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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

#161

Post by bitshiffed »

013a wrote: post #9

Its bad. Its never been this bad before. Just go on pcpartspicker and realize that there are GTX 1080 Tis selling on third party websites for over $1500, and that's the only place you can get them beyond getting lucky. Nvidia isn't going to ramp up production significantly because crypto could crash any day, simultaneously destroying their new sales and flooding the used market with old mining hardware. Combine it wi…

I had no idea I was so lucky on my timing. It's hard to believe they're going for 1200-1500 right now! I bought my son a 1080Ti for christmas, and paid about 1/2 of what they're going for now.

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

#162

Post by Retric »

sgtmas2006 wrote: post #52
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any non-VR games that even push the 1080ti? It seems like you'd need some giant 4k monitor to make it sweat. But also Steam doesn't seem to be releasing a ton of graphics-intensive games. It seems much more cost effective to get away with a lower price and less intensive art requirements and focus on gameplay. And less graphics puts you in a safer place as far as ports to consoles and tablets/mobile (e.g. S…

1080TI can take heavy hits at 2560x1080 even, Battlefield 1 max settings can see 90 FPS at times. 2560x1080 @ 200hz it can't even come close to consistently with high-end games and settings. PUBG? frames are meh. Even with an overclocked card it can be rough sometimes in my experience. Personally i'll be upgrading to the next card that trumps the 1080 ti and moving from 2560x1080 200hz (for all but CS, cs is 1280x960…

90 vs 200 FPS is meaningless on it's own.

If it feels off something else on your rig I'd messed up. Check latency on your keyboard / monitor etc.

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

#163

Post by alkonaut »

Curious: what will happen when it's not economic to mine Ether anymore? Especially if it happens suddenly (e.g. after a crash or a switch to proof-of-stake).

Won't the opposite situation suddenly appear, where second hand GTX1070's and GTX1080's suddenly flood the market and sell for $100?

Or will miners just switch their rigs to whatever coin is possible to mine with their rigs, instead of selling off their rigs?

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

#164

Post by reactbro »

Mining for money is the most depressing hobby I can think of. Go get some real interests goddamn it. Grow tomatoes, bake bread, cut hair, watch the sunset... You morons know what you are doing right? You are buying expensive computers to solve mathematical puzzles with the desperate hope that it will get you get rich fast. At the expense of massive massive waste of energy and environmental destruction for absolutelly no social gain. Pathetic

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

#165

Post by bootlooped »

jmull wrote: post #140
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 t…

I agree with all of these. I think the biggest worry is that graphics cards manufacturers will be, justifiably, very reluctant to ramp up production due to the how volatile the crypto currency ecosystem is. If they first ramped up production to meet increased demand, your scenario 1 (crypto market crashes) would hit them double hard since not only will they not be able to sell lots of cards to miners, but the miners will be selling their used cards for cut-rate prices.

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

#166

Post by alkonaut »

fermienrico wrote: post #37
nn3 wrote: post #10

It's great. Once ethereum etc. crash we can buy used high end graphic cards cheap.

What is the basis for an overwhelming assumption on HN that Cryto will crash? I am genuinely curious. What specifics indicate that it will crash?

It doesn't have to crash. It just has to be uneconomic to mine on GPU's. For example by becoming too hard, or by switching to proof-of-stake. The question is rather whether there is another coin that will take over the workload of the rigs (I know too little about cryptocurrencies to know whether another coin will have the same properties as ether, i.e. be economic to mine on GPUs).

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

#167

Post by alkonaut »

pram wrote: post #13
nn3 wrote: post #10

It's great. Once ethereum etc. crash we can buy used high end graphic cards cheap.

I’m not sure I’d want a card that’s been at full utilization, 24 hours a day, for who knows how long.

If I can buy a 1080 for $100 when they flood ebay, I'm willing to take my chances.

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

#168

Post by heedlessly2 »

reactbro wrote: post #164

Mining for money is the most depressing hobby I can think of. Go get some real interests goddamn it. Grow tomatoes, bake bread, cut hair, watch the sunset... You morons know what you are doing right? You are buying expensive computers to solve mathematical puzzles with the desperate hope that it will get you get rich fast. At the expense of massive massive waste of energy and environmental destruction for absolutelly…

>You are buying expensive computers to solve mathematical puzzles with the desperate hope that it will get you get rich fast

there are plenty of worse hobbies and professions to get rich quick. Like buying lottery tickets and investment banking.

Instead of focusing your tangent on a small group of individuals, why not focus on entire industries built to destroy the environments?

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

#169

Post by freeflight »

jdietrich wrote: post #110
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…

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…

This impacts everything from mid-range upwards. A friend of mine, not so well versed in gaming hardware, recently asked me for advice on buying a new GPU, to replace some 3 generation old card he's using.

I recommended him something like a 1060, assuming they'd be reasonably affordable by now, just to discover that they've actually increased in price, especially considering he's on a tight budget.

In 20 years of PC gaming I can't remember a situation comparable to whats going on right now and frankly, it's quite depressing.

With this going on neither Nvidia nor AMD have much reason at all to innovate and keep increasing their performance, as most of their performant cards sell like crazy anyway, which is a horrible situation for consumers.

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

#170

Post by criddell »

reactbro wrote: post #164

Mining for money is the most depressing hobby I can think of. Go get some real interests goddamn it. Grow tomatoes, bake bread, cut hair, watch the sunset... You morons know what you are doing right? You are buying expensive computers to solve mathematical puzzles with the desperate hope that it will get you get rich fast. At the expense of massive massive waste of energy and environmental destruction for absolutelly…

Why is building and tuning a mining machine to get the most hashes per second more of a waste than tuning a car to squeeze out the most horsepower?
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