Read more.Quote:
Meanwhile many graphics cards are selling for more than double their MSRP.
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Read more.Quote:
Meanwhile many graphics cards are selling for more than double their MSRP.
So Nvidia's answer is to ask retailers to play nice. Well that's going to work isn't it.
Nvidia: Be nice to gamersQuote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
*Customers comes to retailer*
Customer: I want to buy 100 GPUs with minor break pricing
Retailer: KACHING!
It's like asking a thirsty person to drink less water.
If Nvidia upped production to meet the demand...
Never know, output keeping up with demand just might help.
Yeah right Nvidia, not when the retailers can milk the shortage. They don't care who buys it as long at they have the momney in the till.
The Msi 1080ti was listed as £750 over a month ago, and that was high enough as it is.
Now, same card £899 because it's "in stock" whilst several retailers have it on back order for £720.
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-gaming-x-trio-11gb-gddr5x-vr-ready-graphics-card-3584-core-1544mhz-gpu-1657m
Easy to say it's for gamers when the retailers are the criminals themselves.
Not sure output can. Crypto currencies are like a electricity eating cancer that make GPUs look like money printing machines. If more money printing machines are released on the market, what would stop people from buying them as well? If GPU production went up a magnitude I doubt it would help gamers, but it might lead to rolling blackouts from electricity used.Quote:
Originally Posted by Friesiansam
Wow, I'm actually surprised and impressed that Nvidia would take this stance.
I've got a little bit more respect for them now. I don't think this will change too much though.
It's the idea that is what's impressing me.
Neither they or AMD want to do that as if the value of cryptocurrency collapses tomorrow they'd be left with warehouses full of cards gathering dust.Quote:
Originally Posted by Friesiansam
This is basically why I bought my 1060 6GB when I did rather than waiting a few more months like I was planning.
I could already see that the prices were going to go up when I bought over a year ago and so I bought earlier than planned but in all honesty I wasn't expecting the prices to get this stupid.
Surely gamers would now buy them, rather than going for the now-useless ragged-to-heck second-hand ex-mining cards... partly because we wouldn't pay in BitCoin anyways!Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
I don't have numbers but i imagine it would take a long time for gamers to buy up all the excess stock if manufactures up'ed production and a collapse in cryptocurrency lead to miners not buying cards anymore. I was listening to the PCPer mailbag from last week and Ryan mentioned how he's heard of more than one instance of 737 cargo planes packed with graphics cards being shipped direct from Taiwan to China so we're talking about thousands of cards.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster
When the markets are showing you can sell an 18 month old electronic product and still net a profit from what you originally paid, you know things are really, really bad.
It's probably why I'd buy a GPU direct from manufacturer now, instead of from a retailer. It's also something I'd bear in mind in the future when making purchases, how the retailer reacts now defines my relationship with them in the future.
I was seriously debating a 1070 given it's just had a mid cycle refresh in the Ti and they might be looking to begin a slowdown in production to clear excess stock.
It went up £40 in a week. That was the lowest priced one. And there is barely any difference between a 1070 and a Ti (or there wasn't when I looked, I stopped looking and went back to my GTX 780 which I then tried to overclock. Which went badly - I've never had such a small overclock lead to almost immediate crashing on the desktop before, quite impressive and also very effective in disuading any more adventurous lifespan prolonging overclocking escapades).
Vega was supposed to be the card to bring real competition to the market. I can only hope that this cryptocurrency demand does a few things:
1) fills the boots of AMD so as their next card can be really something
2) fills the boots of NVidia so their next card can be really something
3) gives me more points to make to seem less drunj and more clevermerer
4) gives the companies the reason d'etre required for proper dedicated mining cards which are actually good for mining and rubbish / not as good for gaming as the GPUs they're based upon. This would help steady the market because in the long run this is simply going to push more gamers towards consoles.
5) means the companies involved also put some cash away becuase, as July's blip showed, crypto could easily crash and there's a very low threshold for people selling off lots of quality (although hard worked) GPUs cheap.
I think the only thing that will help is if Russia, China, Merkel and Macron go ahead and regulate the crypto market like they say they are considering.
The reality is prices will stay high until the crypto market changes.
Unless they come up with some solution such as making cheaper mining specific cards en masse but I can't see that as they won't massively up production, as has been said, if the crypto crashes then they'd be left with stock they can't shift.
if you know someone that mines ... punch them! ... it's simple (right in the face too ) :D
It really is isn't it? The market just hurts everyone involved besides retailers - as others have said it's far too risky to substantially increase production like AMD did a few years ago and had to write-down stock. People don't seem to understand that the turnaround time from order to product for processors is measured in months - being able to accurately predict a staggeringly volatile market that far in advance is near-impossible.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
It's not great business for the fabs for the same reason - they have a finite capacity they need to fill and if/when the market collapses again, they're out of pocked. Fabs cost on the order of billions and take several years to build, so 'just make more' is not that simple. And I doubt even doubling production would make a jot of difference at the moment.
I don't know what the environmental impact the fabrication causes, but the electricity demands are pretty catastrophic. And it's pretty painful to see so many carefully-engineered products dumped into a task which is entirely pointless by design. I just see the whole thing as horrid now. I can understand the argument for it being a good concept, but it's badly flawed in the real world when greed etc come into play.
It's really not decentralised in reality, it's not remotely anonymous, it's far too volatile, transaction fees are laughably high, there's no financial protection e.g. chargebacks, the processing time is stupidly high, and it's grotesquely power-hungry - something like 215kWh for ONE transaction for BTC! So... what's the attraction of using it as an actual currency again?
only the dumb will blow that kind of unnecessary money on a video card. now if you really need one, then buy it, but most of the gamers dont need one that bad. to each their own!
You're missing the point I think? The impact stretches right across the range from good value mid-range cards upwards - it's not just the silly-expensive top-end stuff.
Remind me, why are ASIC-resistant coins a good thing?
They don't care about you at all Knight.Quote:
Originally Posted by KN1GHT
Think about it: nvidia say that miners come first - what happens?
Miners don't care and just keep buying cards like they always have.
Gamers go mad with rage at this fundamental betrayal and vow never to buy nvidia again.
nvidia say that gamers come first - what happens?
Miners don't care and just keep buying cards like they always have. No change there then.
Some gamers say, "Hey, they're really *trying*. They love us. I have soooo much new found respect for nvidia."
They have just earned more brand loyalty for if / when the crypto craze dies down.
This brand loyalty is like being in love with Scarlett Johansson. It's not real and she doesn't care about you.
nvidia's job, like that of any other company, is to make money.
Being seen to butter up (certain) of their customers is just part of that... nothing more than good PR
Looks like my new PC build is on hold. These kind of prices are prohibitive. It's not like my i5 3570k with RX480 isn't able to pleasantly play games anyway. I can wait.
Good call. That RX480 should be able to hang in there a few more years, anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Midas
Beats me, I would have thought mass production of something designed for the task was the correct way forward to "democratise" any technology.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xlucine
I'm only going on what I've read but apparently miners avoid dedicated ASIC's because there's little resale value in them so $ spent on them are lost forever versus reselling GPUs.
And there was me waiting for prices to drop a little before investing in a new graphics card for gaming... Looks like I may have to wait a couple of more years now with prices the way they are. Surely this is going to kill off the market for graphics card makers with the crypto market the only driver for sales?!
What sane human bean buys a GPU which has been forced into bitcoin slavery? It was my understanding they're only sold when newer, more effective solutions come along (not happening soon) or when they're near death. Or, I suppose, when the miner defaults and has their setup taken apart and sold.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Why do bitcoin miners need cards like 1050ti? Because surely if its just bitcoin peeps fault then mid/low range cards should have no or almost no impact, yet 1050ti price is higher than it was at release like year ago.
People who want cheap graphics cards i guess, I've not looked but i suspect someone selling secondhand cards doesn't advertise the fact they've been used for mining.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozaron
I'd consider buying a cheap secondhand card if it was half, or less, than current retail prices as I'm unaware how 24/7 mining even effects a card.....Time to go do some reading. :)
Don't see how, you can only mine Bitcoin these days with a dedicated ASIC or you will be making a massive loss. If no-one used ASICs then using a GPU would still be viable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
It is down to work done per watt, and on that metric the lower end cards don't look all that bad. If you can't buy any Vega 56/64 cards then I guess they are just buying whatever they can lay hands on. You need 4GB of ram on the card though, so that sets a lower end of the range that is usable. However, if for the price of a few 1050ti cards you can buy a 1070 then you would buy a single 1070 and have room for expansion.Quote:
Originally Posted by aniilv
Either that or people who need to buy a graphics card for graphics are finding that is the card they can afford because all the better cards are gone, so it might be the gamers scrabbling over scraps that pushes up the price of scraps.
AIUI if everyone across the board doubles the size of their mining operation then the system adjusts the difficulty so that the work rate remains the same?
If so, then the sane thing to do would be for all miners to just stop buying cards. But it is an arms race with people trying to increase their share of the "mining".
That would make crypto currencies a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, but with lots of prisoners to guarantee we all lose.
Mining Bitcoin is all but dead due to it not being cost effective no matter what you use, i was talking about cryptocurrency in general and generally GPUs can be used for different types of cryptocurrency whereas ASIC's are (afaik) dedicated to specific currencies. There's also the warranty thing that i forgot to mention, GPUs come with them and ASICs don't.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
what a hypocrisy from Nvidia. They've been milking gamers for some time now (pretty full on on high end front since there is no competition from AMD)
AMD learnt the hard way the last time when they increased production of their cards and the market crashed and screwed them over,so I can understand why both AMD and Nvidia are weary of ramping up production and OFC they also have limits too,ie,the amount of wafers they have already bought from GF or TSMC.
The main culprits are retailers and distributors who are ramping up the prices because they can,and the coin miners who are buying up all the stock - unless it can be proven that AMD or Nvidia have increased channel prices,the only advantage for them is not needing to apply rebates or give away free games,etc to sell the cards,as they are selling all they can make.
Edit!!
Also to those wondering why Nvidia is saying this,is down to one thing - consoles.
If cards become too expensive,it will stop gamers upgrading or they will simply just end up buying an XBox One X or PS4 PRO,as many major titles are multi-platform and longterm that might mean less sales for them,if the people who ended up buying consoles found them good enough and ended up using their PC less.
It didn't stay crashed, though, did it? Kinda like the stock market in 1928.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Question is, would it pick up (with XYZ-Coin or whichever mineable crypto becomes the favourite) quickly enough to make those overproduced cards still viable for mining?
Some things will always be better on PC though, whether you're into higher framerates or seated HOTAS/M&KB games.Quote:
Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH
Besides, many of us like that we can do all the other things on PC as well as play games. You can't get Excel and Powerpoint on XBox, can you? :p
Their marketshare did - the market was swamped with secondhand AMD cards,and they also had overproduced them and they had to discount and give away games to try and get people to buy new ones,and their sales marketshare got affected.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster
I would argue many home users only really buy desktops if they are into building their own computers or are gaming - laptops seem more convenient for people and a cheapo one would be sufficient for most purposes,and for a few years. Its not like anything much more than a quad core is really required for many of these tasks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster
All this artificial price gouging is happening at the same time as:
1.)RAM prices being artificially jacked up to stupid levels,and countries like China now suspecting price fixing,which RAM companies have been fined for in the past.
2.)NAND prices being jacked up so SSDs cost more.
3.)A whole host of flaws especially in Intel CPUs,which drops performance(its been shown some games can be affected by the patches a decent amount) meaning additional costs have to be footed if you are affected. I certainly have been affected as I notice worse performance in FO4,with the Windows10 + Nvidia security patches.
4.)Case prices now starting to go up - look at the price jump on the latest Fractal cases for example.
5.)Bling on various computer parts,essentially jacking up prices for a few dollars of parts. I mean I looked at a Z series mini-ITX motherboard and a crappy one started at £130. I remember years ago getting a reasonable Z97 years ago for £90 for a mates build.
6.)Pound is weaker than two years ago,so parts will cost more.
7.)The sub £300 graphics card area has stagnated in performance in the last three to four years with similar performance. So basically GTX970/R9 290/RX470/RX570/RX480/RX580/GTX1060 are not far off each other if you look at an average of many games.
8.)Many PC games are getting worse and worse optimisations due to the world+dog jumping onto making every blasted game early access,which means most optimisations are not included,making the games very poorly optimised.This is even worse than the anaemic state of general PC games when it comes to optimisation,due to the use of ancient engines and penny pinching devs not even trying to make engines that can effectively even use 4 cores,ie,very poor core loading. Games which also don't even optimise things like textures properly so eat up too much VRAM,etc.
9.)HDD price fixing after the floods years ago,and pricing per TB has taken years to actually improve,and warranties have gotten worse too.
10.)Higher res monitors are now cheaper,but that is compounded by the stagnation in midrange cards and not all LCD monitors are so great if you go past their native resolutions. Yes FreeSync and GSync help,but unless you spend good money,the cheaper ones compromise in other ways and its a band aid over a bigger issue.
Consoles by extension,due to the model Sony and MS have,have not gone up as much,and even the greater cost of console games is partially compensated by the fact you can still buy secondhand games.
Personally I hate the analogue controls on consoles,and can't stand even joysticks on PCs either,so keyboard and mouse is what ties me to the desktop still,and I also like modding games and consoles are too limited still in that way. However,if this price gouging keeps continuing I think I will certainly be priced out of PC gaming and DIY PC building in the next few years when it comes to newer titles if this continues(DR luckily helped me out currently). I love mucking around with PCs,but honestly I can get FAR better VFM with cameras and Hifi in comparison.
I also see more and more friends starting to go back to playing more on their consoles too.
You can’t really GPU mine bitcoin anymore - not been viable for 2-3 years now in the UK due to our power costs,but there are many alternatives.Quote:
Originally Posted by aniilv
If you have an AMD card then ether is just about profitable, and if you have an Nvidia card then there is a lot of choice, particularly with equihash based coins.
Personally I make about £3 a day profit (after power costs) from mining Zcash on my 1080 when it’s not in use, and I cash out every month. It’s a nice little bonus in my view. I have strongly considered setting up a 6 GPU rig if I could find 6 1070s at a sensible price (under 400 a card) as it’s currently just so profitable if you have the capital to put down. Even at the current low rates for Zcash of $430/ZEC that rig would cost me $3k to build and net $500ish a month profit - if the price recovers to the $600/ZEC mark as expected then that profit just goes up and up. That’s with our silly UK power prices; the profits are 1/3 higher in the USA where power is cheaper.
If the price crashes then you sell the GPUs and recover the investment.
I really can’t see a nice/quickway out of this for gamers at the moment - mining is just too easy to start and too profitable. the only way to limit it is for the prices to go up higher..but that doesn’t help those who want a card to game on. Or the prices could crash ofc but at the moment that seems unlikely, given the amount invested in crypto in general these days. The only other alternative is to wait for the difficulty of the current alt coins to go up to the point they are nonger viable (as happened with BTC) but who’s to say another won’t come along - clone a popular coin, tweak the algo and start again.
With ICOs being a thing now that only fuels demand and investment.
Crazy situation to be in! Maybe this is a case of can’t beat em join em? If you do overpay for a card just use it for mining when you are not gaming..you will recover the price difference fairly quickly ;)
Awesome,because it does not always work out:
1.)Not everyone can mine if they are living with other people and causes the average leccy tariff to go up,so affects them too especially if they are not gamers,or care about tech. Plus there coins are speculation so not always a slam dunk you will make much money immediately unless you sit on it. Plus OFC the pricing is so volatile it could just crash quickly. Try explaining that to a non-techy.
2.)The lifespan of the computer parts will go down.
3.)If you are borrowing parts from other people it would be rude to hammer them.
4.)Don't have the upfront cash to be spending loads on a PC since they have normal lives to consider,and that cashflow is more important for their families and other expenditures.
6.)If they were to invest the extra money,what if the coins crash and they lose £100s they have not got.
7.)They don't give a flying monkies about mining since they just want a PC to run some games,and are not interested in fiddling with their PCs,or are not technical minded enough.
8.)A family only has one proper desktop for things like gaming which is shared by many people,so you can't be mining on it all the time.
Plus can hardware enthusiasts STOP rationalising all the RIP-OFF price increase for every blasted thing.
They rationalised all the Titan rebranding,which meant now for a top tier Nvidia gaming GPU you are looking at £1000+ instead of the £500 we would have paid during the time of the GTX580 era,etc and AMD followed suit(just I said they would).
If AMD and Nvidia find gamers spending £300 on RX580/GTX1060 level performance,do you honestly think they won't keep the same tier pricing even if coin mining is not profitable anymore??
Has nothing about the RAM cartels,etc not shown you price fixing happens in computing??
If companies know people are willing to pay beyond the odds religiously they will charge you more.
If you want companies to charge less,simply don't pay overinflated prices.
At some point if less gamers pay the overinflated prices,etc and games devs start complaining their new shiny game is getting less sales since people are buying less new cards for gaming,then AMD and Nvidia will be forced to do something about it.
If people pay 20%,30% or 40% more willingly they are going to laugh in your face and have a nice bonus at your expense.
Its like with loot boxes - they only got that ingrained into games due to weak willed people who spent loads on them. People moan at companies like EA - I don't blame them at all. I blame all the gamers who gave them ideas by buying into them massively in the first place,since they are not charities and if they can extract as much money as they can from you,they will.
But see what happens when the stronger willed customers finally get fed up and do something about it?
Have some standards people,seriously!!
It's not just price gouging/fixing there's a whole host of things going on, there is no one smoking gun factor and I wish people would stop that.
Here's some of the factors involved
Miners causing a supply shortage on certain models.
Increase in mining, mining has become a lot more visible to a larger audience and more people are trying it or trying to get into it.
Ram chip prices being very high.
Ram chip demand going up, not just the amount of vram on graphics cards, mobile phones are having a big effect on the ram market. The phone market is still far larger than the pc market and phones are hitting the point where ram chip requirements have jumped up.
Transport costs, when a certain model of card gets a rush, to get stock back in quickly stock will often be air shipped. Air shipping has a massive cost compared to container ship shipping. (I know that average container ship shipping lead times are ~60days, I'm guessing more for UK)
Margin recovery, many retailers/e-tailers as well as partners/manufactures have had their margins squeezed to very little over the past 10 years, I've heard single digit % numbers and they are trying to claw some back.
Demand for higher res textures, higher res and higher performance, Yes I agree with the points about badly optimised software, however the demand from gamers to push graphics doesn't help the situation.
Badly optimised/rushed games, this again has an element of gamers adding to the issue, now I'm not defending devs/publishers for rushing code out the door, our constant demands for new games and rushing content adds to the situation.
Side note Apparently some of the partners (ie EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, etc) are not happy with the mining situation, yes it's increasing sales but only on certain models of cards and the miners are not good customers, miners only want a model they are not picky about brand, they don't care as much about other products of the Brand. However Gamers & Enthusiasts are far more Brand loyal which is far better for them in the long run.
Miners also have a far higher RMA rate than normal, so the partners aren't happy about it for that reason either. And for the same reason AMD/Nvidia are at risk - they stand to lose a lot of sales in the short-mid term when tons of battered cards are dumped on ebay meaning they'll both struggle to shift new cards, and have a ton of new RMA tickets rolling in. Like I said earlier it's not a good market for anyone involved besides gouging retailers/distributors - most have little to gain and a lot to lose.
It looks like the latest wave of pricing madness has struck the UK - I checked on some prices IIRC last week and they were about normal at Scan and OCUK - they're up to stupid levels again now.
Edit: The likes of Scan seem to have just set blanket pricing across each model of GPU now regardless of brand, cooler, clock speed, etc. It's just bizarre.
You can't profitably mine Bitcoin on a GPU any more. This is most people using other cryptocurrencies, especially Ethereum. Most of the Ethereum network these days is used to service the smart contracts required by Crypto Kitties. https://hackernoon.com/how-crypto-ki...k-845c22aa1e6e
You can't buy a GPU at RRP right now because of people selling each other multi-hundred-dollar cat gifs.
I can't decide if that statement is the ultimate summation of 2017, or the ultimate predicition for what 2018 is going to be like :O_o1:Quote:
Originally Posted by directhex
I noticed Overclockers doing that, though with only one card in each section actually in stock it seemed pretty academic.Quote:
Originally Posted by watercooled
Honestly I'm starting to believe that is the final destination of the world wide web.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
I think it does suitably demonstrate the robustness and viability of the networks, they each seem to have their own problems where despite consuming downright vile amounts of energy, are unable to process transactions in a meaningful way once some niche takes hold. Speculation alone killed Bitcoin, it's basically useless as an everyday currency, and if I understand it correctly others are heading the same way, perhaps with different contributing factors?Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Proof of stake or similar should IMO be at least a step in the right direction towards easing the disastrous consequences of the networks, but the issue is that 'miners' will want to do *something* with their hardware, creating clone after clone. Is there a limit of the sheer amount of clones before the value of yet more just bottoms out?
That's honestly not just from the PoV of a gamer (I have a modern card I'm fine with for likely years to come), it's just depressing to see so much engineering talent (hardware design) and increasing amounts of finite resources squandered on it.
It's funny how, like most things, it seems to have attracted a cult-like following (not by everyone involved obviously). Anyone who disagrees is a 'red', a 'marxist', etc. :laugh: I see plenty of people freely claim it's down to making some extra money, it's a good excuse to play with hardware which pays for itself, which I get. But I'm not buying the other reasons, not even close. Nor how some see themselves as more worthy than gamers because it's 'hedonistic'. The argument might even hold a touch of credence if Bitcoin was even slightly useful for the general population. Because sucking vast amounts of power, consuming resources and disrupting an entire market is far more altruistic and forward-looking than playing the odd computer game after work/school... :laugh:
Lisa Su says ram production is the current problem with graphics card availability.
https://wccftech.com/amd-ramping-gpu...hind-shortage/
I get that RAM production isn't like a tap that can just be turned on and off but you'd think the big three manufactures would at least be doing something, even if that's just a bit of PR, to solve or explain this shortage of RAM as it's having a knock-on effect for the whole industry and not painting them in the best light.
RAM production has always gone through cycles of price hikes followed by oversupply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
It isn't surprising that people don't want to build a new fab to make more ram (the only way to improve the situation) when building that fab will drop prices making it difficult to get the money back from building the fab.
I was just reading this Reuters article from a few weeks ago and it's not like they're not making a tidy profit that could be spent on new fabs instead of investors...Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Quote:
Macquarie estimates Samsung’s chip division’s operating profit margin jumped to 47 percent last year from 26.5 percent in 2016, and will rise further to 55.5 percent this year.
Not sure what the cost of a new memory fab would be these days, but $10B is the sort of magnitude.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Soon, the warranty hit rate will smash into the manufacturers.
Gamers, even utterly devoted gamers, cant put the ram through what mining puts ram through. And the memory controller too. The heat build up, 24/7 is a thing to behold/feel
And because the Retailers will have to deal with the first slew of the warranty claims, it's going to get v v ugly I think -
With the prices retailers have been charging (particularly in the US), they could almost afford to replace every one out of their own pocket and still keep a tidy profit!
Edit: I suppose if you have to find an upside to this mess, AIBs are likely to ensure effective cooling for ancillary components. I remember with the last bubble, there were a few models of cards where the fans (being stupidly+needlessly run at 100% 24/7 and expected to survive for years) were failing due to e.g. lost lubrication. I don't recall hearing similar complaints lately, so perhaps card longevity is being taken more seriously to avoid the risk of a massive influx of failed cards due to cheaping out on cooling, VRMs, fans, etc?