I wonder if anyone who likes to use video cards to play video games will be able to purchase ONE this time around. [spoiler]Plot twist, Nope..... just more inventory for miners to grab[/spoiler]

schmidtbag:

First of all, retailers are the ones hiking up the prices, not the manufacturers.

Well, Sapphire is trying for exactly that, hiking up the MSRP of their cards, not the retailers. But the retailers do it with ALL the cards, there I agree with you. I just find it funny how for months the availability of GPUs was low, and now suddenly they have found the reason for it. I call BS. And if they ramp it up, they're just selling the cards to miners again anyway.

Ok... it's vram shortage. Then why NVidia are in shop or aviable in 7 days , and AMD out of stock since month...

fantaskarsef:

Well, Sapphire is trying for exactly that, hiking up the MSRP of their cards, not the retailers. But the retailers do it with ALL the cards, there I agree with you. I just find it funny how for months the availability of GPUs was low, and now suddenly they have found the reason for it. I call BS. And if they ramp it up, they're just selling the cards to miners again anyway.

Completely agree with you about Sapphire and there are other board partners hiking up the MSRP of their cards as well. It is all about tactics and strategy from many factors that use the moment to profit. Now is the worst time for gamers to buy a graphics card, unfortunately. This is valid for both AMD and Nvidia.

I think its AMD that suggests MSRP of cards, not board partners. Not sure how much leeway board partners have beyond that without AMD objecting. Retailers of course have full freedom on pricing.

alanm:

I think its AMD that suggests MSRP of cards, not board partners. Not sure how much leeway board partners have beyond that without AMD objecting. Retailers of course have full freedom on pricing.

AMD ought to be suggesting the price of the reference card that appears first. The custom designs released later have always had somewhat varying prices. Under normal circumstances, the brands are always competing with each other and naturally against Nvidia cards of a similar value. The simplest market mechanism dictates the price can't be ridiculous or the card won't sell. Only now with the miners witlessly buying everything regardless of the price, the situation is as weird as it is. AMD and Nvidia have been unable to do anything about it, and they most certainly have no say in the price the customer pays.

fantaskarsef:

Well, Sapphire is trying for exactly that, hiking up the MSRP of their cards, not the retailers. But the retailers do it with ALL the cards, there I agree with you.

I was referring to Nvidia and AMD specifically - I know [some of] the AIB partners are inflating the price, too. I was being a bit vague, so my bad.

rl66:

Ok... it's vram shortage. Then why NVidia are in shop or aviable in 7 days , and AMD out of stock since month...

Miners.

vbetts:

Miners.

But again, Nvidia cards are just as good for mining as AMD cards are atm with the cryptos that are offering the best bang for buck. Only thing I can think of is that either GDDR5x is not in shortage but GDDR5 is for whatever reason or due to Nvidia's clout in the industry they are simply able to negotiate for more supply.

Denial:

Only thing I can think of is that either GDDR5x is not in shortage but GDDR5 is for whatever reason or due to Nvidia's clout in the industry they are simply able to negotiate for more supply.

Why not both? If I were Nvidia, I'd rather pay a little extra for first dibs while getting more of my products out there, which in turn makes a shortage for others. Perhaps AMD was somewhat aware of this, and may be why they were gunning for HBM2. Too bad for them that didn't really help the availability issue...

Denial:

But again, Nvidia cards are just as good for mining as AMD cards are atm with the cryptos that are offering the best bang for buck. Only thing I can think of is that either GDDR5x is not in shortage but GDDR5 is for whatever reason or due to Nvidia's clout in the industry they are simply able to negotiate for more supply.

True, but general guides are still saying AMD cards over Nvidia for mining...Not so much anymore, but AMD gpus were also cheaper to buy compared to Nvidia cards for mining. Now, it's about the same. $500 for a 580 or 1060!

vbetts:

True, but general guides are still saying AMD cards over Nvidia for mining...Not so much anymore, but AMD gpus were also cheaper to buy compared to Nvidia cards for mining. Now, it's about the same. $500 for a 580 or 1060!

When Ethereum was $400 the cost of the cards was a major factor for ROI. When the price of Ethereum shot up (up to $1400 at one point) the upfront cost rarely mattered - miners just wanted as many cards as they could get. Even with the recent downturn in the crypto markets, cards from both vendors are highly sought after.

vbetts:

True, but general guides are still saying AMD cards over Nvidia for mining...Not so much anymore, but AMD gpus were also cheaper to buy compared to Nvidia cards for mining. Now, it's about the same. $500 for a 580 or 1060!

Right for the price of the 580 (well it is the same than at launch) but MSI GTX1060 6g is at 439Euro (and in stock) and regular one with 6g at 309Euro... Also the price of the mining AMD version (without head) is around 300Euro... But as the normal one are "Out of stock" since month. Real problem for AMD, shortage in Ryzen and shortage in GPU... When you have good product you have to spend money for stock, unless potential customer will fed up and go to see other manufacturer... It was like that that AMD lost the pro market years ago... Xeon were having nothing special but you had them in few day while Opteron (and their board) take month to reach customer... Sadly Epyc have already take this way too. It seem that AMD don't learn from past mistake 🙁 .

rl66:

Real problem for AMD, shortage in Ryzen and shortage in GPU... When you have good product you have to spend money for stock, unless potential customer will fed up and go to see other manufacturer... It was like that that AMD lost the pro market years ago... Xeon were having nothing special but you had them in few day while Opteron (and their board) take month to reach customer... Sadly Epyc have already take this way too. It seem that AMD don't learn from past mistake 🙁 .

I don't think there is a shortage of Ryzen CPUs (if there is then I'm not aware of it), but AMD is right to be cautious about producing GPUs for cryptocurrency mining. During the Bitcoin mining craze (back when they were mined with GPUs) the R9 290 was by far the best mining GPU, and miners bought them all out (kind of like what's happening now). Unfortunately, when the craze ended these miners flooded the second-hand markets with cheap used R9 290s and AMD was unable to sell any more cards. This led them to take a huge $65 million writedown on unsold inventory and a massive quarterly loss. Although Lisa Su said AMD will try to increase production, I doubt they will go all-in and try to meet market demand (even if memory supplies allow them to). Doing so risks getting burned like before and having to take another massive loss, which would be the worst thing possible for a company that is just starting to turn things around financially. Contrary to your statement, AMD DID learn their lesson and are taking a far more cautious approach this time. Although we consumers complain about how AMD (and Nvidia) are not doing enough, the fact is that there is very little they can do about the situation. Even if it was possible to ramp up production to meet demand, doing so means that when the mining craze ends there will be a mountain of used GPUs in the market, at which point they will no longer be able to sell any more cards (although many of us gleefully anticipate a crypto market crash, it will be awful for companies like AMD and Nvidia). The safest course of action is to maintain production as-is and hope things settle down, although that means shortages and high prices for the immediate future. It sucks for us, but you can't fault AMD/Nvidia for trying to protect themselves.

https://i.imgur.com/osmOwWg.png Has the price of Consoles gone up?

My prediction is that GDDR6 is being mass manufactured now and this is a cash grab from everybody involved then new cards will come out and nobody will be able to buy any old cards at all while still paying high price lol. just a prediction

The pricing right now is simply absurd. Being a PC Gaming Enthusiast was already expensive enough before black lung disease inflicted this new pain. I feel lucky to have purchased our 2x 1070s at release. Lucky to only be bent over for ~$450 a piece. That seemed a little steep then. Times change. I still think $450 was greedy but damn.

Tbh, I dont care much anymore what happens to GPU pricing. The higher and longer prices keep up means I dont have to upgrade as frequently. In the past never skipped a new gen release. Now I think I'm OK with a 2 gen upgrade cycle where I might feel and appreciate the bigger boost in GPU power that would bring.

alanm:

Tbh, I dont care much anymore what happens to GPU pricing. The higher and longer prices keep up means I dont have to upgrade as frequently. In the past never skipped a new gen release. Now I think I'm OK with a 2 gen upgrade cycle where I might feel and appreciate the bigger boost in GPU power that would bring.

Very True. Developers making game nobody can play properly can as well close house. For some time, Steam stats are increasing in average rendering power mostly because people, who did not participate for years since they got new GPU, got to send their system data.

another place memory chips end up en masse is "the cloud"....most cloud server operators switched to AMD on release of server platform...industry wide, so not just RAM, but U.2/pcie plus whatever vram. that will shift more than a few percentage points. not to mention corporate turnover and 6 new consumer cpu classes in one year... 2 for AMD, and 4 for Intel (2 of which the market ignored). so ethereum is a pita, but i think the changeover in production to smaller processes hit at just the right wrong time for the public.