Graphics Card Price Wars: How to Score a Card (If You Must)

[InvalidError]

I think most gamers are going to be forced to use integrated graphics in the future.

Raven Ridge is still quite far from being a viable replacement for a GTX1050Ti. It will take a few years for AMD and Intel to dial up their IGPs to that level.

 

[usnaomi74]

Fact is GPU suppliers need to step up to the plate. With all the articles relating to GPU card shortages??? there most definitely is a need/demand.

 

[usnaomi74]

With the supposed shortage and plethora of articles relating to the supposed shortage I'd say there is some manipulation going on in the market.

 

[InvalidError]

Fact is GPU suppliers need to step up to the plate. With all the articles relating to GPU card shortages??? there most definitely is a need/demand.

There may be a need/demand TODAY but what happens if DRAM and GPU manufacturers invest billions of dollars into new fabs (the production bottlenecks at the moment are raw wafers and DRAM availability) and board manufacturing plants but what if the crypo-mining bubble bursts before manufacturers have a chance to recover their investment? Then the manufacturers will be stuck with billion dollars write-offs for production capacity which may never be needed. Since it takes years to set up new plants, it is entirely possible that the crypto-mining fad will have come-and-gone by the time those factories go live.

Attempting to catch up with the transient demand from crypto-mining would likely bankrupt many manufacturers. That's why manufacturers are concerned with finding out what the sustainable demand would be if crypto-currencies get busted.

 

[13thmonkey]

With the supposed shortage and plethora of articles relating to the supposed shortage I'd say there is some manipulation going on in the market.

Why do you say that? Do you know how long it takes to increase Fab capacity (as they are all full), and the investment cost. If you knew then what you know now then you may have invested to increase the capacity, but it was unknown how long the ride in demand would be, or how big it would be.

Also note that it is probably the etailers that are getting most of the benefit from this, nvidia may not have increased their cost to supply to AIB's, and the only benefit they get is 100% sales of stock.

 

[WyomingKnott]

If we're lucky, someone will produce mining ASICs for each of the most popular GPU-based cryptoponzis and draw off the miners.

 

[velocityg4]

With the supposed shortage and plethora of articles relating to the supposed shortage I'd say there is some manipulation going on in the market.

nVidia and AMD are pissed about the mining. Not that they care what people use the GPU for. They are stuck with contracted rates on their cards. Board partners likely are as well. So, they don't get to cash in. The only people who are happy are the distributors, wholesalers, importers and retailers. As they get to make huge markups.

The only silver lining for AMD, nVidia and the board partners is that they aren't stuck with unsold units. If they could just simply ramp up production to meet demand. They would. Right now there is a whole lot more money they could be making that they aren't.

I imagine the large custom builders and big OEM manufacturers are happy as well. Gamers who would have gone DIY are now buying from them. As they often offer a much better value right now. Especially the OEM. Even some of the large custom builders are cheaper on their custom builds than you can buy the parts for right now. When they normally cost a big premium.

Due to the cost of adding new fabrication plants. They have a big reason not to add capacity. If the crypto currency bubble bursts. They are screwed. Not only will they lose out in sales to miners. The second hand market will be flooded with really cheap gaming GPU. Very good units which are only a few months to a year old. Who'd buy something new at MSRP if they can get a used card for next to nothing?

I won't venture a guess and predict it will collapse. Who'd have ever thought something worth less than one cent in 2010 would be worth over $11,000 right now. I can just imagine what someone is thinking now. Who blew 100 bitcoins for say a month of VPN access.

 

[InvalidError]

If we're lucky, someone will produce mining ASICs for each of the most popular GPU-based cryptoponzis and draw off the miners.

With most newer crypto-currencies being RAM-bound (bandwidth+latency+size), that will only make the DRAM shortage worse: ASIC miner manufacturers are likely willing to pay more per DDR/GDDR/HBM die than GPU AiB manufacturers for consumer cards, which means that instead of having a retail GPU shortage due to miners picking shelves and warehouses clean, we'll still have a retail GPU shortage due to GPU manufacturers not being able to secure DRAM chips (beyond whatever supply they may have on-going contracts for) for a reasonable cost and focusing what DRAM they can get on their higher-margins parts.

Until DRAM manufacturing catches up with demand, GPU shortages will continue.

 

[bit_user]

There may be a need/demand TODAY but what happens if DRAM and GPU manufacturers invest billions of dollars into new fabs (the production bottlenecks at the moment are raw wafers and DRAM availability) and board manufacturing plants but what if the crypo-mining bubble bursts before manufacturers have a chance to recover their investment? Then the manufacturers will be stuck with billion dollars write-offs for production capacity which may never be needed. Since it takes years to set up new plants, it is entirely possible that the crypto-mining fad will have come-and-gone by the time those factories go live.

The standard economist' fix to this problem (though it's most often experienced in agricultural production) is to sell futures (i.e. a contract to buy some amount of a commodity, at some specified point in the future). This provides pricing stability for producers and shifts both risk and some of the benefit onto investors (who are mostly at the root of this problem, anyhow).

 

[InvalidError]

The standard economist' fix to this problem (though it's most often experienced in agricultural production) is to sell futures (i.e. a contract to buy some amount of a commodity, at some specified point in the future). This provides pricing stability for producers and shifts both risk and some of the benefit onto investors (who are mostly at the root of this problem, anyhow).

That only works for goods with relatively predictable worth where you can speculate with fairly good confidence that you're still going to want what you're paying into that far into the future and you are similarly confident that your future-buyer will still pay up even if crypto-mining tanks. It works great for agriculture because people are likely still going to need food along with the equipment and supplies to grow it even 50 years from now.

If crypto-mining goes bust though, I suspect most miners will simply pull all of their remaining crypto-currencies out of their companies into anonymous wallets, declare bankruptcy and dissolve them. Any "futures" contracts they may have had with GPU manufacturers will become worthless, leaving the manufacturers and their suppliers stranded with the bills, excess fab capacity and inventory.

 

[Rexer]

Newegg puts their adds in my email everyday (as I imagine everyone else gets). They're sales ads looks like a scalper selling sports tickets to a play-off game. I wonder what the game companies are thinking.

 

[bit_user]

That only works for goods with relatively predictable worth where you can speculate with fairly good confidence that you're still going to want what you're paying into that far into the future and you are similarly confident that your future-buyer will still pay up even if crypto-mining tanks. It works great for agriculture because people are likely still going to need food along with the equipment and supplies to grow it even 50 years from now.

Heh, there are futures available for cryptocurrencies, themselves! What could be more volatile than that?

Here's one (there are more):

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/bitcoin-futures.html

If crypto-mining goes bust though, I suspect most miners will simply pull all of their remaining crypto-currencies out of their companies into anonymous wallets, declare bankruptcy and dissolve them. Any "futures" contracts they may have had with GPU manufacturers will become worthless, leaving the manufacturers and their suppliers stranded with the bills, excess fab capacity and inventory.

I wasn't talking about the miners necessarily buying them - you'd trade them on an exchange, where some would be held by investors. You could have futures on wafer capacity, if financing of fab expansion is a concern, or you could perhaps use them for specific GPUs and DRAM, in which case some of these would be bought by miners, but also big OEMs and cloud operators.

Anyway, I'm not an expert in finance, but I think that if the solvency of the counterparty is in question, there are ways to mitigate that. Some other advantages of this approach is that we get more transparency into supply, and manufacturers benefit from market intelligence around upcoming changes in both the supply and demand sides of the equation.

I'm just saying this isn't an intractable problem. The bigger issue is getting people to believe that it's a systemic problem deserving of a systemic solution. Otherwise, we muddle on...

 

[ah]

I think the price of the memory is bothered me more: It's 2 times more expensive than 2 years ago.

 

[Rexer]

I think the price of the memory is bothered me more: It's 2 times more expensive than 2 years ago.

Aaah, but when you find a gem, is it worth it? Problem is, those days prospecting for product is becoming it's own occupation.
I'm building a rig right now and yeah, I'm blown away at the gpu and ram prices. Companies who manufacture them say they're building larger factories to accommodate the demand. I wonder how fast can you build a facility that can manufacture for workstation, gamers and miners let alone exclusively for one group of users?
I subscribe to some Youtube guys like J2cents. who do a lot of product sponsor testing. These guys say it's not a good time to build a rig because of the pricing. Even when you got the bucks you can't be happy with double pricing.
It's really strange watching price fluctuations right in front of our faces on a retail outlet websites.
I'm wondering if there will be a good time soon. off-topic political commentary not related to PC hardware prices.
I'm trying to squeeze as much product for my dollar as I can and when I search, I search no less than 20 sites at a time. It's ridiculous to spend a day getting information, listening to friends, searching retailers and websites, watching compare/compatibility and installing videos, calling for availability, looking for draw backs, flaws and worse case scenarios, getting spec, pricing, customer ratings and testimonies, newer models info and mod kits, etc, I haven't even mention balancing the budget if you're pinching. It's worse than mowing the lawn.
Some days on the internet are like trudging though a mine field. All the junk that your computer can pickup, it finds. I don't spend a lot of time swatting down viruses, spyware, adware. But I do the diligence to get rid of them.

 

[BaRoMeTrIc]

I think the price of the memory is bothered me more: It's 2 times more expensive than 2 years ago.

Aaah, but when you find a gem, is it worth it? Problem is, those days prospecting for product is becoming it's own occupation.
I'm building a rig right now and yeah, I'm blown away at the gpu and ram prices. Companies who manufacture them say they're building larger factories to accommodate the demand. I wonder how fast can you build a facility that can manufacture for workstation, gamers and miners let alone exclusively for one group of users?
I subscribe to some Youtube guys like J2cents. who do a lot of product sponsor testing. These guys say it's not a good time to build a rig because of the pricing. Even when you got the bucks you can't be happy with double pricing.
It's really strange watching price fluctuations right in front of our faces on a retail outlet websites.
I'm wondering if there will be a good time soon. off-topic political commentary not related to PC hardware prices.
I'm trying to squeeze as much product for my dollar as I can and when I search, I search no less than 20 sites at a time. It's ridiculous to spend a day getting information, listening to friends, searching retailers and websites, watching compare/compatibility and installing videos, calling for availability, looking for draw backs, flaws and worse case scenarios, getting spec, pricing, customer ratings and testimonies, newer models info and mod kits, etc, I haven't even mention balancing the budget if you're pinching. It's worse than mowing the lawn.
Some days on the internet are like trudging though a mine field. All the junk that your computer can pickup, it finds. I don't spend a lot of time swatting down viruses, spyware, adware. But I do the diligence to get rid of them.

Don't expect ram to come down till late this year or early next. Ram production is ramping up but mobile and enterprise gets first dibs.

 

[bit_user]

Sort of odd time to post about this, when I'm literally seeing GPU prices drop week over week. I know they're not quite back to normal, but if you can afford to wait a few more weeks, they might get close.

I'm trying to squeeze as much product for my dollar as I can and when I search, I search no less than 20 sites at a time. It's ridiculous to spend a day getting information, listening to friends, searching retailers and websites,

pcpartpicker.com has price histories for each component. So, not only can you find the best deal currently, but you can even see how it compares with historically good prices.

They also include compatibility checks, to help you ensure everything will be electrically and mechanically compatible. For this feature, you need to create an account and spec out your entire system on the site.

 

[Rexer]

Sort of odd time to post about this, when I'm literally seeing GPU prices drop week over week. I know they're not quite back to normal, but if you can afford to wait a few more weeks, they might get close.

I'm trying to squeeze as much product for my dollar as I can and when I search, I search no less than 20 sites at a time. It's ridiculous to spend a day getting information, listening to friends, searching retailers and websites,

pcpartpicker.com has price histories for each component. So, not only can you find the best deal currently, but you can even see how it compares with historically good prices.

They also include compatibility checks, to help you ensure everything will be electrically and mechanically compatible. For this feature, you need to create an account and spec out your entire system on the site.

pcpartpicker.com, got price histories? hmm. I'll take a look at it. Thanks.

 

[Rexer]

I think the price of the memory is bothered me more: It's 2 times more expensive than 2 years ago.

Aaah, but when you find a gem, is it worth it? Problem is, those days prospecting for product is becoming it's own occupation.
I'm building a rig right now and yeah, I'm blown away at the gpu and ram prices. Companies who manufacture them say they're building larger factories to accommodate the demand. I wonder how fast can you build a facility that can manufacture for workstation, gamers and miners let alone exclusively for one group of users?
I subscribe to some Youtube guys like J2cents. who do a lot of product sponsor testing. These guys say it's not a good time to build a rig because of the pricing. Even when you got the bucks you can't be happy with double pricing.
It's really strange watching price fluctuations right in front of our faces on a retail outlet websites.
I'm wondering if there will be a good time soon. off-topic political commentary not related to PC hardware prices.
I'm trying to squeeze as much product for my dollar as I can and when I search, I search no less than 20 sites at a time. It's ridiculous to spend a day getting information, listening to friends, searching retailers and websites, watching compare/compatibility and installing videos, calling for availability, looking for draw backs, flaws and worse case scenarios, getting spec, pricing, customer ratings and testimonies, newer models info and mod kits, etc, I haven't even mention balancing the budget if you're pinching. It's worse than mowing the lawn.
Some days on the internet are like trudging though a mine field. All the junk that your computer can pickup, it finds. I don't spend a lot of time swatting down viruses, spyware, adware. But I do the diligence to get rid of them.

Don't expect ram to come down till late this year or early next. Ram production is ramping up but mobile and enterprise gets first dibs.

Thanks. I'll probably look at 16g this spring and wait till fall. Maybe I can find someone on Ebay whose got one 8g for sale. I'd settle for a 24g machine right now. I'm only using it for Battlefield games, exclusively for BF 1 and TitanFall 2. Should give me plenty of headroom for Ultra.