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

#201

Post by stordoff » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 8:05 AM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #172

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…

> 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.

It's not that long ago I used to think of RAM as _almost_ disposable - you could max out your capacity pretty cheaply, and it wasn't really worth reselling a lot of the time. Over the past few years it seems to just been getting increasingly expensive though.

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

#202

Post by stordoff » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

jakebasile wrote: post #29

fermienrico wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Gamers are complaining about why can't nVidia just ramp up their production. I don't see too much of that in gaming circles. It's understood that it would be risky as crypto will crash sooner than later. The anger in the PC community is almost exclusively directed at miners. Threads about it pop up on the daily, but what can we do? We could lobby NVIDIA/AMD to somehow implement restrictions on what the Gaming SKUs…

As much as I think it's bad for gaming (right now at least), I think hardware manufacturers artificially limiting what it can be used for is a bad route to go down.

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

#203

Post by z3t4 » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 8:39 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #96

I am curious as to what we'll do with all that surplus computing power after crypto currencies (or mining on general purpose hardware) fade out of fashion. Better weather forecasting? AI? And don't forget the investment on cheap power sources.

It could be used for decentralized cloud computing.

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

#204

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 9:25 AM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #203

rbanffy wrote: post #96

I am curious as to what we'll do with all that surplus computing power after crypto currencies (or mining on general purpose hardware) fade out of fashion. Better weather forecasting? AI? And don't forget the investment on cheap power sources.

It could be used for decentralized cloud computing.

Yes, but it's numerics-heavy, so the workload would be very specific. Think SETI@Home on steroids. If we could solve the trust issues, pooling retired mining rigs into distributed supercomputers for rent would be viable.

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

#205

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 10:59 AM UTC

hyperpallium wrote: post #190

dogma1138 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why exactly the TPU would be better? it's not a general computation processor it only does MMA.

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

#206

Post by distances » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 12:07 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.…

> 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.

RAM is much more expensive and keeps resale value well. I could sell my 16GB from 2012 now almost for twice the price (!!), which is also keeping me from upgrading to 32GB.

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

#207

Post by z3t4 » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 12:23 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #204

z3t4 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be used for decentralized cloud computing.

Yes, but it's numerics-heavy, so the workload would be very specific. Think SETI@Home on steroids. If we could solve the trust issues, pooling retired mining rigs into distributed supercomputers for rent would be viable.

About trust: You could distribute the load randomly, and do double work, if two data sets doesn't give the same output you do the calculation again and blacklist the node that was wrong.

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

#208

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 12:42 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #207

rbanffy wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's numerics-heavy, so the workload would be very specific. Think SETI@Home on steroids. If we could solve the trust issues, pooling retired mining rigs into distributed supercomputers for rent would be viable.

About trust: You could distribute the load randomly, and do double work, if two data sets doesn't give the same output you do the calculation again and blacklist the node that was wrong.

Yes, but you won't want any sensitive data to be processed on the platform unless an irreversibly unrecognizable transformed version of it is what is processed.

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

#209

Post by hyperpallium » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 2:01 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #205

hyperpallium wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why exactly the TPU would be better? it's not a general computation processor it only does MMA.

I don't know, but at 110 TF for $3000, it would be worthwhile figuring out some way to use it.

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

#210

Post by Fnoord » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #174

fellellor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

PC as in Windows, or Linux/Mac? Big titles like Quake and Unreal were available on PC (meaning x86-32 plus Windows or x86-64 plus Windows in my post though things like Wine have been amazing for me).

There's always been an ample amount of games available on PC. Whether they were boring or not is a matter of opinion (I wouldn't say missing out on say Resident Evil is any issue). I am entirely positive all these games had recent equivalents in their genres. I said recent because else the comparison is too broad. Even Rez is just a newer version of Space Harrier, or compare first Doom or Quake VS last.

Also, some game vendors sign exclusive deals with a console vendor where they initially only release the game for that specific console. Then you have to buy the console, or wait.

So yeah curious what you felt you were missing out on.

Personally, I don't like consoles because I got nothing with this whole Trusted Computing thing. Instead I got a Steam Link for 5 EUR during Black Friday.