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As Ethereum price drops, GPU prices inch toward normalcy
As of right now, Ethereum is just below $523, the lowest it has been in more than three months, and down more than 60% from its peak. As it drops in value, GPU prices are coming down, too. Right now, you can buy a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for about $1000, a GeForce GTX 1080 for $600, a Radeon RX Vega 64 for $900, and a Radeon RX Vega 56 for $650. That's as compared to an MSRP of $700, $500, $500, and $400, respectively. The AMD cards still carry a higher premium over MSRP as they have for most of the last year because AMD's GPU architectures are more suited to mining than Nvidia's.
That's still a hefty price hike as compared to MSRP, of course. But it's movement in the right direction. Surely people will eventually figure out that mined cryptocurrencies don't benefit anyone but organized crime, miners who got in early and then got lucky, and the vendors who sell stuff to support the mining ecosystem. That's not a market that most rational people would want to enter. Once the bubble pops entirely, GPU prices can return to normal.
Of course, memory prices are still ridiculous. Way back in 2011, I saw a Black Friday sale of 16 GB of memory for $50. That was an exceptionally low price for its day, of course, and also during a period of very low memory prices that drove Elpida bankrupt and reduced the number of major memory vendors from four to three. But today, 16 GB starts at about $100 for DDR3 or $150 for DDR4.
That's still a hefty price hike as compared to MSRP, of course. But it's movement in the right direction. Surely people will eventually figure out that mined cryptocurrencies don't benefit anyone but organized crime, miners who got in early and then got lucky, and the vendors who sell stuff to support the mining ecosystem. That's not a market that most rational people would want to enter. Once the bubble pops entirely, GPU prices can return to normal.
Of course, memory prices are still ridiculous. Way back in 2011, I saw a Black Friday sale of 16 GB of memory for $50. That was an exceptionally low price for its day, of course, and also during a period of very low memory prices that drove Elpida bankrupt and reduced the number of major memory vendors from four to three. But today, 16 GB starts at about $100 for DDR3 or $150 for DDR4.
Comments
I hope the card makers do something to make their cards less attractive to miners, but that wont happen. So I now wait for prices to go down to normal, no way I'm gonna pay 2x the MSRP for a card to play a video game. Might have to resort to playing on laptops.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
On the bright side, ebay should see a flood of cheap used cards soon for those that managed to wait out this storm of ridiculous prices.
To say crypto currency has "no backing" while search engines exist is the talk of an absolute imbecile. Calling all of them "ponzi-scheme" is imbecilic. You're upset because you can't buy a graphic card so you can play video games. I get it, still... don't be daft.
It's new, the market is not regulated, and there's a lot of gambling going on. Naturally that causes sharks to circle the waters. It's still not intelligent to brush with broad strokes.
The same companies you all bank with, buy processors from, and purchase fuel from are heavily vested in block chain AND crypto. It's not going anywhere any time soon. If you think the jackass who literally caused the Dow to drop 700+ points because "trade wars are easy" is gonna do ANY THING you're a fool. That's 2 more years of holding your breath right there. As long as there is some real tech and solid white paper behind some of these companies don't expect it all to disappear.
I suggest you all strap the hell in, do some research and speak from a position of knowledge at the least.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your statement is broad and in general false. What else ya got?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Absolutely loved this show
The financial sector sees this as an area of growth but if you are old enough to remember 2008, it will help you understand what is happening here. As long as money is being made everyone is happy and everyone wants a bigger and bigger slice. That leads to overinvestment, and overvaluation. Once people wake up to this the price tumbles, investors know this and intend to be out before that happens.
For the average dude buying graphics cards and maybe even PC's to mine crypto, he can't bail out as easily. We have heard the price is falling, he is going to be left with egg on his face.
One of our posters has questioned our knowledge about cryptocurrencies, can he explain to us how they are protected from being like any other digital bubble that goes Pop!
Mind you if you were in early and made a mint good luck to you, that's the way for individual punters to do it.
People invest in anything they believe has value. In the 90s people were going crazy over beanie babies because they were highly prized and valued (I can't even recall why) and some of them sold for quite a lot. There are many CCs out there that are like beanie babies, they are a quick hit fad, and some people can capitalize on them.
Eventually the volatility will settle some, once CC behaves more like regular currency and not stocks. Bitcoins gained and lost 10s of thousands at this point, and Steam no longer allows bitcoin as payment.
Without knowing what prices will be tomorrow, whether you should cash out currencies or hang on to them, or if what I bought for 1 coin today, will cost 5 coins next week, I'm surprised companies even bother taking them as payment at all.
1. Huge price increase in cryptocurrency mined with GPUs. Ethereum caused this shortage, for example Bitcoin couldn't have caused it because it's not mined with GPUs any more.
2. Very little existing mining hardware capable of mining that currency, meaning that the new hardware purchased had very little competition
3. We've had global RAM shortage since early 2017 that's prevented GPU manufacturers from increasing their production
It's likely that we'll see occasional shortages of some GPUs in the future, but a shortage that lasts this long and affects this many graphic card models is likely a one time thing.
Repeating incorrect things over and over doesn't make them correct, it only makes you leader of the free world.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is the price of Ethereum hedged against hardware prices or something?
What are all of these crypto-currencies that are already backed by governments? I'm aware of one that the dictator of Venezuela issued in a desperate attempt to be able to borrow more money so that he can spend it today, but that's it.
Crypto currencies are fine - minus hacking etc. but I would not invest in them. Invest in the tech that comes from blockchain instead.
As far as GPUs. . YAY! I will need one soon and I was hoping for the perfect storm of increased production and reduced demand. It might work out perfectly!
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I thought even if they don't they'll probably use so-so second hardware to run it. Doubt many of them will be using absolute top end stuff.
I think it is probably more likely that GPU prices will be linked to price of rare-earth metals as a major factor rather than demand, and rare-earths were going up, that might be why we weren't seeing much drop in GPU prices.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/01/09/1285788/0/en/Rare-Earth-Metals-Market-to-cross-20bn-by-2024-Global-Market-Insights-Inc.html
Let's suppose that you can buy some GPUs for $500 each, and for each one you buy, you expect to make $2000 over the course of the next year by using them for mining Ethereum. How many do you want to buy?
If you really believe that it's going to work out, then the answer is, as many as you possibly can. If you can find 100 GPUs to buy, you buy them all. If you can find 1000 GPUs to buy, you still buy them all. If you've got the funding ahead of time and can find 10,000 GPUs to buy, you still buy them all. And then the gamers can't get any because you and the other miners bought them all.
Rare earths have nothing to do with it. At its peak, Ethereum had a market capitalization of $130 billion. Yes, that's US dollars, and billion with a "b". There's simply no way for AMD and Nvidia to keep up with that kind of demand. Retailers figured out that they could charge double MSRP for their video cards and still sell them all, so they did.
What if the price of cryptocurrencies drops so that you only expect that the value of what you mine will be just enough to cover the cost of the electricity to run the hardware? Now how many do you want to buy?
This time, the answer should be zero. And furthermore, the GPUs that you already bought, you may want to start selling used to try to recover some value from them. We might be heading in that direction. Ethereum dropped by another 10% today, which will help.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
^That's 100% fact.
The information is available within a few keystrokes and button press, but you're clearly of the remedially educated ideologue ilk. Your "time" has 0 value.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The serious miners also look at which particular GPUs fare relatively better at various algorithms. For example, why buy a GeForce GTX 1080 for $500 for Ethereum mining if a Radeon RX 570 for $200 is faster? And then they'll do things like overclock the memory and underclock the GPU chip itself, with the latter to save on power.