I stopped mining with my 290x the other day due to power costs in my city... sold it on ebay for ~$275.
:thumbsup: Good job. Right now does seem like the best time to sell all those old HD7000->R9 290/390 cards due to inflated demand for them caused by mining. It's like the old days where some people were able to sell 7970 CF and 'upgrade' to 780 SLI for essentially free. I remember about 12 months ago it was hard to sell a 7970 for even $160 CAD and now they are flying for $180-$200 no problem.
Before Ethereum mining began, 390s were regularly had under $300... not anymore. They've been holding pretty steady (the good brands) above $300 ever since Ethereum hit ~$2-3.
Don't forget after-market R9 290 for $200-250 regularly, and after-market R9 290X sold for 6-9 months for $280-300 alongside $550 GTX980.
I believe AMD is in the process of clearing out all inventory for Polaris 10/11 launches, so yes, you'll see 390x's drop in price possibly to like $350-375 levels and the 390s will come through in a drip supply at the current $300-320 mark.
Ya but I think once again AMD underestimated demand from mining. This is the exact situation as last time with R9 280X series and R9 290 series. I get it they need to clear out the channel but even the
last good R9 390 I listed as in stock yesterday sold out too.
If AMD lowers the price of R9 390X cards to $300-320 mark as you suggest, all of those will sell out too and AMD will have a gigantic gap between a $200-220 380X and a $450-460 Nano/Fury. Essentially even as of now anyone shopping at Newegg and not wanting to pay the Amazon tax is probably going to buy a 970 since there are no R9 390s for sale at reasonable prices left. :sneaky:
I have a 290 and 7970 sitting around doing nothing. Is this still worth getting into at this point?
Worth it for sure. Even if you make $200 from both of those over the next 2-3 months, that's $200 you can use towards a future GPU upgrade. Alternatively, it's also a good time to sell those cards at peak used market prices. Either way, you are in a good spot.
This happened with Bitcoin only NewEgg were real jerks back then and jacked the prices up way over MSRP.
At least this time they didn't do that.
The only after-market 390 left for sale is
$350 USD.
This couldn't be better timing for AMD, they should be thanking us Ethereum miners for
clearing out inventories which will allow the huge e-tailers the necessary room and capital to buy stockpiles of Polaris cards.
If AMD has shortages of Polaris (very likely given a new process, new GCN architecture, GDDR5(X)? etc *and* if they're good for mining like existing GCN cards expect huge price hikes on launch
Ya but it's not like Polaris 10 is launching next week. Right now they are in a position where a gamer cannot even buy a reasonably priced 390 off Newegg and NCIX, one of Canada's biggest online stores is selling out. It's only April 8th and best case scenario Polaris 10 is launched around early June in retail but I doubt it. If AMD discontinues 390 cards too soon, they will have 2 months of drought, essentially forfeiting the sales to NV with the 970 buyers. If Polaris' demand exceeds supply, once again, buyers who are building rigs won't wait that long and will snap 970/980 or better yet GP104.
It seems any time there is substantial demand for AMD's GPUs, by the time they respond, it's way too late. I mean if they increase production of 390 cards now, they will flood the market with them right before Polaris, which makes it very difficult to manage inventory. OTOH, if they don't increase production, 390 will keep going OOS for the next 2 months straight. If they drop prices on 390X, they are losing profits.
I get it, AMD doesn't want this situation:
Huge GTX570 overstock delays GTX660 until August
nVidia made a small miscalculation on the high end cards and finds itself with a stockpile of more than
120,000 GTX570 chips which MUST be cleared ahead of the GTX 660 launch.
I just find it odd to believe that the person managing North American sales and inventory isn't checking daily or even every 2-3 days with major stores like Newegg/Amazon to gauge if the demand is changing. Surely they would have noticed a huge spike in demand for R9 390 at least 1 month ago? Yet, here we are with Newegg almost completely OOS for R9 390s.
The thing is though I think Polaris 10 won't even be better for mining because due to improved gaming efficiency, it likely needs less memory bandwidth and less stream processors to beat Hawaii. Considering Fury/Fury X isn't much better than 390/390X/290X, even if AMD flooded the market with another 30,000 390 cards, I still think they'll sell them all over the next 2 months.
Funny part is, almost none of these mining 390/390X cards are going to show up on Steam and yet we'll have people continue to use Steam as an accurate gauge of market share
I dont normally buy the first batch of cards unless I can see reviews for the competing card at the same time, but I really don't want to get caught in a price hike snafu due to mining again like in 2013. So I'll probably day 1 whoever drops a card faster/same speed as my 2x290s and sell them. I mostly am not a day one gamer, but every once and a while I day 1 game on releases I anticipate and not having the 2nd card's power has been annoying.
I guess at least we know that Sapphire Nitro/Tri-X, MSI Gaming, PowerColor PCS+ and XFX make awesome coolers for 390. However, if Polaris is only 120-150W TDP, chances are they will not utilize such beastly coolers on Polaris 10. I guess you cannot ever go wrong with modern coolers on the AMD side from 4 of those brands. They all stepped up their game massively. I still think Sapphire is above all the rest but the XFX PCS+ and Gigabyte Fury coolers are both beast mode indeed.
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