News Ethereum's Merge Completed Without a Hitch, GPUs Are Free

[Admin]

The Ethereum blockchain has successfully undergone The Merge, a long-time-coming software upgrade that brings a number of changes to the ecosystem, the most important being the end of both Proof of Work and the exploitation of unpaid GPUs for cryptocurrency mining. GPU mining profitability has plummeted in the aftermath.

Ethereum's Merge Completed Without a Hitch, GPUs Are Free : Read more

 

[LolaGT]

We will see.

It will be interesting to watch to see if there is an influx of more used GPUs on ebay or other places as new or used cards like 3080s are still ridiculously overvalued.

 

[jkflipflop98]

The money that comes in the Monopoly box has more actual value than crypto.

 

[lmcnabney]

We will see.

It will be interesting to watch to see if there is an influx of more used GPUs on ebay or other places as new or used cards like 3080s are still ridiculously overvalued.

I believe there is a lot of pent-up demand for modern GPUs. I've been putting off a new build through the pandemic (sitting on a i5-4670k and 1080) and the PC market spent the 1H of 2022 in the doldrums. Getting realistic prices back on GPUs will help revive the market a bit.

 

[husker]

One does not have to understand cyber mining, cryptocurrency, blockchains, or any of that to understand this: When something takes a lot of effort to produce, it becomes worth something to somebody. When something suddenly takes a lot less effort to produce, it is going to become worth a lot less to somebody. You don't need a high end GPU to do that math.

 

[A Stoner]

If the 3080 prices come down enough, i might buy a couple for the kid's computers. Otherwise, I am planning to get in on the new RTX 4000 series depending on the 4090 price.

 

[helper800]

If the 3080 prices come down enough, i might buy a couple for the kid's computers. Otherwise, I am planning to get in on the new RTX 4000 series depending on the 4090 price.

I would bet the farm the 4090 is going to be 1800+ dollars

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I would bet the farm the 4090 is going to be 1800+ dollars

That's possible, but I suspect most people will be more interested in the RTX 4080. I still think there's a reasonable chance Nvidia will put the 4090 at $1,499, the same as the RTX 3090 at launch — whether it will sell for that or not is a different matter.

 

[Eximo]

I would bet the farm the 4090 is going to be 1800+ dollars

Launch price for the 3090 was $1500, they could stick to that and do a $2000 launch for the 4090Ti if they do one.

If they do a simultaneous launch, they could also stick the 4080 Ti at $1200 and the 4080 at $1000. That would keep the $700 3080 in a reasonable spot compared to a $700 4070.

 

[irish_adam]

Launch price for the 3090 was $1500, they could stick to that and do a $2000 launch for the 4090Ti if they do one.

If they do a simultaneous launch, they could also stick the 4080 Ti at $1200 and the 4080 at $1000. That would keep the $700 3080 in a reasonable spot compared to a $700 4070.

They charge what the market will bare, you can't charge $2000 for a card when your previous gen top card is selling for $500. When they released the last gen we were in a silicon shortage so they got away with stupid prices.

This time they have to compete with their own products that they have an over supply of let alone the second hand market.

 

[Eximo]

You underestimate what enthusiasts are willing to pay for the latest version of a product. They certainly can and have charged more for top end 'consumer' products.

Titan RTX launched for $2500, and it sold. Titan V, $3000. You have to go all the way back to Pascal for 'reasonable' prices, and even then the Titan Xp was $1200. That tested well, so the launch price of the 2080Ti was $1200. Now they are looking at 80Ti as a step or two below flagship.

You have to realize that I am talking about MSRP, set by Nvidia, not the street price these things ended up at. Your higher end models are always going to be $100 or more expensive as well.

 

[tamalero]

One does not have to understand cyber mining, cryptocurrency, blockchains, or any of that to understand this: When something takes a lot of effort to produce, it becomes worth something to somebody. When something suddenly takes a lot less effort to produce, it is going to become worth a lot less to somebody. You don't need a high end GPU to do that math.

For something to have value, it MUST have something that other wants. Crypto has nothing except pure speculation.

If you put a lot of effort taking a thurd. It does not means it will be valuable.

 

[spongiemaster]

Launch price for the 3090 was $1500, they could stick to that and do a $2000 launch for the 4090Ti if they do one.

If they do a simultaneous launch, they could also stick the 4080 Ti at $1200 and the 4080 at $1000. That would keep the $700 3080 in a reasonable spot compared to a $700 4070.

The current rumors are the 4090 and two 4080's getting announced. I agree the 4090 is probably going to be in the $1500-1700 MSRP range. I don't expect a significant price increase if any at all. Of course, you have to factor in that AIB's aren't going sell MSRP versions of high end cards and you're going to be looking at AIB versions being $100's over MSRP. The 16GB 4080 will probably be about $1000, with the 12GB version in the $800 range. That's some pretty shady garbage on Nvidia's part if it is true. It doesn't make any sense to have 2 cards that are so different both be called 4080. They've basically renamed the 4070 a 4080 and jacked up the price. That still leaves room for a future 4080 Ti at $1200.

 

[spongiemaster]

Titan RTX launched for $2500, and it sold. Titan V, $3000. You have to go all the way back to Pascal for 'reasonable' prices, and even then the Titan Xp was $1200. That tested well, so the launch price of the 2080Ti was $1200. Now they are looking at 80Ti as a step or two below flagship.

Anecdotally, the Titan RTX was not a popular card among gamers. There seemed to be fewer gamers sporting them on message boards vs previous generation Titans, and SLI RTX Titan users were pretty much non-existent. Titan V was not used by gamers at all. It was based on Volta which never got proper gaming drivers since no GTX/RTX cards used that architecture.

 

[hannibal]

The best Nvidia can do is to price 4080 above 3090ti... Then they can still sel 3090ti at very decent profit.
Not everybody buy used GPU, so if there are $500 3090ti on the used market, it is quite possible that the price of "new" cards don´t drop much... They will come down... but even now we are not below original MSRP to any card that did have decent MSRP that you could newer buy GPUs unless you were really lucky among the first 5 seconds of the release.
And yeah... some people are gonna be willing to pay $3000 for 4090 so why not sell it on that price?

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Anecdotally, the Titan RTX was not a popular card among gamers. There seemed to be fewer gamers sporting them on message boards vs previous generation Titans, and SLI Titan X users were pretty much non-existent. Titan V was not used by gamers at all. It was based on Volta which never got proper gaming drivers since no GTX/RTX cards used that architecture.

I think Titan V can work with the standard GeForce drivers, can't it? But whether it got fully optimized drivers for the architecture is a different question. Volta was a very different chip from Pascal and Turing, and as such there was probably some performance (in games) left on the table.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

The best Nvidia can do is to price 4080 above 3090ti... Then they can still sel 3090ti at very decent profit.
Not everybody buy used GPU, so if there are $500 3090ti on the used market, it is quite possible that the price of "new" cards don´t drop much... They will come down... but even now we are not below original MSRP to any card that did have decent MSRP that you could newer buy GPUs unless you were really lucky among the first 5 seconds of the release.
And yeah... some people are gonna be willing to pay $3000 for 4090 so why not sell it on that price?

I doubt many would pay $3000, or even $2000. Probably quite a few would pay $1500, though, just to have the new king of the hill. We'll see what happens in a few weeks. Used price (on average) is typically only 15% less than that of new cards. I don't expect we'll see 3090 Ti reach $500 average eBay price any time soon, though. If it drops that far, new will also have to drop (or simply disappear assuming supply has dried up). Right now the average eBay price on an RTX 3090 Ti is actually higher than just going to BestBuy.com and picking up the 3090 Ti Founders Edition. An RTX 4090 at $999 would probably push 3090 Ti down to $899 in the near-term, but mostly Nvidia wants retail to stop selling GA102 as soon as possible so that it won't compete with AD102. Meaning, Nvidia almost certainly isn't ordering any new GA102 wafers and probably hasn't for many months.

 

[targetdrone]

The money that comes in the Monopoly box has more actual value than crypto.

The US dollar printer goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Another 6 Trillion added to the pile 😎

 

[spongiemaster]

I think Titan V can work with the standard GeForce drivers, can't it? But whether it got fully optimized drivers for the architecture is a different question. Volta was a very different chip from Pascal and Turing, and as such there was probably some performance (in games) left on the table.

Probably. There are a few reviews of them online. Overall, it was the fastest gaming GPU at the time, but not remotely fast enough to justify costing over 4x a 1080ti. A card it sometimes finish behind, which you would have to attribute to lack of driver optimizations. Would also be painful for anyone who spent $3000, to get worse performance than a $700 card.

 

[renz496]

I think Titan V can work with the standard GeForce drivers, can't it? But whether it got fully optimized drivers for the architecture is a different question. Volta was a very different chip from Pascal and Turing, and as such there was probably some performance (in games) left on the table.

Different from pascal but probably a bit similar to turing. If i remember correctly the SM in volta and turing are configured in the same way plus turing inherit volta capability of using INT32 with FP32. the plus side on turing was it got second gen tensor core which capable of accelerating INT8 and INT4. Volta tensor core is limited to FP16 only. Personally i think volta and turing is more similar to each other than compute ampere (GA100) vs it's gaming counter part (GA102 and the rest).

 

[ikernelpro4]

They charge what the market will bare, you can't charge $2000 for a card when your previous gen top card is selling for $500. When they released the last gen we were in a silicon shortage so they got away with stupid prices.

This time they have to compete with their own products that they have an over supply of let alone the second hand market.

Yep they need to make Cash as well and it would be kind of disrespectful to make Ada a $2000 cash-cow while praising it's history etc. I could see a temporary price hike in order to clear old inventory / temporary launch price to incentivice one last push to get people to buy 3000 cards for christmas.

Nvidia should just focus on regular pricing, the stock will clear by itself, prices will adjust by themselves.

 

[Maebius]

I would bet good money that all this price creeping will come and bite all these companies in the butt, sooner rather than later, while hurting the PC market in the long run.
It will probably accelerate the -inevitable- cloud gaming dominance.
The sweetspot was probably lost around the 1080ti era when you could realistically get a super-duper rig for under 2K $ , including an okay 4K monitor.

Also, all this "enthusiast" nonsense is getting out of hand....With all computer components... plus, RGB everywhere! Gah 😛

 

[InvalidError]

Also, all this "enthusiast" nonsense is getting out of hand....With all computer components... plus, RGB everywhere! Gah 😛

There is so much hoopla around enthusiasts because enthusiasts are the last remaining bastion of highly profitable consumer PC and laptop sales. Most of the rest of consumer and office laptop and PC sales are closer to the bargain basement where margins aren't anywhere near as attractive. Still need to serve that undesirable market though, otherwise x86 will hemorrhage market share to much cheaper ARM-based alternatives and x86 will become an expensive niche market most people don't give a damn about.

 

[Amdlova]

Last time I got a shine new graphics is the 670 for now I got only 200-300 us market, 1650 is all I need for now. Trying to buy a new 17 4:3 display and my projector Is 1280x800 (1650 will drive these resolution over 999fps)

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Hi all - new to PC gaming here but looking to get my first GPU. Anyone have thoughts on getting a used RTX GPU from somewhere like Stockx or ebay? Should I wait? I'm seeing some very good deals now that the merge has happened. Thanks

I expect prices to drop further, and I don't know how good StockX is on returns. I know eBay tends to strongly side with buyers, so if you get a card and it doesn't work, you can get a refund and return the card. Just read the fine print very carefully, and apply some common sense.