The Ethereum Effect: Graphics Card Price Watch (Updated)

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No problem, glad you enjoy the article. I saw you asked several times in the last comment page for us to do so. We were in the process of talking to them already, but we like to keep these things quiet until we have enough ready to publish so unfortunately I couldn't say anything sooner.

I thought about doing it for the GTX 1070, but prices never quiet settled on the $350 price. A few dropped down to between $330 and $350, but most remained at $350-$400, so I feel the original MSRP better represents what the card has cost to date. I did adjust the GTX 1080s MSRP to what Nvidia set it at after the GTX 1080 TI launched though, as those certainly have dropped in price. Even through this shortage, they are priced very competitively.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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MSRPs are what the manufacturers think their products' retail price should be for general market and consumer guidance, not a representation of actual street prices. Manufacturers rarely update MSRPs after launch unless there is a disruptive shift in the competitive landscape forcing them to review their margins.
 

bit_user

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Yes, like how Nvidia repriced lower-end models when they launched the GTX 1080 Ti. That's what we're talking about, here. Not quite sure what you're on about.
 

bit_user

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Put what you want, but just make the column heading consistent. Don't call it the MSRP if it's not.

If you want to put where entry-level prices settled after the GTX 1080 Ti's launch, do it. But then the column heading should be something like Typical Price on May 15th (or whenever you decide prices generally bottomed out).
 
Not all is bad with this mining craze. It wasn't that long ago that we, the PC gamer master race, started worrying about the future of PC gaming and CPU/GPU manufacturers as consoles started increasing in popularity between the PS3/4 and XBox 360/One. You guys remember all the "PC gaming is slowly dying" hysteria. I don't see how this 21st Century gold rush of cryptocurrency mining can be bad for AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.

Then of course there is the used GPU market. I recently sold my SLI 970s for $480. Two months ago and prior, they were maxed out selling on eBay for $150. I took that money and bought an EVGA 1080Ti SC2 Gaming for $740 (NewEgg). My original plan was waiting for the consumer level Voltas to come out next year, but this seller's market on recent generation mid-tier and above GPUs is just way too hard to pass up. Especially as one being on the fence on upgrading or waiting.

It's almost like being the reverse of a stock buyer who snaps up cheap stocks when the market hits bottom (like smart people did with AMD). Sell high and run!
 

bit_user

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You can get lucky a few times, but it's hard to repeatedly time the market well.

So, when there's a relatively stable payout, whether it's dividends or burning watts for crypto coins (especially if you're not paying the electric bill), then it has certain advantages.
 

bit_user

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With crypto-currencies classed as assets, I think many investment banks already own some.

They can't buy all, because that would be like buying all the gold in the world. You'd run out of money, first. Even if you had enough money to buy it all at the beginning, the price would start to go up as you bought more.

And I still don't really see what this accomplishes. If someone bought enough bitcoin (for example) to destroy its liquidity, then people could just create another cryptocurrency that's similar (perhaps even forked from bitcoin's very codebase). Meanwhile, what does the bank gain? Banks don't really care which currency wins - it's the governments who care about that.


Eh, central banks basically just control interest rates and inflation. Not to downplay those two factors, but there are more interesting government activities & policies that shape economies: budgets, taxation, subsidies, investments, social programs (health care, social security, unemployment insurance, welfare), business laws, trade policies, accounting rules, banking rules (leverage, risk exposure), etc.
 
^^Exactly why I sold my 970s and jumped to a the EVGA Gaming SC2 iCX 1080Ti over the 1080 variant of the same line. It was too good to pass up. I got about $90 more for each than what they were worth two months ago on the used market. I chose the 1080Ti over the 1080 due to the price increases of the 1080s. When the SC2 gaming 1080 was at normal release pricing ($550-$560 not including MIR deals) it was not worth buying the 1080Ti at $740+. I am specifically comparing the EVGA SC2 Gaming w/iCX models of each since those were the two I was watching. Currently on B&H Photo, it's $615 vs. $750. So that's 20% more cost for 20-25% more performance of the 1080Ti over the 1080, a perfect price match scale up. Of course with everything else, depending on where you live, YMMV.

But let's keep something in mind: you have people who are not mining snapping up the cards and selling them on the market way over even what resellers are selling them for. That's been toned down some as the cards have become so hard to find and their prices got so high from the resellers. But this time last month it was a double hit between miners and gougers looking for a quick turnaround profit.
 

Beobachter_

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Jul 15, 2017
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A used GTX 980 Ti seems to be a reasonable price right now. It's only slightly inflated by $40 or so. It has almost exactly the same performance as the GTX 1070, but can be found for ~$320 vs ~$470. The only difference is the larger process which uses 100 watts more power, not a huge deal for gaming (assuming you have a sufficient PSU), but it hurts mining profit margins a lot.
 
Dear Santa, please release a flood of $50 used gtx 1060 class cards just in time for xmas.

Be interesting to see what the miners do with the cards when they realize the "profit calculators" with updated difficulty factors say they are paying more for electricity then they are getting paid for etherium... Or when the first FGPA or ASIC solution appears.
 

Aaron_162

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Aug 10, 2017
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i ordered my rx 580 on june 28th. it is now august 10th. the wait is killing me. but i might as well just keep waiting rather then get a refund.
 

Tanyac

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God I wish the price increases here in AU were as "small" as the US price exploitation.
@ $379 US ($479AUD), ASUS GTX 1070 8GB here sells for as much as $715 (Average seems to be around $699), That's around 50% increase, as opposed to the US 18 - 22% increase.

The exploitation by Australian retailers is so bad some people just can't afford to upgrade/repair/replace their systems.
 
Almost two months (shy about a week) since the publishing of the original article....

No real improvements... Vega gets hit right out of the gates... Right now you got a deal if you can find one $50 (or less, USD) above MSRP. They don't last long at that price, so grab 'em if you can... but if you're like me and on a tight budget, you're forced to wait or go older generations. (and even those can be effected)
 


Previous generation GPUs have gone up in price on the used market over the past several months. Used GTX 970s and 980s are upwards of $100 or more on eBay than they were selling for a few months ago. Same with the RX 470s and 480s. I posted my experience previously here in this thread last month about that.

Even five year old GTX 680s are selling for a premium now for up to $150 or more. Months ago you would be lucky to find a buyer for one for $100, and 980 Ti prices are insane at $400+. Anyone looking on selling their previous generation GPU and upgrading to a 1080 or 1080 Ti can make a killing right now. The only potential positive outcome of cryptocurrency mining for we gamers.

The sources also pointed out that part of the issue may lie with TSMC, which typically takes orders months in advance and will likely be unable to rush new orders of Nvidia GPUs due to the need to create products for its other customers. One company also informed us that they do not plan to increase production due to the instability of the market. They are concerned that if they increase production, the market could shift again, leaving them with large stockpiles of GPUs that are no longer in high demand.

What instability are they referring to? The potential for a crash in the cryptocurrency market? I don't see that going away. When the Ethereum bubble pops (and it's a matter of when, not if), another will take its place. There are a lot of gamers out there stuck in no-man's land who either can't or won't spend the premium prices of the current mid-range GPUs like a 1070 or RX 56. Fortunately the GTX 1080/1080 Ti high end segment is not affected but the market is smaller for them.

It sounds to me like the leadership of these AIB partners need better marketing research teams like EVGA obviously has:

It should be noted, however, that one OEM -- EVGA -- is enduring the GPU shortage noticeably better than the others, with more graphics cards in-stock on retail sites. The company also offers the least expensive GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060 3GB, and GTX 1060 6GB on the market. We asked EVGA directly if it was having difficulties getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and a representative told us it wasn’t. However, the representative went on to say the company is experiencing tremendous demand

Off topic: thank you Tom's for putting the "Comment from forums" link back in the articles! Yaaaay!
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator

If enough cryptocurrency bubbles pop, people will lose faith in the whole cryptocurrency concept regardless of how many more new substitutes pop up. Too much fragmentation in the market could become a problem too.

It doesn't make sense to massively increase production for demand that could vanish overnight, especially when you have to commit to wafer starts with foundries several months in advance. By the time you get your extra wafers, it may already be too late to sell the chips.

The only way I can imagine AMD and Nvidia successfully preventing miners from hoarding new-gen GPUs would be to require buyer identity checks and restrict the number of GPUs any individual can operate. Lock the GPU to 400MHz clocks, 1GB RAM, one active shader block, etc. (the absolute minimum necessary to be usable) until the buyer's identity can be verified and unlock codes sent to the drivers to unlock the GPU, possibly going so far as using online DRM to make activation withdrawable. Anything else is bound to have loopholes and exploits.
 


Well that I can see. But my thinking was they need to have an if/or approach to forecasting market demand. One for stability/growth in cryptomining and one for returning to sanity of "normal" GPU demand. Like say going back in time and looking at past annual sales of GPUs between 2013-2016 when cryptocurrency miners were using ASIC builds instead of GPUs.

What I'd specifically like to know is if TSMC's current GPU production output is equal to, less, or more than years past when mining is taken out of the equation...and how AIB partners interact with TSMC regarding demand forecasts and what effect that has on foundry/wafer production.
 
AMD may not want to make a ton of Vega cards if the margins are as low as analysts believe. The only thing that's saving them is various bundle deals like 2 games for $100 and exceptionally high demand that convinces people to buy those bundles. And there's the looming specter of Volta or a Pascal refresh that could drop any time and render any excess inventory an albatross around their necks.
 


A Pascal refresh (GTX 20xx) has been rumored since the beginning of the year to carry it over until next year's Volta. But it's getting late in the season with less than six months before consumer Voltas come. We saw Kepler's refresh of the GTX 6xx --> GTX 7xx. The GTX 680 was released in March 2012. The GTX 770 refresh was in May 2013 and lasted for over a year before the 970/980 were released in September 2014.

The 1080/1070 have been out since May/June 2016 respectively. So if Nvidia was going to do a Pascal refresh, it would have already happened. It appears they are going to repeat with Maxwell and give Pascal a one-time only opportunity. I'd rather see Nvidia put their effort and money into a next generation GPU anyway than extending the life of one for a mere 10% improvement that is already excellent for another year.
 
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