Best time to sell VGAs?

[FatherMurphy]

Hi all:

In light of the (rumored) pending releases of the GTX 880, 870, and 860, and possibly Tonga-based GPUs from AMD, in the next two or three months, I was wondering when is the best time to sell an older GPU on the second hand market to maximize return and when it becomes too late.

For example, I am sporting a Gigabyte Windforce GTX670. Based on the (rumored) performance estimates for the GTX880/870, those cards are likely candidates for upgrades for people in my performance range.

I have never followed the second-hand VGA market. Do I need to start trying to sell my card now (it looks like GTX670s go for around $200, I bought it for $400 on launch day way back when) if I want to sell it for that price, or can I expect that $200 figure to plummet once the next gen cards are either announced or actually enter retail availability?

I'd prefer to wait as long as possible to sell, but I also want to get the most for my GTX670 and can probably make do for a month or two (I have a GTX560ti I can borrow).

Thanks for any input you have.

 

[RussianSensation]

Right now there is no concrete date when 880 launches. Some rumors say September, others October/November. If you are willing to wait 1-2 months with a 560Ti, then selling it at the end of August or 1st week in September sounds about right. If you wait until end if August, read the news/rumors and perhaps there will be more clarity on when 870/880 could launch.

 

[KingFatty]

Generally, demand should affect pricing. Demand should be affected by certainty/uncertainty, where I think that demand falls when uncertainty rises.

So 2 outcomes: 1) the new cards are released, and are priced fairly/proportionately according to the increase in performance. Your card's price probably won't change much.
2) the new cards are released, and are a bigger improvement over current cards, compared to the price increase. Your card's price would probably decrease.

The issue is that I think uncertainty will gradually keep rising until the cards are actually released.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. Ideally you could use sites like camelcamelcamel or whatever that shows price trends over time, and see how that overlays with new card releases, but it won't be directly on point for used prices, where you might be able to dig through ebay price trends. However, refer back to the release of the GTX 760, and how it affected the pricing of the GTX 670 (I think it was comparable to where a new card comes out, that offers better price/performance than the previous generation, such that the 760 matched the 670 performance, but was priced lower). It would be very interesting to see such price trend data cross referenced with and mapped out against the video card performance and used/aftermarket card prices.

 

[greenhawk]

It is always a guessing game, and it is not made any easier.

What is known from previous releases is that the second hand market for older gear will drop. Once a actual date is known, it is generally the start of the price drop, so waiting until then is too late.

The reason is that the people who would be looking second hand would know that once the new cards are out, people that upgrade will be offloading their old cards, so there will be a glut for sale second hand. This will drive down the price quickly.

If you want to get the best price, then sooner the better for selling. But then you need something to be able to play with until you get a replacement. buying a temp card is pointless as it is just another card to sell later.

So for the best money, going without a card for the longest is what is required. But that does not help a gamer game .

It is part of the reason that there are so many cards sold quickly with the release of the new cards. People see that it is better value to game with the current card and take a smaller price later as they can still game in the mean time.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Gpu's usually launch at a really high price. You should still be able to get a decent price for the 670 then, it'll probably be $20 less than now, but is it worth the hassle?

 

[Leyawiin]

I have a ASUS DirectCU II GTX 670 2GB. I'm not going to wait any later than this month to sell it. I have a feeling if I wait until to far into the fall it'll start dropping in price due to buzz about new generation cards. But yeah, its not a perfect science - just put it up when you're ready and its convenient.

 

[toyota]

I have a ASUS DirectCU II GTX 670 2GB. I'm not going to wait any later than this month to sell it. I have a feeling if I wait until to far into the fall it'll start dropping in price due to buzz about new generation cards. But yeah, its not a perfect science - just put it up when you're ready and its convenient.

I doubt a 670 will be affected much. its the 780 and 780 ti cards that will take a massive drop in value. I got a good deal for my 780 so I am not too worried.

 

[Leyawiin]

I doubt a 670 will be affected much. its the 780 and 780 ti cards that will take a massive drop in value. I got a good deal for my 780 so I am not too worried.

I won't get in a big rush then.

 

[bakalu]

i have sold gtx 670 for a long time and waiting gtx 880.

 

[toyota]

i have sold gtx 670 for a long time and waiting gtx 880.

lol you say that as if you actually think it was the right move? you will have been without a gaming card for no telling how many months just on the chance that your 670 will have gone down in value a small amount when the 880 launches.

 

[tweakboy]

When 980 comes out... thx

 

[Lepton87]

Since my card is currently unsaleable where I live I hope that the current gen card prices drop like a rock, especially Titans, I would like to buy two for cheap. I couldn't care less about power consumption, I have 1200W power supply that currently doesn't even break a sweat. Besides, Titan is only inefficient compared to Maxwell cards, it has the best power efficiency on the market aside from those lowly Maxwell cards. But because there's literally 0 used Titan cards for sale in Poland, I doubly anything will change. If I could withstand r290 stock cooler I would have already bought 3 pcs, but they are just too loud. Titan is barely livable when it comes to noise. Aftermarket R290 are much more expensive and can't work next to each other in Three-Fire.

 

[MagickMan]

the best time to sell is after you get a new one, otherwise you end up like that poor bastard up there who's been without a discrete GPU for months now. :\

 

[RussianSensation]

Since my card is currently unsaleable where I live I hope that the current gen card prices drop like a rock, especially Titans, I would like to buy two for cheap. I couldn't care less about power consumption, I have 1200W power supply that currently doesn't even break a sweat. Besides, Titan is only inefficient compared to Maxwell cards, it has the best power efficiency on the market aside from those lowly Maxwell cards. But because there's literally 0 used Titan cards for sale in Poland, I doubly anything will change. If I could withstand r290 stock cooler I would have already bought 3 pcs, but they are just too loud. Titan is barely livable when it comes to noise. Aftermarket R290 are much more expensive and can't work next to each other in Three-Fire.

Can't you sell the Titan and just buy 2x after market 290s or 780 Ghz editions? Dual after market cards such as Gigabyte Windforce or MSI Gaming should work well in a well ventilated case. I would even think selling your Titan for half the price and getting dual 880s is worth it instead of trying to find a second Titan in Poland. If Titan is so rare there, the person selling it would likely rather wait 6 months to sell it at 70-80% of its value. This is going to make it very hard for you to find a 2nd Titan at a reasonable price.

If you sell the Titan for the price of a single 780 Ghz edition, you get out of the stranglehold of having to find a 2nd Titan and now have real options like 870/880 SLI.

One other strategy I use when I want to maximize the resale value of my GPU is to sell the entire system. There are plenty of people who want a relatively fast system but can't afford top of the line cards or know how to put a PC together (although in Poland I would presume people are very handy).

For example, if someone wants to buy an i5 4770/4790k it will cost them way more than buying a system with an OC 2600k and 780, yet the difference in real world gaming is going to be hardly noticeable.

You could achieve higher resale value selling them as a total pre-built system rather than trying to sell them one by one -- for starters you beat the market by Not including VAT, then since your parts are used, you drop the price again a bit. But overall, sometimes the aggregate resale value of a used gaming rig is higher than the sum of its parts if sold on an individual basis.

This gives you the option of dumping the entire rig and going X99 for example where 5820K could prove to be an awesome CPU that could last 4-5 years once overclocked!

 

[VirtualLarry]

You could achieve higher resale value selling them as a total pre-built system rather than trying to sell them one by one -- for starters you beat the market by Not including VAT, then since your parts are used, you drop the price again a bit. But overall, sometimes the aggregate resale value of a used gaming rig is higher than the sum of its parts if sold on an individual basis.

It's the opposite here, in the NE US, on Craigslist. You see gently-used gaming rigs (or maybe not so gently) selling for less than the parts would go for.

 

[FatherMurphy]

Thanks all for the great input. With more and more evidence pointing to a September release for the GTX880 and GTX870, I am tempted to put the GTX 670 up for sale late this month. Problem is that it isn't at all clear where those cards will come in performance wise. I'm on the record as saying I believe the GTX880 will be about 20-25% faster than the 780ti for $550. But that obviously could be way way off... much less and the GTX880/870 wouldn't be too great of an upgrade.

Then again, I did recently move to a 25x1440 monitor from 1080p, so the projected 4GB of RAM in the GTX880/870 will be an upgrade in and of itself.

Hooray for upgrade season!

 

[tweakboy]

NOW!

Get SSD, Get any i7 cpu and some ram will sit you back.. SSD is more noticable then going from weak CPU to super CPU.. thx

 

[Lepton87]

Can't you sell the Titan and just buy 2x after market 290s or 780 Ghz editions? Dual after market cards such as Gigabyte Windforce or MSI Gaming should work well in a well ventilated case. I would even think selling your Titan for half the price and getting dual 880s is worth it instead of trying to find a second Titan in Poland. If Titan is so rare there, the person selling it would likely rather wait 6 months to sell it at 70-80% of its value. This is going to make it very hard for you to find a 2nd Titan at a reasonable price.

If you sell the Titan for the price of a single 780 Ghz edition, you get out of the stranglehold of having to find a 2nd Titan and now have real options like 870/880 SLI.

One other strategy I use when I want to maximize the resale value of my GPU is to sell the entire system. There are plenty of people who want a relatively fast system but can't afford top of the line cards or know how to put a PC together (although in Poland I would presume people are very handy).

For example, if someone wants to buy an i5 4770/4790k it will cost them way more than buying a system with an OC 2600k and 780, yet the difference in real world gaming is going to be hardly noticeable.

You could achieve higher resale value selling them as a total pre-built system rather than trying to sell them one by one -- for starters you beat the market by Not including VAT, then since your parts are used, you drop the price again a bit. But overall, sometimes the aggregate resale value of a used gaming rig is higher than the sum of its parts if sold on an individual basis.

This gives you the option of dumping the entire rig and going X99 for example where 5820K could prove to be an awesome CPU that could last 4-5 years once overclocked!

No one in here would buy a rig like mine for a decent price.
1200W PSU? forget about it
768GB in SSD storage
11TB in magnetic storage
Noctua NH D14
Top of the line Mobo etc.
Only sell-able in parts, which most I want to keep.
Only enthusiast buy parts like that, over 99% of the population don't care about top-end PSUs or Coolers.
no way to sell a computer like that for a decent price, besides, I don't want to sell my newly bought storage or cooler etc.
(2xMX100 and 4TB seagate)
I'll probably try to snag a cheap Titan when 880s come out, if not successful I'll just wait for true high-end card like GK110 and not half-assed high-end like GK104. I never considered it high-end, not even when it came out, same with 28nm maxwell.

 

[blastingcap]

the best time to sell is after you get a new one, otherwise you end up like that poor bastard up there who's been without a discrete GPU for months now. :\

It's not so bad as it used to be. I was without a discrete GPU for a few months around the time of GTX 460 and HD6850. I wound up playing a lot of minimum-settings L4D2 at low resolution off an overclocked IGP. Surprisingly playable. Today's IGP and on-chip GPUs are even better, heck even Intel's are getting quite good.

 

[RussianSensation]

It's the opposite here, in the NE US, on Craigslist. You see gently-used gaming rigs (or maybe not so gently) selling for less than the parts would go for.

That's not even logical because then a person would buy gaming rigs online and resell them part by part and make $ doing that in volume. :biggrin:

 

[Sohaltang]

That's not even logical because then a person would buy gaming rigs online and resell them part by part and make $ doing that in volume. :biggrin:

How much is your time worth? What if something breaks? In Texas Craigslist you see either custom built brand new machines that are 2x part costs or used machines that somone is taking a big loss on. The rest sit unsold till the sellers give up or decide to keep. Heck I paid 200$ At least a year ago for a my kids 3570k rig, 8gb ram, win 7, 1tb blue, 7870, and a nice 100$ case. Sold the 7870 and gave him a 7970ghz. Some people are broke and need cash. From my respective its a huge risk to buy used. So craigslist+used=a awesome deal or I'm not interested. Ebay at least gives you protection.

 

[Lepton87]

In here people don't overpay for complete rigs on the internet, it's different with tech illiterate people who just go to Mediamark or some other kind of big supermarket, in which case they are very likely to buy laptops not desktops and even if they buy desktop, the buy the cheapest one. There's not iMac, Macbook Pro craze over here due to prices. Desktops are usually bought by people who are at least a little interested in newest games or technology. The only way to sell computers is to do so part by part otherwise it's both very difficult and the price is very low.
No one would understand why a computer with a ROG board and Noctua NH-D14 and 1200W PSU should cost more then the equivalent with the cheapest mobo, stock cooler and shitty 600W PSU, and the cost difference between those parts would easily exceed 2 times. Hell, a good 1.2 Kw PSU and Noctua cooler already cost as much as the parts I mentioned. The other thing is how complex such rigs look, I have 8 SATA drives and it's a mess. Just take a look. http://i1328.photobucket.com/albums/w524/Lepton87/367_zps6241a736.jpg?t=1407204724
I know that I could tidy it up, but the connectors are already loose and I don't want to wear them if I don't have to.
I've got NF200 on my mobo but the problem is that it only becomes active with 3 cards, 16x split to>2x8x or 16x split to 8x/16x/16x all of that on PCI-E 2.0. I know that 16x split to by a bridge to 2x16 works almost as good as native because as it turns out it's peak bandwidth not sustained that matters. But I'm worried that 2x8X PCI-E 2.0 will not be enough for new radeons because all communication happens by the way of PCI-E. My instinct tells me that 2xTitans would fare better because the PCI-E bridge would off-load some of the bandwidth off PCI-E. It's a shame that my mobo can't split 16x into 2x16, in such a configuration I would have no reservations. 2 cards would have clearance but 3 would not so in such a configuration I would need blowers. Does anyone know any tests with 2x8x PCI-E with new ribbon-less Radeons and titans/780s?I'd like to see how they fare with such limited interface bandwidth. I guess it's time to upgrade my aging rig with Haswell-E but in such a case it was stupid of my to buy 2600K a few months back, maybe it will be more prudent to wait for broadwell-E. DDR4 prices will have come down by then at least they should. How many months after HW-E will broadwell-E make an appearance? 16x>8x>16x>16x with NF200 tests would also be nice to see but it's such a niche that I doubt anyone bothered to test that.

 

[greenhawk]

It's the opposite here, in the NE US, on Craigslist. You see gently-used gaming rigs (or maybe not so gently) selling for less than the parts would go for.

I find you get that a lot of the time, espically when some parts are not worth anything second hand or by themselves.

Things like a year old motherboard that was mid ranged or lower to start with. Generally worthless without a cpu. It still has a rrp, but not worth the time to remove from a existing computer.

Another is a year or two old power supply. While still good, some become more prone to dieing as they run out of warranty.

Lastly is cases. They have value to the right buyer, but given the size, taste and hassle of stripping a computer of of them, people are more likley to just part with them cheap.

The other side is that if you take a working machine, strip out the parts that sell well (cpu/gpu/hdd/ram), what you are left with for a lot of people is something that is close to worthless given the costs needed to get it working again.

 

[greenhawk]

With more and more evidence pointing to a September release for the GTX880 and GTX870, I am tempted to put the GTX 670 up for sale late this month.

Problem is that it isn't at all clear where those cards will come in performance wise. I'm on the record as saying I believe the GTX880 will be about 20-25% faster than the 780ti for $550. But that obviously could be way way off... much less and the GTX880/870 wouldn't be too great of an upgrade.

Personally, that date sounds too late to me. By the time you list it, so take a few days, then have a few extra for funds to clear, then post it out, any smart buyer will see that the card will not be in their hands until mid September anyway. A quick look indicates the September launch is just a paper one, but still, even then people with money can place orders for them.

As to the second, the same article i just read indicates the gtx880 will be between the gtx780 and gtx780ti, so way slower than what you are hoping for. Add to that these cards will eventually be at the prices of the current cards they replace (so the increase at release is the early adopter tax), hoping for a super card is going to be a bit of a let down.

IIRC, this new generation is once again another power saving design so I am expecting most of the improvements to be in the area of performance/watt with most of that coming from reduced power consumption.

 

[RussianSensation]

I find you get that a lot of the time, espically when some parts are not worth anything second hand or by themselves.

Things like a year old motherboard that was mid ranged or lower to start with. Generally worthless without a cpu. It still has a rrp, but not worth the time to remove from a existing computer.

Another is a year or two old power supply. While still good, some become more prone to dieing as they run out of warranty.

Lastly is cases. They have value to the right buyer, but given the size, taste and hassle of stripping a computer of of them, people are more likley to just part with them cheap.

The other side is that if you take a working machine, strip out the parts that sell well (cpu/gpu/hdd/ram), what you are left with for a lot of people is something that is close to worthless given the costs needed to get it working again.

That last paragraph is key. That's why I can "repackage" some old left overs that on their own are not enticing such as a 4-5 year old case that still has modern cooling, a near flagship 3-5 year old air cooler, 5 year old solid Corsair PSU, 1TB 7200 rpm old hard drive (but that's perfectly fine for storage of media) and drop in used after-market quiet 7970 and a modern i5/i7 and a get the latest "hot"0 $100 SSD (MX100) and now I have a system that's uber fast for 90% of buyers.

On their own, the old case, old PSU, 7970, 1TB 7200 rpm mechanical drive are not worth much. Who wants to buy a Thermalright Silver Arrow for $70 used when NH-D15/Corsair H100 is $90-100? Hardly many people. But for someone who doesn't overclock, an i5 4690K @ 4.5-4.7Ghz on Silver Arrow is worth $70-$100 more over a stock 4690K. That's how to sell an after-market cooler for $70 that you'd have no hope at all selling on its own in used form.

Now take those old parts and with an i5 4690K/i7 4790K OC, and get a new Crucial MX100 SSD, and people in a large city like Toronto would be all over that rig because it would cost a fraction of buying new parts. Not everyone can overclock or knows how to put together a solid system. All you need is just 1 interested person.

I've been reselling systems like this for at least 10 years. That's why I invest more $ into an after-market cooler and try to get a PSU with a 5-7 year warranty. If I have to upgrade, it'll be a breeze trying to sell an overclocked i5/i7 on Silver Arrow and SeaSonic Platinum even with an aged GPU because people know you can upgrade the GPU 2-4x over the useful life of an overclocked i5/i7 4xxx series while that cooler and PSU will keep the system bulletproof for 5+ years. I definitely changed my strategy for buying PC parts. The other huge advantage of buying a flagship cooler and PSU and a half-way decent case is that if you don't want to resell the CPU platform every 2-3 years, then these 3 parts will keep your system solid for years and years.

Nowadays, you can buy an i7 4790K or i7 5820K and overclock them and these CPUs should last 4-5 years allowing one to keep upgrading the monitor, GPU or SSDs only with little requirement to touch the CPU platform. Unless we see a sudden surge in CPU usage from PS4/XB1 console ports, the cost of PC hardware rig will dramatically decline since one no longer has to upgrade the case/PSU/cooler/CPU/mobo for 4-5 years for games. In the past, this was not possible.

---
Getting back to GPUs, with lower nodes becoming very expensive and a severe lack of any next generation PC games, I am looking to change my GPU upgrade strategy too. From reviews I have been closely tracking the longevity factor of NVs/AMD's 2nd best GPUs against the flagships. I have kept track of the following:

6800GT vs. 6800U
GTX 275 vs. 280/285
HD4870 vs. 4890
HD5850 vs. 5870
HD6950 vs. 6970
HD7950 vs. 7970
GTX 470 vs. 480
GTX 570 vs. 580
GTX 670 vs. 680
GTX 780 vs. 780Ti
R9 290 vs. 290X

^^ Not once in any of these generations, did the flagship product from AMD/NV last any longer for next gen games than the 2nd best from the top. The 10-20% difference amounts to almost nothing the minute a next gen game comes out that pummels the last gen flagship. For example, let's say a 780Ti OC now gets 70 fps in some title and 780 OC gets 60, in BF5, 780Ti OC will get 35 fps and 780 will get 28-29 fps -- both too slow. The obvious? Buy 780 for $450 and save $200 towards a next gen card when a game like BF5 comes out instead of "future proofing" with 780Ti.

Moving forward, I think buying NV's/AMD's second best card is a smart way to save money while hardly losing much tangible performance. And since SLI/CF is not 100% efficient, for guys going 2-3 cards, the difference is even closer since you'd apply ~ 90% factor to the performance of each setup, which brings the 2nd best cards even closer to the faster setup. A lot of people are eyeing the 880 but I think not enough credit is given to the 870 which could be a more preferable card overall

Ask yourself this, did 680 SLI last any longer than 670 SLI? Nope. Will 780Ti SLI last any longer than 780 SLI for BF5/Witcher 3? Doubtful.