So will cards ever drop back down to normal prices?

[crakerjack]

There are ways around this, but no way a GPU mfr or retail site ever implements them. They don't particularly care who is buying their product.

If they DID care, they would limit purchases to one per address/phone number/some other relatively hard to spoof detail. it's not like crypto demand is going to go away just because people can't buy cards. They could institute the limitation until sales started to slow, then open them back up and crypto buyers would still be chomping at the bit.

It all depends on when Eth 2.0 moves over to PoS. Ethereum currently has over 800 TH/s and other PoW coins such as raven and ergo only have 7.48 and 20.34 TH/s. When Eth moves over, all that hashpower has to go somewhere, so likely people will jump to the next profitable coin, except those coins are only profitable because difficulty is low. When all that hashrate moves over, difficulty will drastically spike and profits from mining will plummet. It all comes down to how well these alternative PoW coins can handle the hashrate. Eitherway there's going to be a steep dive in profits from GPU mining and those who got into the game late will be lucky to reach RoI. It's hopefully at this point that people start panic selling their GPU's on the used market. Fingers crossed Eth 2.0 doesn't continue to get pushed back and occurs sooner rather than later.

[Kagthul]

The problem with your theory is simple. SLI/Crossfire configs were popular for over 10 years, never stocks felt down as today. You seeing thing in a peculiar way, you only seeing your gaming POV, and you refuse to see other things. The chip shortage is real and is afecting all sectors of technology.

Miners ceartainly contribute to the shortage, but they are not the solo blamable.

SLI/Crossfire was never popular. Ever. nVidia said it was like sub 1%.

[unbound]

Nvidia's new cards are supposed to have tech in them to throttle crypto mining. Depending how secure the tech is, it could drop the prices of newer cards. Until then this is the norm.

3XXX series was supposed to have a similar restriction...only took a few days for crypto miners to figure out a way around it.

Regardless, I think the main lesson Nvidia and AMD learned is that many people are willing to pay closer to $1k for a video card than $500 or $600, so I suspect even if they truly managed to lock them down against crypto mining, the prices will be closer to $1k going forward.

[OrangeJuice]

3XXX series was supposed to have a similar restriction...only took a few days for crypto miners to figure out a way around it.

Regardless, I think the main lesson Nvidia and AMD learned is that many people are willing to pay closer to $1k for a video card than $500 or $600, so I suspect even if they truly managed to lock them down against crypto mining, the prices will be closer to $1k going forward.

Ya I mean I'm not surprised they found a way around it but at the same time the tech is still in the infancy stage. So I'm still hopeful. AMD/Nvidia have to both agree at the same time to raise prices otherwise one will put the other out of business lol. If nvidia is selling cards for $1000 but AMD sells the same quality card for $500 well its adios Nvidia.

A few years back you had to submit your ID to a dispensary and your purchases were stored in a database, to prevent you from buying a ton from different dispensaries. I haven't been to any since, and I'm sure thats obsolete now, but maybe these companies can start doing that. Stop selling online and require ID verification to purchase cards. Its a bit extreme but it could help temporarily until they figure something else out.

I guess they could just make the cards run extremely hot too, so the cost of cooling offsets the profits of running it 24/7?

[OrangeJuice]

The FE basically requires a thermal pad swap to mine effectively.

I guess that ends that option lol.

[MrPaladinGuy]

There is allready a solution for BUDGET vs ENTHUSIAST GPU gamers: RTX.

Look at CP2077, a potatoe system can still run it and if you want the real eyecandy with full featured RTX effects, you need a 3080/3090 just for ULTRA 1080p (~60-70fps nothing crazy).

I think thats where it is going. People with lower end GPUs will have to settle on normal game engines, while high end systems will be able to use full RTX featurd engines at playable frame rate.

But of course, its not really playing the same game.

CP2077 ULTRA



CP2077 RTX ULTRA



Does it look like the same gaming experience to you?

People who watch GamersNexus pretty FPS charts on their phones will be happy either way - ignorance is bliss. And for those who have the budget and actually saw the game engines in their screen, will have an awesome experience.

What ?

6 months ago I had an 8600k (6c) @ an all-core 4.8Ghz, a 1080, 16GB DDR4 3200, 1440p 144hz IPS Native G-sync display. I literally could not run Cyberpunk above 45 fps on lowest settings and obviously that's with RT disabled and no DLSS.

Now I have a 10850k (10c 20t) @ an all-core 5Ghz, RTX 3080, and I can literally max every single setting at 1440p with DLSS set to the highest quality and I don't fall a single frame below 80, even outside. If I disable Raytracing it skyrockets to 110fps. Now I will say without DLSS I won't bother enabling raytracing as the performance hit is too large. So that may be a valid argument.

From what I can tell this game is like Crysis 3 in that before Cyberpunk, C3 was the only game that drastically/insanely benefited from extra cores and SMT (hyper threading) as the game called for a ridiculous amount of 'draw calls'. Cyberpunk is insanely CPU bound in that aspect as people with 3080's and my previous processor weren't getting that much better performance and were extremely cpu-bound, just like with C3.

Also, this game was aimed around raytracing and it's extremely beautiful, but that's a cherry picked screenshot aimed at making RT look bad due to brightness you're seeing outside of the car because the two people in the car clearly look 10x better.

[Ange]

A few years back you had to submit your ID to a dispensary and your purchases were stored in a database, to prevent you from buying a ton from different dispensaries. I haven't been to any since, and I'm sure thats obsolete now, but maybe these companies can start doing that. Stop selling online and require ID verification to purchase cards. Its a bit extreme but it could help temporarily until they figure something else out.

Thats more or less what was done in EU with MSRP Founder Edition variants, after the NVIDIA shop closed.
1. domestic shipping address
2. ~6 month cooldown per GPU variant
3. bot prevention since Q4/2020

But again, mining is not a thing outside of the US, so by just blocking US sales made it 1000x easier to get a gaming GPU at MSRP.

[Lahis]

They did.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3950...-rate-gpu.html

They tried. You can mine with any card, despite what the manufacturers say.

- - - Updated - - -

I bought an ultrawide (3440x1440) last week and I love it. But my RTX 2060 (vanilla, 2019) struggles to run even WoW (around settings of 8) as smoothly as I was used to on 2560x1440. I went to look for a new card and was felled by the prices, even on the lowest-end. For now I'll just deal with it, but I would be shocked if the cards EVER go back to MSRP range.

Cards won't go down. Next gen MSRP will just rise up to current price range.

[Coldkil]

When will they go down, when it's full of people willing to buy them at such inflated prices? Mining bubble apart, the core of the issue is some middle men going to productors and buying entire stocks of stuff before those entering the large distribution.

Mining craze and chip scarcity made it even worse, but it was really there that demand would have been at an all-time high and this would have produced the same results. The only way to stop this is not buying anything until prices go down, but that's simply not going to happen.

Market for GPU is forever screwed at this point until there's a suddend drop in demand and spike in production.

[GreenJesus]

When will they go down, when it's full of people willing to buy them at such inflated prices? Mining bubble apart, the core of the issue is some middle men going to productors and buying entire stocks of stuff before those entering the large distribution.

Mining craze and chip scarcity made it even worse, but it was really there that demand would have been at an all-time high and this would have produced the same results. The only way to stop this is not buying anything until prices go down, but that's simply not going to happen.

Market for GPU is forever screwed at this point until there's a suddend drop in demand and spike in production.

Seriously fuck crypto. They ruined the gaming industry. I'll be stuck with a 1070ti forever (not that it doesn't serve my needs good enough anyway).

[mrgreenthump]

Seriously fuck crypto. They ruined the gaming industry. I'll be stuck with a 1070ti forever (not that it doesn't serve my needs good enough anyway).

Crypto was just a catalyst, the prices were going up long before crypto was a thing, although slowler than now. It's hard for me to see how we wouldn't have gotten here even if crypto mining was banned when it should've. Maybe 4080 would've cost $799, but because of what we've done, it's more likely going to be $999. And 4080ti will probably be $1499 and a 4090 $1999. AMD will surely follow and we are salty again, yet gobble up the cards. Cry out for cheaper and then we get a "budget" card at $599 and people gobble that up.

[Tommi]

Seriously fuck crypto. They ruined the gaming industry. I'll be stuck with a 1070ti forever (not that it doesn't serve my needs good enough anyway).

Glad I got my 3080 on launch. I mine on it when I'm not gaming, card's paid for itself.

[Tommi]

The problem is it just simply isn't fair some people own dozens if not hundreds of cards to mine - but to nvidia or AMD - a sale is a sale - even if they could prevent it why would they?

That's life though. No one is entitled to the cards no matter what their use is, crypto mining, gaming, content creation. If someone has the cash to buy 10+ GPU's for mining, then they should be allowed to do so. What entitles anyone to anything?

[Lahis]

Until something is done about crypto - and that's a whole can of worms in itself - I don't see how

The problem is it just simply isn't fair some people own dozens if not hundreds of cards to mine - but to nvidia or AMD - a sale is a sale - even if they could prevent it why would they?

But long term if pc gaming as a mainstream hobby wants to survive something must change - it's already a hard sell - you can expect to easily pay double if not triple the price of a console for a pc that can compete with current gen, and that's only going to get worse

I bought Series X for less than third of the price of any decent GPU.

It is ridiculous.

[Coldkil]

I'm gonna wait for my 4th bday to redo my pc, it works fine and i have no issues with my 1080ti. Even if this means passing over more graphics demanding titles because i have an awful lot of stuff available.

We'll see in 3 years or so then if the situation has changed XD

[Tommi]

I'm gonna wait for my 4th bday to redo my pc

Fucking hell, kids these days are becoming more advanced than ever. 3 years old and PC gaming?!

[Kagthul]

some people would again argue no

Those people are idiots.

The entire reason society exists is to curb the extremes of human nature.

However, when it reaches the realms of "you literally do not need this" goods - then we're not really talking about the good of society, and ergo, the government probably doesn't need to step in.

You dont need a GPU to live or even live well. (needing a computer in the modern age is at least potentially a relevant argument).

Its not like food, or medicine, etc.

So.. free market it is.

[Coldkil]

Fucking hell, kids these days are becoming more advanced than ever. 3 years old and PC gaming?!

Hahhaha 40th :P

[DeltrusDisc]

Eventually - probably will. But this eventually at the very best is a good 3 years off.

Reality is EVEN if the whole Cryptocurrency market crashes (fat chance of that IMO) or ETH will manage to successfully transition off GPU mining - you still have global foundry shortages to deal with and the demand for foundry capacity is only growing more and more with every passing year with practically everything you can think of needing chips.

Some Intel's hotshot recently projected that GPU shortages will last all the way into 2023 and I have no reason to not believe that.

I really need my refrigerator to be smart.
And my microwave.
And my toaster.
And my door.
And my stairs.
And my floor.

pikwhndrngpienghpesinrhp AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[mrgreenthump]

I really need my refrigerator to be smart.
And my microwave.
And my toaster.
And my door.
And my stairs.
And my floor.

pikwhndrngpienghpesinrhp AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Well yeah IoT has gotten out of hand, while it has brought us many improvements, it also has complicated stuff that never needed any improvements.

You may joke, but from what you listed only my fridge and stairs don't have a chip controlling some aspect of them. And outside of automatic temperature control, I don't really need any of them.