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Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#131

Post by jrs95 »

wmf wrote: post #24
secstate wrote: post #20

Maybe there's something I missed about GPUs and mining, but how can an amateur rig like these hope to keep up with ASIC rigs? Can you profitably mine with residential electricity and GPUs still? How long can that possibly last?

Some cryptocurrencies are mined using only ASICs and others are mined using only GPUs (because there aren't any ASICs for those algorithms).

Some (like Monero) are also still able to be efficiently mined by CPUs. Mining Monero isn’t very profitable right now though. It’s probably half as good as ETH.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#132

Post by jrs95 »

paulmd wrote: post #12
stordoff wrote: post #4

It's (unsurprisingly) pushing the used market up. I'm selling a 1070 I don't need anymore, and it's already at more than I originally paid for it, despite being over a year old at this point.

My local Microcenter has an open-box 1070 they want $800 for, an open-box 1060 3 GB they want $475 for, a couple new 1060 6 GBs they want $600 for, and a couple 1050 Tis they want $350 for. That's their entire stock apart from some misc GTS cards from like 10 years ago. So yeah, they're marking everything up to double MSRP basically.

That’s crazy, where are you located? My Microcenter is basically fully stocked with whatever GPU you’d want (aside from Vega)

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#133

Post by behringer »

jnordwick wrote: post #53
aianus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Nvidia et al could short Ethereum as a hedge while expanding production.

This is why futures exist. They would sell the futures to hedge their crypto exposure.

You'd trust your business to a bitcoin exchange?

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#134

Post by extesy »

behringer wrote: post #133
jnordwick wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why futures exist. They would sell the futures to hedge their crypto exposure.

You'd trust your business to a bitcoin exchange?

Futures are sold on CME/CBOE, not on bitcoin exchanges.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#135

Post by dogma1138 »

hanbura wrote: post #127
baldfat wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get a mid level graphics card either. These cards in the article are $200 and $250 cards from AMD. They are going for over $400. I am the person that buys $200 graphic cards and high end is $500+ like a 1080ti or some sort of Titan. I always thought that $200 was the sweet spot with the best price to performance ratio. I can't buy a $200 card now. I was lucky and got a new AMD 480 last year for $220. It sadly…

The effects on prices are quite bad, but the pendulum always comes back in the other direction two. Every GPU shortage leads to the second hand market getting flooded a few years later with used mining GPUs. So in effect we get short term problems, but if you time your purchases correctly you can get deals too.

The problem that a few years later those GPUs aren’t worth much and with more and more coins coming out miners have always something to fallback on for their older hardware.

It doesn’t look like the GPU flood of 2015 would happen again.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#136

Post by dogma1138 »

hyperpallium wrote: post #114
gaius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could lobby NVIDIA/AMD to somehow implement restrictions on what the Gaming SKUs Infact the opposite has happened. NVidia has restricted consumer cards from DCs with an exception for blockchains! They are very much making hay while the sun shines

I think something interesting will happen with TPU's. nvidia's titan v has a 110 TFLOPS TPU (and only 12 TF GPU iirc). Ir's $3000, but that seems not reflect costs, but avoid cannablizing their even higher-end scientific computing offerings... so price could come down (to forestall competition). Can TPUs give better ROI than GPUs? Conversely, will games end up exploiting TPUs?

Google’s TPU is a GPU without the silicon burden of needing to render graphics so no.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#137

Post by dogma1138 »

jakubtomanik wrote: post #101
smcl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think goda90 was referring to the second hand market.You may have taken good care of yours, but I suspect that miners won't have been as careful so buying these could be a bit of a crapshoot

When it comes to GPU mining (especially ETH) it is very common to undervolt / power limit a GPU as it reduces power usage greatly so the temperatures are lower than usually. Power consumption together with the price of kWh is an important factor that affects mining profitability

Yes but they are still stuck in open air cases in not exactly pristine environments.

Getting a GPU that has been running 24/7 for 2-3 years will be the mother of all lotteries.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#138

Post by davidmurdoch »

After finding and disclosing a vulnerability in a graphics card manufacturer's site they offered me cash or a brand new GTX 1070. Which was sold out everywhere at the time and was selling for about 2x the retail cost on eBay.

Not sure what you can take away from this, but could it be possible that the "storage" is in part manufactured by the card manufacturers themselves? (or maybe they thought this would be a special reward I might have wanted?)

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#139

Post by api »

baldfat wrote: post #120
jdietrich wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most PC gamers aren't using high-end machines and don't upgrade very often. The Steam Hardware Survey shows that the majority (74%) of PC gamers have a 1080p monitor and a plurality (37%) have a video card with 2GB of VRAM and 8GB of system RAM (47%). The GTX 1060 only recently overtook the GTX 750 Ti as the single most popular video card. Pricing of high-end hardware is largely irrelevant to the success of PC gaming…

I can't get a mid level graphics card either. These cards in the article are $200 and $250 cards from AMD. They are going for over $400. I am the person that buys $200 graphic cards and high end is $500+ like a 1080ti or some sort of Titan. I always thought that $200 was the sweet spot with the best price to performance ratio. I can't buy a $200 card now. I was lucky and got a new AMD 480 last year for $220. It sadly…

When the crash comes or when someone comes up with an ASIC for Ethereum, all these cards will flood the secondary market and the spare capacity slack will cause a price crash. You'll be able to get the highest end card in the world for half the current price.

Re: Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy

#140

Post by jmull »

jakebasile wrote: post #15

I'm legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) at this point. Prices like this have a cascade effect because when less people can afford to build a PC and/or upgrade there's less incentive for developers and publishers to spend time on the platform. Consoles are shielded by the ability of Sony and Microsoft to take losses which will be absorbed by online fees and higher game prices but no…

Don’t worry. This kind of supply constraint is an intrinsically short-term thing.

Either...

* crypto mining will crash (in which case you’ll be able to get powerful cards for cheap since the secondhand market will be flooded)

* or crypto mining will move on from the stop-gap measure of using gaming cards (more sophisticated setups will be more efficient and everyone is competing)

* or — in the highly unlikely event the current situation proves to be stable — card manufacturers will ramp up production

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