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The frustrations of the GPU market

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First post, by BEEN_Nath_58

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It's been 3 years, that I have been waiting for my RTX. Looks like the worst decision I had made in Q3 2020 to delay my purchase of 2070. That feeling went away with the announcement and price of RTX 3000 series, which again was short lived again. Since then I have never been able to see a RTX 3000 or RTX 2000 or even a Radeon 6000 in real world with my eyes, best I could find are pictures of it. None in my locality, as far as I know, has been able to get hands on the current generation GeForce or Radeon. Even the local retailer has the GT series and 1050s at best, claiming that the GF 16 stocks stopped 2 years back, and RTX 3000, RX 6000 aren't released in this region yet 🙁

My 1050Ti has entered it's 4th year, and although not the best, I am hanging on. But for how long, even if the stocks normalise someday in the future, I don't see a reason for GPUs to stop being overpriced. Nvidia and AMD have seen the simping miners, who would charge anything for it. LHR cards were just a small show for gamers to be happy about, no materiality from it. I wonder what direction Intel follows, even though it won't be the flagship with it's first GPU, I hope they can sell to the non-mining market with reasonable pricing.

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Reply 1 of 191, by RandomStranger

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Same here. I bought a used RX480 8GB (for about $150) with the hope that in 3 months the RX6800 XT will release and I'll buy one. That was in 2020 September and the GPU market shat itself in November. I could have gone with an RX5700 XT for around $350, now for twice that price I can get an RX6600.

As for the current prices, I think this is the new normal.

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Reply 2 of 191, by Boohyaka

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those are indeed worrying and frustrating times for PC gamers. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I wonder how the pc gaming market can compete against miners buying everything that is released at any price, and in the current situation why would AMD and Nvidia cater to gamers? They don't care, they're making record profits. As you said let's hope Intel can bring something to the table... time will tell

I got pretty lucky as I decided to treat myself with a new overkill modern build soon after the 2080Ti was released and grabbed one. Felt somewhat stupid putting that much money into a video card, now I'm kinda glad I did...!

Reply 3 of 191, by DosFreak

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Even before the last mining craze before covid began msrp was way too high. Still gaming with my 1080ti at 3840x1600 on my 5950x. My limit is $800 for a video card and yes I realize how ridiculously high that is. If my graphics cards dies I will most likely throw in my 980ti only other option would be to find a low to mid range video card in that price range but why would I pay $800 for a POS? Answer: I wouldnt.

It would be nice if gamers forced the market with their money but gamers are idiots and I think the people too stupid to live and miners are paying these crazy prices.

I will not touch the 1st generation of intels new cards, I'm not interested in being a beta tester for Intel unless they want to pay me for my time.

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Reply 4 of 191, by BEEN_Nath_58

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DosFreak wrote on 2022-01-19, 11:06:

Even before the last mining craze before covid began msrp was way too high. Still gaming with my 1080ti at 3840x1600 on my 5950x. My limit is $800 for a video card and yes I realize how ridiculously high that is. If my graphics cards dies I will most likely throw in my 980ti only other option would be to find a low to mid range video card in that price range but why would I pay $800 for a POS? Answer: I wouldnt.

It would be nice if gamers forced the market with their money but gamers are idiots and I think the people too stupid to live and miners are paying these crazy prices.

I will not touch the 1st generation of intels new cards, I'm not interested in being a beta tester for Intel unless they want to pay me for my time.

I agree. Gamers are too self-entitled with their job. Some revolution needs to take place for it. I am quite sure GF is designing GPUs specified for mining for the next generation too.

About Intel, I won't be buying an card day 1. I always wait for months for price cuts and proper reviews, hands-on and better drivers. I wonder if that would be a new driver architecture, backward compatibility of applications might suck.

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 5 of 191, by Garrett W

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I've had an RX 480 for 5 years now, the longest I've ever held a videocard. Thankfully, I mostly play older games and the only "new" games I tend to play are multiplayer titles that I can either lower graphics or are already running too slow. My R5 3600 takes care of every emulation or other CPU need I might have. I've had some random GPU related hiccups here and there which have given me a mini heart-attack, I really don't want to have to replace this GPU at this time. I too worry that the ship has sailed and this is the new normal even if shortages are eventually tackled. If that's the case, I'm never buying a new GPU again, unless I find something very enticing secondhand. I'll make sure my next CPU has an IGP as well, just in case my card dies.

I've been browsing some old mags for some project and I think 2007-2009 was the golden era when it came to hardware. CPUs were getting ridiculously fast and cheap (E8400 was 150-160E !), RAM was pretty cheap, motherboards were... alright, but to be truthful some of the designs were stuck in prior year mentalities and were incapable of handling some big CPUs, HDDs were pretty cheap and SSDs were a luxury, wow-factor item even in 2009, totally unnecessary and of course, more importantly, GPUs were absolutely ridiculous value-for-money monsters. Late 2007 you had 3850 and 3870 from AMD and 8800GT from NVidia, none of which exceeded 250E for 512MB versions and especially the latter could serve one well for many years. Then, in the summer of 2008, you got 4850 and 4870, again not one of these was above 250E and the 4870 was alarmingly close to the GTX 280 which cost almost twice as much. And the prices were falling, come summer of 2009 you could get a custom-cooled Sapphire Toxic or Vapor-X 4850 for ~110-120E. The budget offerings were really great as well, 4670 was sub 100E and offered great value, by early-ish 2009 you could get the 4770 which was a very power-efficient GPU on the then new 40nm process trading blows with 4850 at roughly 100E.

By 2012-2013, the writing was already on the wall with new single chip CPUs launching at ~600$ and of course Nvidia's Titan at 1000$. Year by year it got worse, but I never expected it to get this bad. Then again, I never expected a full-scale pandemic for 2+ years, so there's that tiny detail. I just don't see how this could ever go back to the era I described, that'd be like Nvidia launching their new 3050 at 80-100$. Obviously there's a lot of talk about chip density, newer processes being way more expensive, Moore's Law dying out (although this observation has its detractors, Jim Keller comes to mind and has given some great talks on the subject)...

If it reaches a point where I can either get a Playstation 5 or a new GPU, I'm going Playstation 5, thing's have gone ridiculous.

Reply 6 of 191, by RandomStranger

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Garrett W wrote on 2022-01-19, 12:22:

I've been browsing some old mags for some project and I think 2007-2009 was the golden era when it came to hardware.

You can put back as far as 2003-2004 to the start of that golden era. ATI with the R300 was very competitive while Nvidia dropped the ball with the Geforce FX, AND with Athlon-XP and Athlon 64 was very competitive while Intel dropped the ball with NetBurst. These had a positive effect on the prices (from the end-user perspective). Later the Geforce 7 and Radeon X1000 were well priced too, as well as you could get by with a Pentium Dual Core E2000 or Core2 Duo E4000 series CPU to the end of the decade. They were good overclockers too.

The real golden CPU was however the Q6600 (early 2006). If you got one, you basically had a CPU to serve you for the next ~8-10 years.

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Reply 7 of 191, by appiah4

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The Sub-300 USD GPU market is dead. The only thing you get in the 300-400 USD bracket these days is shit like RX6500XT that performs roughly on par with Polaris cards from 5 years ago. These "mainstream" cards will never again become available if nVidia and AMD have their way. The market has moved on and vacated the mainstream GPU segment to APUs. This was already the case for entry GPU segment, but now the mainstream has also gone extinct. I can foresee a future where most people just buy APUs and game on them at inferior details while hardcore gamers shell out for high end GPUs and game on high details. If that reminds you of the early days of 3D acceleration and software vs hardware mode, yeah, that's what's going on. Strangely enough, that market allowed for a lot of 3D accelerator vendors to flourish and die over years, and these days we have Intel re-entering the discrete GPU market. Time is a circle.

In hindsight, buying a 4GB Reference RX480 for $200 at launch in 2016, then softmodding it to 8GB was possibly the BEST computer purchasing decision I ever made. It runs everything I want to play just fine on my Ryzen 2600@4GHz.

With the way things are going I will likely never buy another GPU again. Hopefully my RX480 will hold until the AM5 platform is more or less stable, if not I will just buy a 5600G and make do with that. When the time is right I will spring onto an AM6 RDNA2 APU along with DDR5.

Fuck the GPU market, fuck the GPU prices.

Last edited by appiah4 on 2022-01-19, 13:35. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 9 of 191, by RandomStranger

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I don't think that will last. Because of the lockdowns there were a lot of new people to the hobby, but I think they'll fall out. And semi-modern GPUs got a price-hike because of the modern ones, but eventually everything gets too outdated for daily use while still too modern for retro enthusiasts.

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Reply 10 of 191, by BloodyCactus

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Im stuck on a 960gtx 🙁 I just refuse to pay 3x the price for even a base 1650

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Reply 12 of 191, by kixs

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Last year I didn't want to give 130€ for GTX1060 6GB as my limit was 100€. I guess I'll just wait it out... don't play games much. I don't even remember what I played last 🤣

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 13 of 191, by Meatball

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Plasma wrote on 2022-01-19, 14:27:

First world problems...You can still enjoy games without the settings maxed out at 4K resolution.

True, but once you have played a game (like Rise of the Tomb Raider) on max details on a 21:9 3440x1440 screen running at 144fps locked; it's tough to go back. (Setting Retro aside, because I love to play Turok at 640x480 on a 19" CRT via Voodoo 1-Rush-2-3-4 w/2x AA.)

Last edited by Meatball on 2022-01-19, 15:10. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 14 of 191, by BEEN_Nath_58

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Even GTX 1050Ti in my area comes at around $350 new. I look at the old Anandtech articles and wonder how greedy the world became. The legendary 8800GT, could be purchased at $129! This same level of performance, currently is what you dream.

First world problems...You can still enjoy games without the settings maxed out at 4K resolution.

That's what I am doing. 30FPS gaming at 1080p for the latest titles.

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 15 of 191, by subhuman@xgtx

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Running an R9 Nano @ 1070mhz with a 120mm zip tied delta fan. I'm rarely gaming on my desktop system. Modern games are getting too boring and tedious because "realism and storyline". I'd rather play some Castlevania IV on my snes or Gran turismo 3 on the ps2. Even play some Quake 1 with the Pentium mmx.

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Reply 16 of 191, by BitWrangler

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-01-19, 13:33:

Don't forget about creeping prices for vintage GPUs.

It's nearly meeting in the middle now, probably only a couple of years now between desirable for retro and "still just about good enough because everything else is over $200"

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 17 of 191, by RetroGamer4Ever

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I'm sticking with my 6GB EVGA GeForce 1060 SC, until I find a suitable replacement. It's in an HP PC, and newer cards are long-board and power-hungry, with greater PSU requirements than what I can support, so I can't upgrade until an energy efficient option is released. My best bet would be one of the new Intel GPUs, probably an 8GB model, though we have no real info on the many OEM cards and models at this time, just some bits about the engineering generics tested by Intel.

Reply 18 of 191, by Claris

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There is a ton of Doom-and-Gloom in this thread. The PC market is terrible right now, but i don't forsee it staying this way forever. Miners wouldn't be that big of an issue if we weren't having supply problems. I suspect once the chip shortage pipeline gets unclogged and some of those news fab facilities the manufactures are talking about come online, we will finally get a taste of what the "new normal" for GPU pricing is. I don't think it'll ever be as good as say...the GTX 900 series days. But i don't forsee it lasting as it is. Nvidia can get away with it now, but they won't if it keeps up year after year.

I have no plans to abandon PC gaming. If my 1080ti dies, i'll just go hunt out a 3050 or 6600. A bit less performance, but i only play at 1080p and they are the only cards that fit into my budget in this market. It will happily suffice for me. A 3080 can wait.

Reply 19 of 191, by Hanamichi

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I managed to get a 3070TI late last year at 'rrp' for GBP750 from a smaller retailer just as the restricted hash rate cards came in stock. Thought long about it as it's the most I've ever paid.
Went for it in the end because the 40x0 series will likely have no win7 support. (and feeling lucky to have it now)

I don't think prices will return to 'normal' in regards to the manufacturer rrp, titan prices for a mid-high end GPU are going to be here for some time..
I think we just got used to fairly low prices from 2000s to mid 2010s, compared to how expensive computers were in the 90s
Now GPUs are multi purpose and in demand from a wider audience.

But I'm hopeful the scalping and mining situation will go in a few years.

Don't quite understand how retailers are allowed to scalp a graphics card but not a PS5/Xbox ?