Question are video card prices headed down yet?

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Aapje

Golden Member
Mar 21, 2022
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Assume another PoS coin will take it's place. The best bet is still prices really crashing.

I won't assume that, since the evidence goes rather strongly against it.

For you to be correct, the value of crypto has to mostly come from miners hoarding the same coins they mine & for them to easily switch to new coins, yet we see that the old coins are way more valuable than the new coins and that a lot of people invest in crypto without being miners.

Ultimately, mining is like any production, it's only valuable as long as there is sufficient demand for the thing that's being produced. Producing more doesn't suddenly make demand go up, other than due to decreasing prices.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
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It's August, folks. Though there's still some work left to be done on the Ropsten testnet to make absolutely sure it'll go off without a hitch. If that little test goes well then perhaps card prices really WILL crash. They're already a bit depressed.
 

Insert_Nickname

Diamond Member
May 6, 2012
4,971
1,691
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Introducing the NV HPC (High Power Consumption) line of cards. Basically everything has to offload twice the wattage draw of the standard part. For someone that games a couple hours a day, no big deal. For someone that mines 24/7, mining no longer profitable.

Twice the power consumption? Maybe if you have cheap power. That'll be a hard pass from here.

Try paying US$1.06 per KWh, and get back on this.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,635
3,095
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It's August, folks. Though there's still some work left to be done on the Ropsten testnet to make absolutely sure it'll go off without a hitch. If that little test goes well then perhaps card prices really WILL crash. They're already a bit depressed.
Imagine 70% of every 3000 series card ever made suddenly getting dumped on the second hand market. I can see 3080's going for $400, or maybe about $20.69 more at most.
 
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amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
3,851
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Imagine 70% of every 3000 series card ever made suddenly getting dumped on the second hand market. I can see 3080's going for $400, or maybe about $20.69 more at most.
Yep, that would be GPU makers biggest nightmare, just in time for the arrival of new gen cards which would impact their prices too. Thats why its my impression that Nvidia may be trying to get the new cards out before they are hammered by the potential Ampere flood, to try to milk the consumer for whatever they can in that short time window.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,510
5,159
136
Yep, that would be GPU makers biggest nightmare, just in time for the arrival of new gen cards which would impact their prices too. Thats why its my impression that Nvidia may be trying to get the new cards out before they are hammered by the potential Ampere flood, to try to milk the consumer for whatever they can in that short time window.

You would think the 4090 and 4090 Ti would be fine because they are way faster. Maybe even the 4080 if it's AD103. But yes I wouldn't expect anything below the 4080 until next year.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
136
Yep, that would be GPU makers biggest nightmare,

They could suffer worse fates than that. It'll only really hurt them if they can't bring something significantly better than a 3080 or 3090 to market in a timely fashion.
 

fleshconsumed

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2002
6,483
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They could suffer worse fates than that. It'll only really hurt them if they can't bring something significantly better than a 3080 or 3090 to market in a timely fashion.
Yeah, the new gen is rumored to be much faster, but 3080 and 6800XT can handle pretty much any game right now in QHD, and even in 4K, you may have to use DLSS/FSR2.0 in most demanding games, but it'll be perfectly playable. There is little reason to shell out for the new gen if the current gen at firesale prices can handle every game you throw at it. It'll definitely put pressure on new gen pricing, can't sell new gen at twice the price of the old one when old one is perfectly fine.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
4,723
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Yeah, the new gen is rumored to be much faster, but 3080 and 6800XT can handle pretty much any game right now in QHD, and even in 4K, you may have to use DLSS/FSR2.0 in most demanding games, but it'll be perfectly playable. There is little reason to shell out for the new gen if the current gen at firesale prices can handle every game you throw at it. It'll definitely put pressure on new gen pricing, can't sell new gen at twice the price of the old one when old one is perfectly fine.
It'll be interesting to see the prices for N33 cards if the rumors of it being cheap to manufacture are true. It might be able to compete with cheap 2nd hand 6800XT cards. New, lower power, faster RT. Might be the only new card this year to withstand a flood of ex-mining cards.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,510
5,159
136
Yeah, the new gen is rumored to be much faster, but 3080 and 6800XT can handle pretty much any game right now in QHD, and even in 4K, you may have to use DLSS/FSR2.0 in most demanding games, but it'll be perfectly playable.

4k144 w/ RT possibly. I will say that things do feel pretty barren right now for new PC AAA titles with Starfield pushed out.
 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
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ASUS Dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 V2 OC Edition for $579.. I'd say that's as close to MSRP and available as I've seen this year.
 

YBS1

Golden Member
May 14, 2000
1,945
129
106
8GB piece of garbage for that price. That's a 1080p card in 2022 and should be $300.
You're getting more and more grumpy moonbogg....This is the reality of the situation we are currently in, it will eventually pass and it may at some point be even worse. Fact of the matter is that $579 piece of garbage as well as the RX 6700 XT I paid $479 for will both manhandle a 1080Ti, doing so while using less power and with a superior feature set. It looks like 1080Tis are going for between $300-400 on EBay currently, sell it quickly and you're out of pocket anywhere from $150-300 after fees and taxes.


This is the link to my undervolted RX 6700 XT running in a mini-itx case and 3900X being cooled by a piddly little Noctua NH-U9S with bog standard 3600MHz ram vs. the fastest 1080TI/3900X combo in the world (sub ambient cooling no less). Even with the tremendous CPU score advantage it gets smoked. Figure another 1500-1800 points to the graphic score on top of mine for a 3070.
 
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YBS1

Golden Member
May 14, 2000
1,945
129
106
Even better, look in the "What happened to the 6800XT thread?" and someone just posted a link to both B&H and Amazon for a $699 RX 6800 XT which will properly obliterate the 1080Ti, 3070 and 6700 for you.
 
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Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
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The price already crashed and there is no drop in network hashrate even with electricity prices going up in all the world. That should tell you what will happen here with eth 2.0, there is not a massive desire to get rid of gpus just because one coin is not as profitable as before.
ETH 2.0 might be the end of ETH for all we know or it might also increase the value because it will be harder to get. But whats sure, other coin will replace it, there is nothing stopping this. Some people seem to have forgotten that ETH replaced BTC gpu mining.

Also, there is the example of the 4GB cards that never showed up in massive amounts as used when they were unable to mine ETH.
 
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Aapje

Golden Member
Mar 21, 2022
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The price already crashed and there is no drop in network hashrate even with electricity prices going up in all the world. That should tell you what will happen here with eth 2.0, there is not a massive desire to get rid of gpus just because one coin is not as profitable as before.

Fact is that mining is still profitable at the average cost of electricity for an American, as various sites can just calculate for you. Profit seems too low to result in a lot of sales of new mining cards, but that doesn't mean that people who already have cards will stop mining and will sell them. It also doesn't mean that some gamers won't subsidize their purchase by mining on the card, allowing them to buy a card sooner and/or spend more on the card.

I see a lot of irrational behavior as well, where miners treat the card as essentially worthless other than it's value for mining because they earned back the card, even though this is not sensible. This delusion no longer works when ETH goes to Proof of Stake.

I also see a lot of miners whose plan for a dip in prices is to HODL the coins they mine until the price goes up again. This strategy can no longer work for ETH when Proof of Stake happens, because mining won't work anymore.

None of this guarantees that there will be a flood of cards, but it is still perfectly plausible that it will happen.
 

Aapje

Golden Member
Mar 21, 2022
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The algorithms are designed to reduce the coins you get if more people start mining a coin. So if 10 people mine Moonbogcoin, they'll each get fewer coins per hour mining than if 5 people mine that coin. And the price of coins is of course a matter of supply and demand as well, so if more coins get mined, the price will go down.

So the expectation is that people will move to other coins that were profitable before proof of stake with a limited number of miners, but are no longer profitable when a gazillion miners flock to them. Essentially, fewer miners can mine profitably, so they can choose between having many miners exit mining, or having really low profits or a making a loss.
 

Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
3,835
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Fact is that mining is still profitable at the average cost of electricity for an American, as various sites can just calculate for you. Profit seems too low to result in a lot of sales of new mining cards, but that doesn't mean that people who already have cards will stop mining and will sell them. It also doesn't mean that some gamers won't subsidize their purchase by mining on the card, allowing them to buy a card sooner and/or spend more on the card.

I see a lot of irrational behavior as well, where miners treat the card as essentially worthless other than it's value for mining because they earned back the card, even though this is not sensible. This delusion no longer works when ETH goes to Proof of Stake.

I also see a lot of miners whose plan for a dip in prices is to HODL the coins they mine until the price goes up again. This strategy can no longer work for ETH when Proof of Stake happens, because mining won't work anymore.

None of this guarantees that there will be a flood of cards, but it is still perfectly plausible that it will happen.

As i said, this already happened, when the 1st gen of Bitcoin hardware miners arrived and made GPU mining petty much impossible.
There are going to be miners who are going to pull out, just not in the number that some people expects. The others are going to move to other coins and will continue mining even at a loss, because you never know what is the coin that will replace ETH. You always need to think long term.

What is going to happen is a loss of motivation to add more cards, at least for a year or two.
 

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
3,851
2,019
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As i said, this already happened, when the 1st gen of Bitcoin hardware miners arrived and made GPU mining petty much impossible.
There are going to be miners who are going to pull out, just not in the number that some people expects. The others are going to move to other coins and will continue mining even at a loss, because you never know what is the coin that will replace ETH. You always need to think long term.

What is going to happen is a loss of motivation to add more cards, at least for a year or two.
The "other coins" are not as widely accepted and tradeable as BTC and ETH. So they will not generate the sort of trade volumes that will tempt mining farms to spring up as ETH had done.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
4,723
4,628
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As i said, this already happened, when the 1st gen of Bitcoin hardware miners arrived and made GPU mining petty much impossible.
There are going to be miners who are going to pull out, just not in the number that some people expects. The others are going to move to other coins and will continue mining even at a loss, because you never know what is the coin that will replace ETH. You always need to think long term.

What is going to happen is a loss of motivation to add more cards, at least for a year or two.
Mining at a loss is better than just buying the coin? Am I still on the same planet?