Why you can’t buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by jakebasile » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

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…

> 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?

Once bitten, twice shy. I remember the dark time you're referring to. I don't think they've actively contributed to it but I can't help but think that MS and Sony must be seeing this as an opportunity to "twist the knife" some, bring back the good old days of the 7th generation.

I admit that in reality my fears will probably never come to fruition but that doesn't change the way I feel about the current situation.

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

#182

Post by jakebasile » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #158

pcr0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the 1060 6GB. It can max out any game on my 1080p 60hz 24" monitor. However, that's table stakes these days. 1440p monitors are gaining ground as people realize the DPI difference between their PC monitor and their smartphone. Moreover, most people can also notice the difference between 60hz and 100hz monitors.

Why is a noticeable difference considered meaningful? It won't make the gameplay any better. (Asking as a Luddite who doesn't see the point of Retina displays.)

Gameplay is only part of what a game offers. Increased realism or visual acuity from higher resolutions, larger textures, higher framerates, better anti-aliasing, better shadow rendering, and so on can contribute to feeling more immersed in the world of the game. Many gamers, myself included, use gaming as an escape from the world - it is helpful that the "world" I escape to look and feel real within the context of the fictional world.

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

#183

Post by usaar333 » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #71

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…

The 1050 and the 1060 3GB GPUs are more than good enough to run any tier one game on nearly the highest graphics on a 24" monitor. Everything above it is just ridiculousness for the sake of being absurd in the gaming industry, and for benchmarks that don't reflect real usage - unlike GPU mining, where the cards are actually pushed to their maximums.

1060 3GB cards are also going through price shocks. I bought a 6GB Geforce 1060 for $250 in Oct, 2016. Even the 3GB version is going for $450+ now

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

#184

Post by usaar333 » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #92

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…

Why do people still think you need a high-end rig updated every year or two just to be a PC gamer? Almost every game I want to play runs satisfactorily on a five-year-old machine. This is bad for the tech-obsessed top 10% of PC gamers. For the rest of us it's meaningless, and it's not going to last in any case.

Depends on how quality your five-year old machine is. Graphics matter, less CPUs these days.

e.g. I found I could play high-end games (Deus Ex: MD for instance) fine on my rig with a Core i7-3770 (almost 6 years old!). However, it lagged on my original Geforce GTX 650 (~4.5 years old at that time), prompting an upgrade to a Geforce 1060 (an upper-mid end card that is now super expensive)

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

#185

Post by frakr » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

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.

Would you want to buy a piece of hardware that had been run at 100% of it's capacity for years, without any warranty?

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

#186

Post by segmondy » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

mlevental wrote: post #58

segmondy wrote: post #31

I wanted to buy 2 1080 for deep learning experiments, but that's going to have to wait. I picked up a used 32core 128gb server for $1000 recently... It's only a matter of time before these 1080 will be sold for pennies on the dollar. If your lively hood doesn't depend on it, wait.

from where might I ask did you buy that server

Amazon, I bought a HP Z820

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

#187

Post by washadjeffmad » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 8:37 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #97

icelancer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD gambled on HBM2 and it paid off in ways they never expected. They were simply getting dominated by Nvidia and threw a hail mary pass on memory bandwidth and speed, knowing they couldn't compete on compute loads. Enter the CryptoNight and Dagger-Hashimoto algorithms, and well, the rest is recent history for the RX architecture, primarily the Vega line.

And yet the most efficient (hashrate/tdp) GPU for Etherum mining is GeForce 1070, not any of the Radeon models. Even Vega 64 couldn't beat it.

Vega 64 has improved since launch, beating the GTX 1070 in efficiency this past Sept 2017 by achieving 0.20 mHash/W over the 1070's 0.18 mHash/W.

They're still within 10%, so it's not a great margin unless you're very focused on density.

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

#188

Post by rspeer » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 8:48 PM UTC

heedlessly2 wrote: post #168

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?

Whataboutism will convert nobody to your side.

Cryptocurrency is a bad thing. Unrelatedly, other bad things exist.

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

#189

Post by gspetr » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

_coldfire wrote: post #73

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'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.…

Monetary value, perhaps.

Gaming value? Actually the reverse is true - everything in my i5-3570K's rig is from 2012, except for the GTX 1080 and it ran everything 2017 @1440p very well.

Admittedly no BF1 or PUBG as I grew tired of the FPS genre a long time ago.

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

#190

Post by hyperpallium » Sun, Jan 21, 2018, 10:59 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #136

hyperpallium wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I referred to nvidia's titan v, which is independent of google's tpu. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_processing_unit https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/titan/titan-v/

I also didn't say it would be used for rendering in games, but that it could be used by games. Games can use GPUs for compute, for physics, simulation amd even AI. Some is already happening. TPUs would be even better. to I find that interesting.

The point of my comment was that TPUs providing some differentiation relevant to mining vs gaming would affect prices.