those times distribution had stock of various graphics cards and many other components that are currently in short supply. Where as this time, distribution has no stock of anything above basically a GT1030. Many other components are also very low in stock. I was amused to see one distributor having no stock of LGA1200 boards yesterday. But of course this is all caused by miners right

Mining is for sure not helping the issue, but it is not to the level that many haters believe it is. Even with a crypto crash, the problem wont just disappear overnight.

Oh just for clarification, what is your experience in the industry?

Of course they weren't as bad - Doesn't mean with certainty mining isn't mainly to blame though.

My experience in the home gaming pc space? Pretty much since it started, before actually (unfortunately ). Since PCs weren't even used for gaming I guess. I think an Encarta 95 machine was the first I had.

Whilst in the UK (and China) I have never once known or even heard of someone not being able to buy a printer, laptop or webcam? Last year specifically I bought all of those items several times over in both countries so I'm not sure if you're talking about buying thousands of units from China or something rather than an end user shortage? Electronical items often go into low stock for various reasons - Yes, I'm aware of that.
I don't look at new cars often though (neither do many people during Corona I guess) but didn't hear even in tech news about that so don't know. There were no new cars available or something?

Again, I haven't said, as you keep quoting "all caused by miners" (not entirely sure why you're doing that as you're clearly intelligent enough to write educated replies?).

HDD shortages in Thailand and other places I once remember pushing prices up, again only for 6 months... I'm trying hard to think of anything that has (seemingly) permanently (and significantly) harmed hardware prices other than mining and I seriously can't.

 

[silversurfer]

Whats the most GPU memory you might use up. I remember one Vega version had a SSD drive to render large scenes

8800GTX was the one I remember was top for ages and not cheap. [Launch Price 599 USD or £500 apparently

 

[slim01]

I can't speak for all 3090 buyers, but there are real reasons. For someone like me, who is a developer, works at home, plays at home, tinkers with AI, and even likes to do some rendering. I can't overstate how desirable double the VRAM+double the Cores is, on a gaming card.
Something that is very cheap compared to the professional alternative cards, even with the currently inflated price.

Oh for sure, but I think we can all agree there's enough 3090's to go around for niche things like that. I'm talking about those gamers that gotta have that +10%
If you told me you were spending £20k on some sort of crazy Quadro card I wouldn't bat an eyelid. £2k for a gaming gpu though and I'd pity you haha

 

[Tinek]

True, scalpers are the worst in the current state of stock, however scalpers can ONLY profit from items that are very rare. Without this 2nd (or technically 3rd) mining boom, they would have had a MASSIVE challenge acquiring funds to buy ALL the produced stock, AND buyers would know they're much more likely to get a card therefore wouldn't feed the scalper business model into profitability.
Production has actually been confirmed to have been increasing in many instances. Yet these cards aren't ending up in the hands of gamers as they usually would. Just look at reviews and such for 3000 series. Been like what 7 months and there's hardly any, which would tell you:
a) production has massively decreased
or
b) they're simply not ending up in customers/gamers hands.


In my 30 years of buying/selling hardware only 2 times have I seen such a **** storm - both during mining booms. I've not seen anything to convince me that's not coincidence... not even Corona causing higher demand. I once remember the price of RAM doubling in I think around 2012, but that was sorted within 6 months or so. Nvidia have never lowered their prices since the first boom taught them they could sell for 2x the price.


Thousands upon thousands of these cards are going to INDIVIDUAL farms. Manufacturers themselves, are shipping thousands upon thousands of cards to miners OR mining themselves. Perhaps into the MILLIONS, every Tom Dick and Harry are buying to mine. And It's free money - Why wouldn't they?

TLDR - IMO if it weren't for miners, even accounting for higher demand, stock would be relatively hard to get... not damn near impossible.

What I've seen confirmed so far is Asus claiming they get LESS GPU chips from NVidia not more. Few possible reasons for such - one most likely to me being that NVida decided they can milk the market more and so they sell mostly 3090 nowadays, then stockpile the ones that can't be used as 3090 to release them as 3080Ti (for much higher price than 3080). And then the rest, worst chips, that couldn't be used as 3090 and 3080Ti, end up as 3080. Hence, less 3080 getting released to AIBs, so technically production numbers of these dropped and not increased. One thing we can be sure of - NVidia will milk the situation as much as they can, for as long as they can. Same with AMD. Though, AMD on the other hand is increasing production already, as they take over Apple's capacity, who is moving to lower nodes and is freeing up 7nm in TSMC. AMD has already been confirmed second biggest TSMC client, just behind Apple.

That said, no matter how many cards miners buy or not (big farms count only a couple of thousands in summary - there's not that many of them out there, contrary to popular believe) - it doesn't change the huge demand of gamers themselves. As I said, even if mining dies today I am quite sure it will change almost nothing for gamers. Miners started to buy them out months after release, and we had shortages of supply since day one, completely irrelevant of mining. That hasn't changed - by all information we have, supply is still at least 30% behind gamers' demand - miners just add to that even more so, currently. And in such market, scalpers will still win - till supply catches up with above 100% of the demand - which won't be anytime soon, mining or no mining.

What we see now has NEVER happened in the past, with GPUs. Not even once and not even close to what we see now. We had shortages for 1-2 months in mining boom, but that was it. One could still get cards (with just bit more effort needed), scalpers weren't rampant, demand wasn't too big either. What we see now is caused by pandemic: both camps released good new cards for sensible prices; lots of people with disposable income that couldn't go anywhere and decided to upgrade their rigs; lots of people working form home meaning people had to buy many more computers, as kids couldn't use the ones they use for work anymore, etc. etc. That means a sudden, unexpected, huge demand counted in millions of GPUs (and other components) etc. To that add all the supply constrains, many less flights and ships between countries, lockdowns, slowdowns in production etc.
Neither AMD nor NVidia ever expected that to happen, and yet it did. These are main sources of such supply issues. I highly doubt mining farms want and will buy millions of cards - they're constrained by how much power they can use. available space, etc. Gamers will, though - and scalpers mostly sell to gamers.

 

[Buddy]

Hi when is the next deal for members planned to go up? Any chance of a 3070?

 

[xb8browney]

Next week, Monday I think they said.

It won't be a sku that's got a backlog.

 

[Buddy]

Next week, Monday I think they said.

It won't be a sku that's got a backlog.

Thanks

 

[Shaolin Chicken]

Next week, Monday I think they said.

It won't be a sku that's got a backlog.

I think the deal on Monday is open to all forum members, hope I'm wrong though as I think it will be easier to get a deal in the members market, looking for a 3060 TI or 3070 for myself.

 

[slim01]

What I've seen confirmed so far is Asus claiming they get LESS GPU chips from NVidia not more. Few possible reasons for such - one most likely to me being that NVida decided they can milk the market more and so they sell mostly 3090 nowadays, then stockpile the ones that can't be used as 3090 to release them as 3080Ti (for much higher price than 3080). And then the rest, worst chips, that couldn't be used as 3090 and 3080Ti, end up as 3080. Hence, less 3080 getting released to AIBs, so technically production numbers of these dropped and not increased. One thing we can be sure of - NVidia will milk the situation as much as they can, for as long as they can. Same with AMD. Though, AMD on the other hand is increasing production already, as they take over Apple's capacity, who is moving to lower nodes and is freeing up 7nm in TSMC. AMD has already been confirmed second biggest TSMC client, just behind Apple.

That said, no matter how many cards miners buy or not (big farms count only a couple of thousands in summary - there's not that many of them out there, contrary to popular believe) - it doesn't change the huge demand of gamers themselves. As I said, even if mining dies today I am quite sure it will change almost nothing for gamers. Miners started to buy them out months after release, and we had shortages of supply since day one, completely irrelevant of mining. That hasn't changed - by all information we have, supply is still at least 30% behind gamers' demand - miners just add to that even more so, currently. And in such market, scalpers will still win - till supply catches up with above 100% of the demand - which won't be anytime soon, mining or no mining.

What we see now has NEVER happened in the past, with GPUs. Not even once and not even close to what we see now. We had shortages for 1-2 months in mining boom, but that was it. One could still get cards (with just bit more effort needed), scalpers weren't rampant, demand wasn't too big either. What we see now is caused by pandemic: both camps released good new cards for sensible prices; lots of people with disposable income that couldn't go anywhere and decided to upgrade their rigs; lots of people working form home meaning people had to buy many more computers, as kids couldn't use the ones they use for work anymore, etc. etc. That means a sudden, unexpected, huge demand counted in millions of GPUs (and other components) etc. To that add all the supply constrains, many less flights and ships between countries, lockdowns, slowdowns in production etc.
Neither AMD nor NVidia ever expected that to happen, and yet it did. These are main sources of such supply issues. I highly doubt mining farms want and will buy millions of cards - they're constrained by how much power they can use. available space, etc. Gamers will, though - and scalpers mostly sell to gamers.

I can agree with most of this however what do you mean "miners started to buy them out months after release"... its been proven bots bought most of the cards within seconds of release and more recent releases even BEFORE they went live. This has happened numerous times (confirmed by resellers) and was popular news. And only miners/scalpers would/could buy 100's of units, not gamers. Also consider, miners are much more likely to pay scalper prices as heck, theyre gonna mine that money back.

Again i'll agree you've listed many many huge contributing factors, all of which undoubtedly true but I'd say you've missed a few and can't see how miners don't factor into that.
-For one, all the people at home out of work looking to mine for one. Hell even I myself was thinking of mining after losing my job in china due to Corona, and that was well before 3000 series.
-Nvidia/AMD THEMSELVES, as well as other tech giants investing in mining.
-Another is how lackluster 2000 series performance was so you had millions skipping upgrading and waiting for 3000.
-Another being the console releases.
-Nvidias initial shift to Samsung.
-And yeah all the corona related stuff, could be many factors we don't even know about tbh. You're right, it's never happened, so who knows.

I'm not sure what you mean by "miners are restricted by power/space" though? You could fit literally thousands of £10 p/h gpus into a regular size office? Electricity used is irrelevant as it pays for itself and therefore accounted for in profitability, as would be floor space and everything else needed come to think of it.

I mean I can only go on what manufacturers themselves have said, the respective journalists reporting their figures and statements. Perhaps they're lying.

-Nvidias reports are thought to show around $200,000,000 worth of gpus to miners. I think Linus said that was like 0.1% of the ENTIRE USA population. And if it weren't for that people would have been something like 3 times more likely to get a 3080.
-XFX were found to have sold almost their entire allocation... to miners.

After a quick google now even I just see statements from AMD and Nvidia saying they are increasing production, not reducing it. Asus would be a 3rd party seller so i'm unsure how we'd use the amount of stock they're receiving as any kind of solid proof to how many are actually being produced. I think it was MSI china for example that said they didn't have many chips but then were found to have sold several thousand 3080s to a single farm community. Pretty sure it was MSI.

IF even the few examples are true, you simply cannot deny the significance the impact on stock mining has had/is having, albeit yes, along with everything else.

So... etailers OCUK etc and Asus etc etc saying theyre getting less cards. Theyre not getting into the hands of gamers for sure. Meanwhile, scalpers and miners all over the world boast the 100-1000's of gpus they have, manufacturers found to be supplying miners and all whilst gtx1080s are like £500 on auction sites. And why are they there even - Because they're not profitable.

 

[Thekwango]

However you can't really blame Nvidia for ripping people off who are very happy to be ripped off I guess?

of course we can. we regulate industries to prevent companies ripping consumers off. but seemingly the pc market is immune to such regulation.

look at the first gen ryzen - incomplete bios code, chips not doing the advertised speeds. threads upon threads full of posts with people going through testing, tweaking and tinkering just to try and get their purchase to do what it was supposed or claimed to do. those chips and boards and ram, every single one of them should have been going straight back to the retailer who would then have been going straight back to the supplier/manufacturer. pretty sure there would have been quicker fixes applied were that the case.
look at the pc games industry. games that are literally ****** on release. day one patches. early access/beta testing. where the **** else would you get that? any other industry pulling that kinda crap would be getting fined into oblivion. but governments and regulators don't have the foggiest clue how to handle the pc industry and Nvidia, intel and Amd all know that so they rip the pee outta their customers and we just bend over and take it. hell there will be people reading this, frothing at the mouth wanting to burn me at the stake for daring to utter such nonsense such is the idiocy that is rife in this market. look at the rampant fanboism that goes on. we are utterly moronic and the most gullible generation of consumers that has ever existed. we are almost happy to be shafted and the main players all know that!

I'm a scrounger though, i'll only ever get something expensive if it's on offer lol.

that's not called being a scrouger, that's called being sensible!!

Trouble is, even a top tier card like a 3080 for around £900ish is considered a deal by many atm

exactly. look at this thread, people are getting so upset and their knickers in a twist because they are missing out on being thrown a bone. a bone 'just over' mrrp......so that translates that people are upset at not being able to be ripped off..... yea, they are getting a little bit less ripped off than a scalper or many other retailers are doing, but ripped off nonetheless (and that's not a pop at ocuk - they are seemingly trying to be pretty fair to the average joe here) but **** me that's some level of idiocy on our part as consumers.

I can't speak for all 3090 buyers, but there are real reasons. For someone like me, who is a developer, works at home, plays at home, tinkers with AI, and even likes to do some rendering. I can't overstate how desirable double the VRAM+double the Cores is, on a gaming card.
Something that is very cheap compared to the professional alternative cards, even with the currently inflated price.

with all due respect, you are an outlier. a niche within a niche. one of the very lucky few who 'needs' the latest card.

the vast majority of customers don't. if that vast majority, en masse, said **** you to Nvidia and Amd we're not interested in this generation of gpu, miners can have them, the result would be the scalpers having next to no customers other than other scalpers or miners and nvidia and amd having to rethink their 'pricing' strategy.

but i get that will never happen. we consumers are too stupid/greedy/gullible - delete as appropriate (or indeed leave all 3!)

 

[Joxeon]

So... etailers OCUK etc and Asus etc etc saying theyre getting less cards. Theyre not getting into the hands of gamers for sure. Meanwhile, scalpers and miners all over the world boast the 100-1000's of gpus they have, manufacturers found to be supplying miners and all whilst gtx1080s are like £500 on auction sites. And why are they there even - Because they're not profitable.

Retailers not getting cards yet look at nvidias profits from the last 2 quarters to see they are going somewhere and I doubt production is down either looking at the figures.

 

[Narj]

I'll be keeping an eye on this. To be honest, I've lost all hope of upgrading at all now. Everything has become way too expensive for me to justify.

It's depressing that it's now almost impossible to build a new gaming rig unless you want to pay scalper prices for GPUs. Totally fed up with it and I'm just playing indie and less demanding games rocking my rig from ~10 years ago instead.

 

[slim01]

of course we can. we regulate industries to prevent companies ripping consumers off. but seemingly the pc market is immune to such regulation.

look at the first gen ryzen - incomplete bios code, chips not doing the advertised speeds. threads upon threads full of posts with people going through testing, tweaking and tinkering just to try and get their purchase to do what it was supposed or claimed to do. those chips and boards and ram, every single one of them should have been going straight back to the retailer who would then have been going straight back to the supplier/manufacturer. pretty sure there would have been quicker fixes applied were that the case.
look at the pc games industry. games that are literally ****** on release. day one patches. early access/beta testing. where the **** else would you get that? any other industry pulling that kinda crap would be getting fined into oblivion. but governments and regulators don't have the foggiest clue how to handle the pc industry and Nvidia, intel and Amd all know that so they rip the pee outta their customers and we just bend over and take it. hell there will be people reading this, frothing at the mouth wanting to burn me at the stake for daring to utter such nonsense such is the idiocy that is rife in this market. look at the rampant fanboism that goes on. we are utterly moronic and the most gullible generation of consumers that has ever existed. we are almost happy to be shafted and the main players all know that!

True... I mean I work in the financial industry (for a subsidiary of the government) and every, single, little thing we do is VERY closely monitored by the FCA. They work hard to prevent monopolies and have smashed, several times, like £20million+ fines for those who so much as cough at consumers in a way that displeases them, let alone shafting them.
It kind of makes me wish there was an FCA for the pc/tech world tbh. You're right it gives AMD/Nvidia/intel free reign. I kinda wished if someone else would enter the gpu market it wouldn't be intel but well here we go next month.

I'm sure it's not the only industry this happens in mind. Perhaps even the phone industry. Is it just me but ever since those insanely priced £1200 iPhones sold out then the androids, I've noticed £500 now gets you the beat down version, inclusive of sub par screen/camera/cpu. 5 years ago HALF of that (£500) was flagship territory. I got an as new xperia 1 (£900rrp) for like £200, barely 6months old, my mate the new Samsung, both of us laughed at the fact if we'd f paid £1000 it'd of been worth more than our cars lol. And they aren't even anything special tbf.

Games however are getting hella expensive/risky to produce... I honestly don't mind paying £50 for a AAA game but you're right it should dam well work for £50.

 

[Gzero]

of course we can. we regulate industries to prevent companies ripping consumers off. but seemingly the pc market is immune to such regulation.

look at the first gen ryzen - incomplete bios code, chips not doing the advertised speeds. threads upon threads full of posts with people going through testing, tweaking and tinkering just to try and get their purchase to do what it was supposed or claimed to do. those chips and boards and ram, every single one of them should have been going straight back to the retailer who would then have been going straight back to the supplier/manufacturer. pretty sure there would have been quicker fixes applied were that the case.

And 2nd and 3rd gen. But then again, Intel dropped the ball and got off scottfree with the spectre performance issue, lots of flawed cpu's performance nerfed into the ground so Intel can sell more (talk about misadvertising lol).

one of the very lucky few who 'needs' the latest card.

the vast majority of customers don't. if that vast majority, en masse, said **** you to Nvidia and Amd we're not interested in this generation of gpu, miners can have them, the result would be the scalpers having next to no customers other than other scalpers or miners and nvidia and amd having to rethink their 'pricing' strategy.

but i get that will never happen. we consumers are too stupid/greedy/gullible - delete as appropriate (or indeed leave all 3!)

The problem is the RTX2* series was soo expensive and scarce for its performance over the 1* series so many of us skipped it sticking to either 9*0 or 1*. Meanwhile Devs continue to release low fps games with poor optimisation.

 

[slim01]

I'll be keeping an eye on this. To be honest, I've lost all hope of upgrading at all now. Everything has become way too expensive for me to justify.

It's depressing that it's now almost impossible to build a new gaming rig unless you want to pay scalper prices for GPUs. Totally fed up with it and I'm just playing indie games rocking my rig from ~10 years ago instead.

This. PC gaming is just so expensive now, I think I'm gonna get a Series X and call it done. So much value in a console. 4k blu ray player, 4k 60fps (kind of) gaming, affordable gamepass etc, descent controller included.

Even without scalpers youre looking at a whopping £1800 for a high end-ish rig (r5 5600 + 3080). Crazy money.

I'm super happy to see OCUK doing something about it though. If I ever do decide to splurge I'd like it to be with them.

Honestly though guys the whole scalpers/miners thing why the hell cant etailers just do a repatcha thing. Bots cant read those right, so why are we not seeing them?

 

[Narj]

I'm super happy to see OCUK doing something about it though. If I ever do decide to splurge I'd like it to be with them.

Yeah I must say, if OcUK continue to take the moral high ground here I'd definitely be more encouraged to push future purchases their way (stock permitting).

I was going to do a full system upgrade for CP2077 as well as work related things but...well, it isn't happening right now. I've played PS4 titles to death and had enough of consoles now to be honest.

 

[slim01]

Yeah I must say, if OcUK continue to take the moral high ground here I'd definitely be more encouraged to push future purchases their way (stock permitting).

I was going to do a full system upgrade for CP2077 as well as work related things but...well, it isn't happening right now. I've played PS4 titles to death and had enough of consoles now to be honest.

CP will look pretty good on a xeries x / ps5 though, why you fed up of consoles, the mouse/keyboard thing?

Since ive got gamepass i've hardly used steam tbf, theres a few pc only titles i would miss but hey can always play them in 4k/60fps in 2024 when I can probs get a 3080 for like £200-300

 

[Narj]

CP will look pretty good on a xeries x / ps5 though, why you fed up of consoles, the mouse/keyboard thing?

Since ive got gamepass i've hardly used steam tbf, theres a few pc only titles i would miss but hey can always play them in 4k/60fps in 2024 when I can probs get a 3080 for like £200-300

I have a PC in the living room for sofa gaming and massively prefer the higher frame rates and having a more flexible device. Don't get me wrong, I have had a blast with my PS4 but I don't feel inclined towards getting a PS5 and I see no point getting an Xbox when I have 2 PCs already.

Maybe it's time to consider one of the game streaming services but ugh, I can't imagine it being a great experience. I would rather have a PC any day of the week as I have plenty of options controller wise, not just M&KB

 

[slim01]

I have a PC in the living room for sofa gaming and massively prefer the higher frame rates and having a more flexible device. Don't get me wrong, I have had a blast with my PS4 but I don't feel inclined towards getting a PS5 and I see no point getting an Xbox when I have 2 PCs already.

Maybe it's time to consider one of the game streaming services but ugh, I can't imagine it being a great experience. I would rather have a PC any day of the week as I have plenty of options controller wise, not just M&KB

Lol don't bother. I've tried them all. This was my plan after I sold my 2080 a few weeks before 3080 launch, stupidly thinking I'd get one even if I had to wait a month or so gaming with amiga/mega drive games on laptop etc... DEFFO didn't expect a longer than 7month wait so got a gtx1080 a while back and even that has been a MILLION times better than streaming. 1080p to me just looks sooooooo 2010 unfortunately haha.

I'm a sofa gamer like you, hence the HTPC, had a 2500k for yonks as well haha. But yeah wouldn't the point be 4k/60fps gaming for £450? But yeah PCs are so much more flexible.