Mid- and high-end graphics card price increases forecast for Q1

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Originally Posted by EvilCycle

Let's hope the memory price fixing investigation puts a stop to this madness.

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Has nothing to do with price fixing. Altcoin mining has roared this year, especially Ethereum, and people are buying anywhere from 3 to 300 GPUs at a time to mine with. That leads to massive shortages.

I watched a thing yesterday about a dude with 192 GPUs in his shed mining. The next video was about someone who bought over 20,000 GPUs to mine with.

I shop on the used market and don't spent more than 220 on an RX 480 8G or RX 580 8G. No _good_ prices on nVidia stuff yet; they're just too high quality and high performing for there to be a price drop even on the used market.

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Originally Posted by QuorTek

The mining thing wont stop... but it would be easier if some of these manufactors actually made products aimed for it.

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They did for a hot second and people didn't buy them (no they weren't more expensive than a standard video card like the other poster says; they were about 80 cheaper due to the reduction in components) and they didn't perform as well as a standard GPU.

What happens at the end of life for a mining video card, presuming you haven't burned it up? You flip it to gamers.

What happens at the end of life for a dedicated mining card with no video outputs, that mines slower than a standard GPU anyways? You throw it in the trash. You can't flip it to gamers; no video outputs!

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Originally Posted by iworrall

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Originally Posted by lon3wolf2002

I thought the GPU manufacturers were going to make crypto specific cards to stop the gamer paying through the nose, swear I read that somewhere last year?

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They did, but then priced them higher than gamer cards! #facepalm

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FGS typical :roll:

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Originally Posted by spacein_vader

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Originally Posted by iworrall

They did, but then priced them higher than gamer cards! #facepalm

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They won't work even at a lower rrp unless they offer much greater mining performance though. Why would you buy a mining edition you'd struggle to sell on after its no longer profitable vs a gaming one you can sell on easily?

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Indeed

Silver linings, when they all start selling the RX580s I will bag a cheap second one to crossfire with.

Its only a matter of time before currencies get to hard/expensive to mine.

More stupid price fixing:
1.)Price fixing of graphics cards from suppliers/importers and retailers,due to mining craze excuses.
2.)Price fixing for system RAM,due to mobile devices craze excuses.
3.)Price fixing for HDDs(look at the prices of even a 2TB drive over the last few years) due to flood excuses from yonks ago.
4.)Price fixing for SSDs,due to mobile devices craze excuses.
5.)Motherboard pricing and case pricing being bumped by all the utter useless crap they put on them,which costs pennies to put in put adds pounds to the price.
6.)Also reduction in warranties with a number of these products(HDDs are the most famous example of this).

It means I will keep my stuff longer and longer,and probably buy secondhand more often.

Yet,interestingly enough consoles,despite using largish pieces of silicion,high speed RAM,etc seem to relatively constant in pricing. However,I cannot stand analogue controllers so have no interest in them.

If it were not for Ryzen/Threadripper and the Intel response,I honestly think 2017 would have been one of the worst years in DIY computing tech for many years,but that has not been helped by AMD timing the release with RAM being stupidly priced.

Edit!!

Plus lets look at the last three to three and a half years in the midrange GPU market.

Lets say £200 to £300.

Basically R9 290/GTX970/RX480/GTX1060/RX580 level performance.

So much so a console which costs £430 from Amazon now has caught up in GPU processing power(or close to it).

Now they want to now increase the pricing of said level of performance even more.

Is the XBox One X,etc, suddenly going to jump to £500+ then?? I doubt it.

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Originally Posted by Iota

That's the other problem, when RAM becomes almost as expensive as higher end graphics cards for what I'd ideally like to build. I get the impression that the supply chain is being deliberately restricted to push up pricing, I certainly don't buy the excuses they're making. If it is because of demand, then why have they not been using those profits (Samsung etc) to increase production capacity? Something is seriously off.

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China is investigating some of the RAM and NAND companies:

https://www.kitguru.net/channel/gene...-price-fixing/

They have been caught doing this years ago and got fined for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10126755

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Originally Posted by QuorTek

The mining thing wont stop... but it would be easier if some of these manufactors actually made products aimed for it.

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I was thinking the same thing. But those who are really into crypto mining will buy one of the small dedicated units that cost £10k and over.