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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

#171

Post by freeflight »

api wrote: post #139
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…

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.

Unless there will be no crash and/or Ethereum will be replaced by another cryptocurrency that's profitable to mine with GPU's.

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

#172

Post by jorvi »

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…

> RAM is also sky high and I do video editing from time to time an want at least 16 GB in my rig. That would cost $100 18 months ago and now thats $225+ also due to the miners.

That is crazily out of whack. Back in 2011 I bought 8Gb (2x4Gb, 1333Mhz) for in my 2009 15” MBP and it cost me €25 secondhand. Worked like a champ too, even transferred it to the computer of my little brother when I upgraded to a new MacBook.

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

#173

Post by bootlooped »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #119
Simon_says wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be glad those people exist, because they subsidize the R&D for people who buy older/cheaper cards.

Enh, honestly, if graphics somehow stopped advancing forever right now, it wouldn't bother me that much as a gamer. The era where good game concepts just couldn't be made because the hardware couldn't handle it are long over. We're just adding successive layers of polish now. That's nice, but it doesn't add much to gameplay or fun.

You could find somebody who said or thought this very thing each year for the last 20 years.

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

#174

Post by freeflight »

fellellor wrote: post #63
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…

I remember when the PS3 and Xbox360 had just come out, and everyone was screaming from the rooftops about how PC gaming will just crash and burn. Not for a week or two, but for years after those boxes had been released. So you're saying PC gaming survived that sustained direct threat only to be wiped out by cryptocurrency mining that isn't even concerned with gaming? This is a silly exaggeration. In the long term, if…

> I remember when the PS3 and Xbox360 had just come out, and everyone was screaming from the rooftops about how PC gaming will just crash and burn. Not for a week or two, but for years after those boxes had been released.

This still lead to the situation that, for years, AAA publishers wouldn't touch the PC gaming market with a ten-foot pole and focused pretty much all of their efforts on the 7. console generation, this was additionally compounded by the "piracy factor".

During that time PC gaming pretty much only had MMORPG's (which made the big bucks due to subscription-based payment), some RTS and a couple of rare exceptions in the FPS genre going for it while Steam was still busy establishing itself and the indie scene was nowhere to be found yet.

It was a rather boring time to be a PC gamer as you'd miss out on many of the interesting and unique releases due to them being only released on consoles.

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

#175

Post by jackmott »

fermienrico wrote: post #26
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…

Gamers are complaining about why can't nVidia just ramp up their production. Having worked in a Fab and an assembly factory, there is a tremendous amount of coordination that needs to happen. Let's forget the business aspects for a moment - in order to ramp up production, it is not just building more lines. Silicon industry supply chains are mind bogglingly complex from oil-free-air supply hardware, etching chemicals…

ram is the limiter, they can't get more.

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

#176

Post by jakebasile »

icelancer wrote: post #70

Funny that in this image in the article: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/bare_... The entire shelf is sold out of GPUs, but it's a near-lock that the RX550 2GB model for $71.xx had a higher ROI than any single card purchased for cryptocurrency mining. Now, that being said, gamers (and to a lesser extent, deep learning researchers) need to shut up and enjoy a good thing while it lasts. Gamers wh…

> gamers [...] need to shut up and enjoy a good thing while it lasts.

I don't consider what is happening to be good. I don't think cryptocurrencies are a positive change for the world at large nor for gaming in particular. I don't want to make money off of my hobby, I want it to be my hobby.

> It's very odd to watch a group of people bitch that they are handed a bunch of free money, but gamers manage to do it.

Gamers are being handed insanely inflated prices for hardware, and many of us don't want to deal with the crypto bubble - we just want to game.

I'd flip this on its end. Miners and AI enthusiasts really should be thanking gamers - we've put up the money that allowed GPU research to reach the point it's at today.

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

#177

Post by freeflight »

leddt wrote: post #151
zawerf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 4k monitor with two GTX 1080 in SLI and I usually don't get 60fps if I play on max settings. Annoyed by this I got another monitor at 2560x1440 @ 144hz and I can't max that out either. The games were stuff like rise of tomb raider or witcher 3. I think 1080ti situation is similar.

I have a gsync 1440p 144hz, running on a 980ti. IMHO, if you can get at least 90 FPS it's a great experience. I don't really see the need for faster frames. Granted, I believe gsync does a lot to make it appear smoother so if you don't have that it may be more important to max the frame rate. I do see it though when I drop to 60 fps, it feels choppy.

It's still a silly situation to be in, you spend all that money on a fancy monitor and GPU, yet you can't even max out visual fidelity if you want to make full use of them.

About GSYNC: Afaik isn't its purpose to eliminate screen tearing without the use of vsync, thus not getting stuck with awkward halfing of fps if the GPU can't keep up?

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

#178

Post by jakebasile »

JudasGoat wrote: post #108

It seems as though the large PC companies like Dell are still getting high end graphics cards. Ironically It's probably cheaper to buy an Alienware right now, as opposed to making a PC from parts.

The trade off is that the parts that go into a machine that don't affect its performance on paper are usually sub-par. You can get a 1000W PSU from some no name OEM or you can get a 1000W PSU from e.g. Corsair. Both supply the amount of power your rig needs but one is cleaner, lasts longer, quieter, etc.

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

#179

Post by freeflight »

bo1024 wrote: post #152
_coldfire wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) The equipment required for gaming loses value very quickly. Old 7970's released in 2012 command amazing resale prices in 2018. Everything else in a rig back then is now worthless apart from scrap metal. GPU's are one of the biggest expenses for gaming, as a hobby it got far cheaper. The fear is unfounded and this is typical alarm-journalism.…

My i7 2600k from 2011 is still doing great now, even not overclocked. Maybe not much resale, but I would guess it would play almost all games today fine (not much of a gamer myself). Actually, the upgrade from DDR3 to DDR4 is probably as much of a factor.

As an avid gamer, with an i7 2600k@5GHZ I can confirm that it's still up to the task with anything I've thrown at it so far, the bottleneck is pretty much always the GPU, and it's not looking like that will be changing anytime soon.

And I'm still sticking with DDR3, which runs with way sharper timings compared to DDR4.

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

#180

Post by volkl48 »

alkonaut wrote: post #163

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?

Probably depends on if it's a broad crash or a single-currency one.

If it's just one currency people would probably switch.

I suspect that when there's a crash it's going to shake confidence in all crypto and you're going to see them all drop significantly in value.

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