Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[igor_kavinski]

There's likely to be "Pro" models at some point too.

I really hope not. I would rather they keep optimizing their game engines to do 4K 120Hz somehow and then just go straight to 8K 120Hz whenever that becomes feasible with available technology. So maybe like 10 years or so.

 

[Aapje]

This console gen is going to last a long time, longer than the typical cycle which is normally 7 years. There's likely to be "Pro" models at some point too.

The normal cycle seems to be more like 5-7 years. Not sure how you can be so certain that it will be longer. The competition in GPU's and CPU's seems to be hotting up, with more innovation. That means that there is an incentive to upgrade sooner to new hardware, since they can provide a good case for people to upgrade earlier.

FSR might be used to extend the life of the consoles, though.

 

[biostud]

With the high end they are simply tapping into the SLI/CF segment that used to exist.

As I don't game that much but a 1070 is too weak for my G9. When I upgrade I will buy a video card that has least the power of rtx 3080, and then the best price/performance ratio and best power/performance ratio.

So that might not be the top cards of next generation, but hopefully those below will still be an improvement over current generation in all aspects.

 

[jpiniero]

The normal cycle seems to be more like 5-7 years. Not sure how you can be so certain that it will be longer. The competition in GPU's and CPU's seems to be hotting up, with more innovation. That means that there is an incentive to upgrade sooner to new hardware, since they can provide a good case for people to upgrade earlier.

With Gamepass MS has an extra incentive to be as accessible as possible. It's not about pushing consoles anymore... it's about selling subscriptions.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I actually believe current card "surplus" is due to declining demand from miners. I think ETH being 50% off from ATH and reality of ETH PoS merge is finally setting in and miners are finally wising up and no longer snatching up cards the way they used to. There is still pent up demand from gamers which is what helps keep prices afloat for now, but once ETH goes PoS the floodgates will open and prices will plummet. To be honest, if I was a small/medium size miner, I'd start selling cards now before the Zerg Rush. I mean during the great firesale of 2018 you could get used cards on ebay for half off MSRP. Right now, I'm just patiently waiting on a chance to snag a good 6800XT for cheap when it happens. If all things align, end of 2022 is going to be awesome, firesales on current gen videocards and Zen3.

My favorite was still the firesale of 2014 when you could buy brand new R9 290 with warranty and 4-5 free games for $200 to $230 off newegg, amazon, etc.

 

[jpiniero]

My favorite was still the firesale of 2014 when you could buy brand new R9 290 with warranty and 4-5 free games for $200 to $230 off newegg, amazon, etc.

Yeah that's what I mean when I talk about AMD trying to avoid that happening again.

 

[Aapje]

With Gamepass MS has an extra incentive to be as accessible as possible. It's not about pushing consoles anymore... it's about selling subscriptions.

That's nothing new. They've been making money on the game tax for a long time. With the subscription model the income is just a lot more reliable and not so dependent on good game releases.

 

[Markfw]

OK, in the last week at EVGA.com I could have gotten a 3080TI for MSRP of $1420 or $1320, virtually for a like a week. Last night I snagged a 3070TI for $720. None of this has been possible for like a year. I would have gotten the 3080TI, but my budget is not that great right now.

But a LOT of people can afford a $720 3070TI, and it will play virtually any game at pretty high rates and quality.

 

[moonbogg]

I wouldn't pay $400 for an 8GB card regardless of it's GPU power. Maybe $250 as a short-term 1080p upgrade for my kids over their 6GB 1660 supers. 8GB won't last long at any resolution. Also, Nvidia still hasn't offered people with a 1080Ti an upgrade. The 3080 was a Vram downgrade at the same price and the other 3080 models cost TWICE the price for 2 more gigs of ram. If the RTX 4070 is $1000, then that's not an upgrade either. I decided during Kepler that spending $1000 on a Titan was a place in this hobby I would simply never go, and I still won't. It doesn't matter if it's called a 4070 or a Titan or whatever. I already know the 4070 will realistically end up over $1000, so that leaves the 4060 maybe. That might be a 12gb card for $800. So I get an extra gig of ram for more than I paid 5 years ago. I'm sure you guys will have fun with these cards, but I feel this hobby may not be for me anymore. I'd honestly rather spend $1000 on many other things that will at least feel like they bring some value based on the nature of that product. $1000 for a gaming card is absolutely ridiculous and I'll simply never justify buying one. They can cite inflation and manufacturing costs all they want, but unless they send me a GPU coupon in the mail worth a $500 discount, I'm not paying for any of this crap. Do you think people could charge $25.00 for a cup of coffee by simply blaming it on inflation and the price of paper cups? No, they can't. None of that crap matters because people just won't buy it. The insanity with GPUs is that people WILL buy it, regardless of price. It does blow my mind to be perfectly honest.

 

[Artorias]

I wouldn't pay $400 for an 8GB card regardless of it's GPU power. Maybe $250 as a short-term 1080p upgrade for my kids over their 6GB 1660 supers. 8GB won't last long at any resolution. Also, Nvidia still hasn't offered people with a 1080Ti an upgrade. The 3080 was a Vram downgrade at the same price and the other 3080 models cost TWICE the price for 2 more gigs of ram. If the RTX 4070 is $1000, then that's not an upgrade either. I decided during Kepler that spending $1000 on a Titan was a place in this hobby I would simply never go, and I still won't. It doesn't matter if it's called a 4070 or a Titan or whatever. I already know the 4070 will realistically end up over $1000, so that leaves the 4060 maybe. That might be a 12gb card for $800. So I get an extra gig of ram for more than I paid 5 years ago. I'm sure you guys will have fun with these cards, but I feel this hobby may not be for me anymore. I'd honestly rather spend $1000 on many other things that will at least feel like they bring some value based on the nature of that product. $1000 for a gaming card is absolutely ridiculous and I'll simply never justify buying one. They can cite inflation and manufacturing costs all they want, but unless they send me a GPU coupon in the mail worth a $500 discount, I'm not paying for any of this crap. Do you think people could charge $25.00 for a cup of coffee by simply blaming it on inflation and the price of paper cups? No, they can't. None of that crap matters because people just won't buy it. The insanity with GPUs is that people WILL buy it, regardless of price. It does blow my mind to be perfectly honest.

The average PC gamer is not buying at insane prices. A GPU today provides a ROI that is simply too easy, what other investment instrument gives you such a return? When even a casual crypto miner can make back a couple hundred bucks it's a lot easier to justify stupid prices.

I too have a 1080TI and to be quite honest it runs everything at 1440P just fine, I can easily see it last for another few year as a high end card. Remember how AMD stormed back in the CPU race? The landscape can change very quickly if NVIDA is not on the ball, as long as there are competitors looking to take market share there will be great products, were in a bad era because of Covid and Crypto's. Things will turn around eventually.

 

[jpiniero]

I too have a 1080TI and to be quite honest it runs everything at 1440P just fine, I can easily see it last for another few year as a high end card. Remember how AMD stormed back in the CPU race? The landscape can change very quickly if NVIDA is not on the ball, as long as there are competitors looking to take market share there will be great products, were in a bad era because of Covid and Crypto's. Things will turn around eventually.

As I mentioned, AMD has plenty of competition from their own products basically given they won't/can't get enough wafers. They aren't going cheap either.

 

[beginner99]

The assumption here that the chip shortage and crpytbros are eternal is weird. Every cutting edge silicon company has said the chip shortage should ease by the middle of this year, and the cryptocalypse may already be underway.

I find the constant belief that mining is cause for the shortage weird. Even more since like 90% of people mentioning it are talking about bitcoin which no one mines on GPUs anyway. Mining with an additional factor but not the main problem at all. Every wondered why there is no shortage or overpricing in gaming laptops? That use the same chips desktop GPUs use and in fact miners also bought in the millions? dGPU market is/was especially bad because contracts with OEMs went firsts and DIY last which made the DIY piece smaller than usually. At miners on top and you got a perfect storm. but stop the non-sense miners are the main cause. How do miners affect car chip production? they don't obviously. Here the compounding factor was just-in-time manufacturing, no chip storage.

There is no cryptocalyps coming. Look at the new Goldman-sachs homepage. Right there on the main page "crypto and metaverse". You know it's not going away when the greediest of greedy are boarding the train.
The reason the used-market is heating up is because ethereum, the main mining crypto, will move to PoS as soon as June. Then mining on GPUs is essentially dead. it sill means it makes sense to wait for a purchase till June/July because then used will get flooded and Intel will also have released their GPU (hopefully). Which means both new and used market should see much, much more supply. Want a 6000-series or 3000-series below msrp? Wait for July.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

My favorite was still the firesale of 2014 when you could buy brand new R9 290 with warranty and 4-5 free games for $200 to $230 off newegg, amazon, etc.

Good times. Hawaii was also great value.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

As I mentioned, AMD has plenty of competition from their own products basically given they won't/can't get enough wafers. They aren't going cheap either.

They definitely didn't see the huge demand spike and low supply coming when they promised all that priority to Sony and Microsoft. 28 million or so in just over a year. That's, let's see, about 175k wafers. That's 28 million GPUs as the SOCs are about the same average size, and of course take GDDR as well. That'd probably have put a dent in that demand. Well at least someone is gaming with them.

I find the constant belief that mining is cause for the shortage weird. Even more since like 90% of people mentioning it are talking about bitcoin which no one mines on GPUs anyway. Mining with an additional factor but not the main problem at all. Every wondered why there is no shortage or overpricing in gaming laptops? That use the same chips desktop GPUs use and in fact miners also bought in the millions? dGPU market is/was especially bad because contracts with OEMs went firsts and DIY last which made the DIY piece smaller than usually. At miners on top and you got a perfect storm. but stop the non-sense miners are the main cause. How do miners affect car chip production? they don't obviously. Here the compounding factor was just-in-time manufacturing, no chip storage.

There is no cryptocalyps coming. Look at the new Goldman-sachs homepage. Right there on the main page "crypto and metaverse". You know it's not going away when the greediest of greedy are boarding the train.
The reason the used-market is heating up is because ethereum, the main mining crypto, will move to PoS as soon as June. Then mining on GPUs is essentially dead. it sill means it makes sense to wait for a purchase till June/July because then used will get flooded and Intel will also have released their GPU (hopefully). Which means both new and used market should see much, much more supply. Want a 6000-series or 3000-series below msrp? Wait for July.

Hahaha, redacted Goldman Sachs, the idiots leading the charge straight into the 2008 financial crisis are the all seeing knowers of the future. Good god you just mentioned "metaverse" as if it was a serious thing. Anyway.

We have a zero tolerance policy for profanity in the tech sub-forums.
Don't do it again.

Iron Woode
Super Moderator

 

[Aapje]

I find the constant belief that mining is cause for the shortage weird. Even more since like 90% of people mentioning it are talking about bitcoin which no one mines on GPUs anyway.

One reason is that GPU prices went up as mining was very profitable and came down when it wasn't so much & you can easily find youtube channels where people show off many dozens of GPUs in mining rigs. It's a simple fact that gamers tend to only have one gaming PC and thus buy one GPU every x years, while many miners are/were buying multiple cards. It's very easy to create a shortage when there is an influx of people who want to buy every card they can get their hands on, as long as the price is below a rather high limit, while in the old market, people were satisfied for a couple of years if they got one.

Another reason is that it is mostly GPUs that are really in short demand and went up in price. If the reason for the shortage was just that a lot of people came into gaming or were willing to spend more on gaming, then you'd expect shortages of many other components, as those new/upgrading gamers would need entire systems (while serious miners plonk multiple cards into a special mining rig).

A third reason is that the video card companies, who do market research and should know where the demand comes from, are very much acting like mining is the main issue. See LHR cards. See 'drops' for artificially low prices, which pretty much only makes sense if the GPU sellers are willing to earn less as long as the cards end up mostly with gamers, rather than miners.

And I'm not sure where you are seeing 90% of people talk about bitcoin, because I mostly see people talking about Ethereum.

Anyway, I'm a little less positive about Proof of Stake coming in June as the Ethereum people are now upset over a single validator client having 70% of the market share, so if there is a bug in that code, a majority of validators will make the same mistake and it will thus be considered valid by the network. They are now trying to convince people to move to a minority client, which seems like a hard sell (as asking people to sacrifice their own interests for the better of all typically is). The alternative seems to test that client much more than has been done so far, which takes more time.

 

[biostud]

For most people bitcoin == all cryptocurrencies, just like iPad == all tablets

 

[igor_kavinski]

Nvidia's RTX 3060 laptop GPUs are being transplanted onto desktop cards to bypass mining limiter | TechSpot

WTH???

 

[DrMrLordX]

A GPU today provides a ROI that is simply too easy, what other investment instrument gives you such a return?

That may not last. Besides, you can make more money just buying tokens if you want to get in on blockchain investing. I certainly made more money buying directly than I did mining. Which is one reason why I stopped mining.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Nvidia and AMD run a severe risk of cannibalizing this market if this lasts too long and lots of gamers shift to console gaming or Pokemon. The people who are buying cards for $800+ are usually not the young kids who are getting into gaming. It makes way more sense for those kids to buy a PS5 for just $500 (or even a Quest for $300).

AMD does dominate the current gen of consoles, so they could profit from people moving more to consoles, but it is very risky to put all your eggs in that basket, because missing out on a future contract with Sony/MS would mean a loss of over 10 million units a year. If they lose both the contracts for the PS6 and the next gen XBox, they are looking at losing 20 million units of sales a year (is Nvidia looking at developing their own CPU's because they want to be able to offer a full console solution, to be able to compete with AMD better?).

The PC market is relatively stable and it's good business to nurture a more reliable market, so bad fortune doesn't bankrupt your company as easily. Mining is not a stable market, which is why we've seen the LHR cards in the first place: Nvidia wants to ensure that actual gamers end up with cards.

Also, these huge margins are not going to be sustainable for the long term. If production capacity goes up relative to demand, AMD and Nvidia will compete for market share, which will drive down the prices. Also, companies like Intel are now greatly incentivized to invest in GPU's.

I am not EVER moving to Pokémon or hand helps or a PS unless they create content that entertains me. I don’t care what the top end card costs, I don’t need the top end card.
Realistically I am okay going up to $500 for a decent card that will last me years. Be aware I am okay with it not happy with it.
What is happening is norm supply/demand forces. Supply is increasing and/or demand is decreasing. There will be a balance at some point. Maybe that balance is more powerful cards that cost more and provide a better experience to someone like me or maybe there will be price increases to support larger margins that fail or possibly succeed. Either way someone like me will manage to get a card and still play some games.

 

[In2Photos]

I find the constant belief that mining is cause for the shortage weird. Even more since like 90% of people mentioning it are talking about bitcoin which no one mines on GPUs anyway. Mining with an additional factor but not the main problem at all. Every wondered why there is no shortage or overpricing in gaming laptops? That use the same chips desktop GPUs use and in fact miners also bought in the millions? dGPU market is/was especially bad because contracts with OEMs went firsts and DIY last which made the DIY piece smaller than usually. At miners on top and you got a perfect storm. but stop the non-sense miners are the main cause. How do miners affect car chip production? they don't obviously. Here the compounding factor was just-in-time manufacturing, no chip storage.

There is no cryptocalyps coming. Look at the new Goldman-sachs homepage. Right there on the main page "crypto and metaverse". You know it's not going away when the greediest of greedy are boarding the train.
The reason the used-market is heating up is because ethereum, the main mining crypto, will move to PoS as soon as June. Then mining on GPUs is essentially dead. it sill means it makes sense to wait for a purchase till June/July because then used will get flooded and Intel will also have released their GPU (hopefully). Which means both new and used market should see much, much more supply. Want a 6000-series or 3000-series below msrp? Wait for July.

So mining isn't the reason for the lack of GPUs on the open market but when mining goes POS there will be plenty of GPUs? Got it, thanks!

 

[Stuka87]

I find the constant belief that mining is cause for the shortage weird.

Except its not a "belief". Its very easy to follow GPU pricing trends in regards to GPU mining. We have now been through multiple cycles now. And they follow each other like clockwork.

 

[Aapje]

@Fanatical Meat

I wasn't talking about you, but the 12-17 year olds without rich parents. The risk with expensive PCs is that the influx of new gamers will greatly reduce. Most people who are willing to spend big on PC gaming only gradually increased their budgets, as they grew older and earned more money.

If the prices are too high, then you can get a situation where (way) more people stop gaming on PCs due to age, parenthood, death, etc; then new gamers are coming in.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

@Fanatical Meat

I wasn't talking about you, but the 12-17 year olds without rich parents. The risk with expensive PCs is that the influx of new gamers will greatly reduce. Most people who are willing to spend big on PC gaming only gradually increased their budgets, as they grew older and earned more money.

If the prices are too high, then you can get a situation where (way) more people stop gaming on PCs due to age, parenthood, death, etc; then new gamers are coming in.

I get it.
Simplified point
In that event someone will make less expensive cards somehow even if it’s intel or amd doing better “built in” video and game makers make games more “fun” and less “demanding”
Point is something always happens

 

[igor_kavinski]

Remember when there were NO 3D cards and yet games were so much more fun?

 

[Aapje]

There are a lot of indie games on Steam that you can play with an iGPU, but that only works if you like certain kinds of games.