The Ethereum Effect: Graphics Card Price Watch (Updated)

[redgarl]

What the hell? My 900$ MSI 1080 TI Duke is worthing 1500$? People are insane!

 

[InvalidError]

What the hell? My 900$ MSI 1080 TI Duke is worthing 1500$? People are insane!

Many coins went up by more than 5X in value during 2017, so miners became able to afford to spend more than 5X as much per MH/s on GPUs for GPU-friendly crypto currencies. In early 2017, a 1080Ti was too expensive to consider for mining use. After the coin value inflation, it became fair game.

It is largely the same story for lower-end GPUs: they didn't make sense in early 2017 because they didn't have enough MH/s, MH/W and MH/system to be economically viable. After the coin and higher-end GPU price inflation though, those became fair game too and we have GPUs all the way down to the 1050Ti (possibly even lower, I haven't checked) also costing twice what it did a year ago.

 

[mihen]

You can get Vega Frontier Edition cards for around $700 which is a few hundred below MSRP.

 

[bit_user]

You can get Vega Frontier Edition cards for around $700 which is a few hundred below MSRP.

Um... no? Link, please.

 

[mihen]

Correction: AMD Vega Frontier Edition is selling for $999.99

 

[zippyzion]

I even went poking around looking for the workstation cards (Quadro or FirePro) that roughly correspond to the gaming cards and the prices on those are wildly out of wack too. There is no way around it. If you plan on building a new PC soon (like me) expect to be reusing your current card. It just doesn't make sense to buy video cards right now. Guess I'll be using my RX 470 for the foreseeable future.

 

[therealduckofdeath]

The GPU manufacturers really have to start getting their supply on par with demand. \o/
I'm getting to the point where it's time for a GPU upgrade but I'm not paying these ridiculously inflated prices.

 

[InvalidError]

The GPU manufacturers really have to start getting their supply on par with demand. \o/

They can't: if they increase production to catch up with (mining) demand and the crypto coin bubble bursts, they'll be stuck with a huge over-supply of now worthless cards (they'll have to compete against the million+ mining cards that miners will be dumping for cheaper than the GPU manufacturers' costs) and excess factory capacity.

The short-term profit from supplying miners is not worth the manufacturers' long-term costs. It doesn't make sense to spend a hundred million dollars on a new facility if it'll have to get written off as a loss the moment the crypto bubble bursts.

 

[lbrown]

Its getting worse as the prices I see today (1/24/2018) are way higher for nvidia GPU's than presented in this article.....sad....as I wanted to build a new rig....not anytime soon. This GPU shortage could depress the PC market a bit IMHO.

 

[sinclaj1]

I was able to get an MSI RX 580 GAMING X 8GB from NewEgg last week for $389, it was on the site for probably half an hour before I got there, and about 30 minutes afterward they were all gone.

I'm very fortunate to have gotten one, hopefully others out there like me who were replacing their 6 year old GPUs (mine was a Radeon 6970) so they can keep playing their gaming libraries are able to snag one as well.

 

[drinking12many]

I dunno I just got a 8G MSI 580 for 310 on newegg, higher than it should be sure, but it wasnt hard to find. I mine on the side, but I mostly game. I work from home so my computer is pretty much always on. I figure if mining does bust oh well if not, 600 dollars in video cards (I already had a 480) are still running my monitors/games. Mining is just a bonus to me if it makes me some money.

 

[awood28211]

As a miner and a gamer I find it difficult to believe that anyone is buying these ridiculously priced cards. It takes about 16 RX580s to make about 1k US a month mining ETH.. that changes based on the price of the coin... that means each card is earning about $62 per month... which sounds great until you realize how much electricity that is.. and the cost of other components not to mention cooling additions (on larger scales).. So if I'm going to buy the lowest price RX580s on Amazon right now that card costs $600 bucks and It's going to take nearly a year for it to pay for itself. I am not willing to bet a year in advance on whether prices are double or half of today... not to mention zero profit during that year...

 

[TJ Hooker]

@awood28211 I imagine at least some miners are doing so with the expectation that the value of eth will go up, meaning that eventual profit will be higher than current rates. Although if you're banking on eth going up, you're arguably better off just buying some eth and sitting on it rather than buying ridiculously overpriced graphics cards...

 

[ghettogamer]

and hurts more here in asia bought my gtx 1060 3gb for $320 us equivalent. precious precious money..new budget pc builders might want to consider the upcoming ryzen APU's and low res/low setting..

 

[bit_user]

if I'm going to buy the lowest price RX580s on Amazon right now that card costs $600 bucks and It's going to take nearly a year for it to pay for itself. I am not willing to bet a year in advance on whether prices are double or half of today... not to mention zero profit during that year...

You assume everyone buying these is paying for electricity and air conditioning. What about kids whose parents pay the bills (and maybe even buy the hardware)? Then, anything they get from mining is pure profit for them.

 

[USAFRet]

You assume everyone buying these is paying for electricity and air conditioning. What about kids whose parents pay the bills (and maybe even buy the hardware)? Then, anything they get from mining is pure profit for them.

And, as a dad, I'd ask for a cut if he's using my electricity.

Like if he had a painting business, and expecting me to pay for the paint.
TANSTAAFL.

 

[InvalidError]

which sounds great until you realize how much electricity that is.. and the cost of other components not to mention cooling additions (on larger scales)..

Which is why the largest mining farms are located in northern areas where power is often also affordable. Cooling gets pretty simple when outdoors temperature is below 10C most of the year: dump hot air outside.

 

[mihen]

Correction: An AMD Vega Frontier Edition for $899 from Newegg until January 30th.

 

[sonny12681]

There needs to be a new way to stop this problem and that is to block the use of Bitcoin mining on the graphics cards and manufacture a new card that fits a new kind of pin connector on the motherboard that is for only Bitcoin mining use. This will put the graphics cards back in the hands of gamers.

 

[InvalidError]

There needs to be a new way to stop this problem and that is to block the use of Bitcoin mining on the graphics cards

That isn't possible: the only way to do this would be to disable DirectCompute/PhysX on all GPUs, rendering them useless for anything GPU-accelerated other than graphics. Many people use GPU-based acceleration for video editing, 3D rendering, scientific computing, in-game physics acceleration, etc. and the compute market is growing at a much faster pace than gaming to the point where it may overtake gaming as the largest share of GPU sales in 2-3 years from now.

AMD and Nvidia can't remove GPGPU support from GPUs as that would kill the future of their most profitable business which will survive well beyond the point where most of the lower-end mainstream will be on IGPs.

 

[kyotokid]

...pretty much settled on just continuing to render on the CPU. Got an upgrade for my system to max out the memory and have the best CPU I could get for the MB socket I have on the way. Yeah still nothing like what some in CGI enthusiast field have but anything that will improve performance even in the slightest is welcome.

Nvidia is still selling Founders' Edition GPU cards directly at MSRP with a limit of 2 per customer however they are currently pretty much out of everything from the 1070 on up until you reach the Titan and Quadro line. At the price I've seen for a 1080 Ti on the "open" market one would almost be better off getting a Titan Xp direct from Nvidia. Interestingly, the Quadro P5000 has actually come down in price from 2,499$ to 1,999$. Dell is offering a P5000 for 1,799$ and I saw a refurbished one on Newegg for 1,549$. On some sites I've seen 1080 Ti's going for as much as 1,499$ which would make that P5000 at Newegg or even the one offered by Dell look attractive.

One other place to beat the price spike is pre-built systems. I've seen some gaming rigs with 32 GB of memory a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, and a GTX 1070 for a few $ north of 1,600$

 

[targetsb]

Hopefully the manufacturers will build cards that are built specifically for mining with no outputs. Then maybe miners would leave consumer cards alone (Radeon and Nvidia, this was my idea. You'd better recognize)

 

[InvalidError]

Hopefully the manufacturers will build cards that are built specifically for mining with no outputs. Then maybe miners would leave consumer cards alone (Radeon and Nvidia, this was my idea. You'd better recognize)

That idea isn't new, it has been tried over a year ago and has been tried again earlier this year (ex.: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-470-mining-edition-8192mb-gddr5-samsung-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-380-sp.html) and have mostly failed both times.

Miners buy GPUs with outputs because GPUs without display outputs have no resale value once they've outlived their economically viable mining useful life as they have limited use beyond that while GPUs that have display outputs can still resell above MSRP until the mining viability of that GPU has completely died off.

Also, splitting GPU production between output and output-less cards means that many fewer output-capable cards on the market and steering more GPU dies to output-less cards still mean that many fewer GPU dies available for gaming cards that will still get purchased in bulk by miners. In all likelihood, it would only make the problem worse, hence most manufacturers burying the idea.

 

[kyotokid]

I even went poking around looking for the workstation cards (Quadro or FirePro) that roughly correspond to the gaming cards and the prices on those are wildly out of wack too. There is no way around it. If you plan on building a new PC soon (like me) expect to be reusing your current card. It just doesn't make sense to buy video cards right now. Guess I'll be using my RX 470 for the foreseeable future.

...actually the mid to high end Quadros have been holding pretty steady. The P5000 has even dropped a bit in price since its introduction to 1,999$ (from 2,499$). Refurbished P5000s are going for as low as 1,511$, not far above some of the price highs I have seen for 1080 Ti's.

Given the fact Quadros are actually designed for operating at continuous high performance for both rendering and compute purposes (compared to a Consumer card), a refurbished P5000 would probably be a more sound purchase for the CG enthusiast than waiting to buy a used high end GTX card that has been constantly driven at peak for months to over a year (in some cases not in the most favourable of operating environments) to recoup the most out of the hardware investment.

 

[Isokolon]

Hopefully the manufacturers will build cards that are built specifically for mining with no outputs. Then maybe miners would leave consumer cards alone (Radeon and Nvidia, this was my idea. You'd better recognize)

this doesn't work when there's a shortage.
if it was the other way around -- yes. that would be a solution. but miners don't care if you can connect a device to the card. the card is still there, even with the outputs.

there's just no feasable way to prevent miners from using gaming cards, since every restriction you force on them, hurts gamers even worse or won't have any effect (like blocking the use in certain softwares in BIOS)

if the price levels stay stable, you could increase production
otherwise you can just hope for a crash or some sort of regulation of cryptocurrencies.