Kaarme:

That would depend on the politicians. Now they are preaching about saving energy in every aspect of life, yet they do absolutely nothing about the miners using more energy than a small developed country. If the energy consumption used as much as Ireland already years ago, I imagine they must use as much as Finland by now. One article says they will use as much as Italy in 2023. It's utterly bonkers. Fridges are freezers need to be so optimised by the regulations that they will fail mechanically right after the warranty is over, but nobody cares about the miners. It makes me think politicians all over the world buy major amounts of drugs using crypto currencies, making them unwilling to try to control the scheme.

Politicians the world over are almost always grifters. They tell you want you want to hear to get elected, pandering to every group and all they do once they get the power is enrich themselves. It's gone on forever it is nothing new. So you can bet anything they hammer into the population is nothing but a scheme to enrich themselves in one way or another. This is why messages are mixed and why their actions don't seem to make sense. You have to understand their actual motivation and then it all makes sense.

Undying:

What if prices never settle and this becomes our reality? Gpus costing three times as more than before will definitely be the end for pc gaming as we know it.

I don´t think this will happen because only miners are willing to pay those silly prices due to the gold rush. And as soon as the gold rush dies, no one else will pay 2 or 3 times more for a GPU. But i think AMD and Nvidia are going to take advantage of this situation and raise their prices because they now people are willing to pay more for a GPU than before...

Undying:

What if prices never settle and this becomes our reality? Gpus costing three times as more than before will definitely be the end for pc gaming as we know it.

I dont foresee that happening at all. It might take a long time to recover but i am positive that it eventually will normalize. If it never does just imagine all the millions of kids around the globe whose parents won't be able to afford these expensive cards for xmas and bifday gifts for their children. sad sad. 😀

Where I live there is a shop that fixes hardware. They never had so many people bringing dead GPUs for repair, like 30 a day. People are selling dead RX580 for 250€ or so, crazy... @Undying an Xbox Series S costs 300€, it's the only way I see right now to get into gaming. New games will have a hard time selling if they don't stick with old hardware requirements. But even so, old hardware dies too and needs to be replaced. I'm not exited by the day I have to quit gaming on a PC, and its soon.

Undying:

What if prices never settle and this becomes our reality? Gpus costing three times as more than before will definitely be the end for pc gaming as we know it.

The price of GPUs, just like any other commodities are based on supply and demand. Right now demand far outstrips supply, and even supply has it's issues, so obviously prices are far higher than what we expect. IMHO there is a correlation between crpyto mining profitablity and global economic disruption. As soon as the supply side gets back on track and the global economic situation normalizes somewhat, demand will dip and we will see lower prices. It might take a while. It might take more than a year from now, but eventually it will happen.

Just have to relativise it's X3 the price, but they never reached the shop at that price, as they never reached at all... Also 1 week or 2 ago the 5 Asrock RX6700 XT that reached shop next to my place were around 560 Euro.

tty8k:

I would blame it mostly on resellers and local shops greed plus our european tolerance to be ripped off (or being stupid). Since US shops list 3070 for $700+ (even if not in stock or just on raffle) EU shops list the card for $1800+

As long as the cards sold are going into scalper or miner hands, I won't blame the shops for raising prices to scalper levels. There's no way for a store to know what's going to happen to a card as soon as it leaves the store's warehouse. Even some of the perfectly reasonable looking people here at Guru3D are miners. Other than that, it doesn't really matter what a shop lists a card's price as if they haven't got anything to sell. If they still accept orders despite zero stock, they are more likely to have raised the price. I feel pity for myself and every other PC gamer (be they casual or serious), but as things are, you just have to accept the reality that PC gaming is currently trying to hold its breath. You can't reasonably buy a new gaming video card. You can buy one unreasonably, but you shouldn't do it as it only feeds the insanity. The real, fundamantel culprits are the people who feed real money into the crypto scheme due to greed, hoping for a quick buck or to launder criminal money. Of course there's also the occasional anarchist who wishes crypto would replace national/union currencies. I doubt they have that much money to invest in the bigger picture, though.

Sticking with my 5700xt for years to come. No time to play, and nothing to play in any case. So I'm mostly sticking to retro gaming. For which it's super plenty.

The cheapest 3080 I could find right now is going for 3.5x MSRP. High-end PC gaming is definitely dead at this price point.

TheDeeGee:

Can't believe my 1070 is almost 5 years old now, longest i've had a GPU.

Same here. I picked up my 1070 at Frys for $399 on the week they were released. I keep telling her wow look at those impressive FPS' you are putting out. She needs to make it a little while longer and I don't want her getting depressed.

this should worry game developers also. PS5 is $1000+ at walmart

I have a 5700XT in my system and a GTX 1070 in my drawer. I'll keep using those until they die and clear my Steam backlog and then quit gaming. I'm getting too old for this shit anyway. My work doesn't really require a powerful GPU so i'll just buy the more powerful APU on the market and call it a day. This said i don't think we will reach that point. If it keeps going for 5-10 years this will become such a big problem than governments wont have any choice but to regulate. Many fields important in our society like medical, science, design, .... depend on powerful computers and GPU and if price keep rising because of the lack of availability i don't see the US government being able to afford not getting involved. The problem is not really the price. It's availability. The price depends on it. If the market would be flooded with GPU the price would go down to a more normal state (maybe not MSRP but at least something you can afford). We all know why there's an availability problem. And no it's not because the whole world decided to turn into gamers and buy a new computer because of COVID (maybe at the beginning but certainly not now). I don't know a single soul who bought a GPU last year. Not one. We all know why there's no cards available. Personally at this point i question whatever the cards even leave china.

Airbud:

this should worry game developers also. PS5 is $1000+ at walmart

If things don't change it will be very hard for them. Personally i wont buy any new game until things go back to normal. I have a huge Steam and EPIC backlog anyway and my 5700 XT struggles to run new games at 3440x1440p with a fps over 100. I'll clear my backlog of games i can play with my 5770 XT and GTX 1070 i have enough games for the next 5 years anyway.

tty8k:

Here is where you got it all wrong. I understand that shops don't have much control of stocks but they do the pricing. How do you think it helps raising the price from 700 to 1700 for the actual gamer, in case he/she can find one in stock to buy. This also helps scalpers justify their high price on ebay, giving you the shop example which costs the same ridiculous price. If the card was listed for 700 in shop, it won't look that good for 1700 scalper price. Wake tf up people! Stop trying to cover bshite for greedy bastards.

How can a scalper sell for 1700€ if he buys the card for the same price? Where's the profit? A scalper needs to find the "think of the gamers!" store owner who keeps selling for 700€. The scalper buys all of those cards, using his bots that no human can beat, and then sells those cards for the healthy profit of 1000€ per card. The shop owner made, at the very maximum, 100€ profit per card. This is what the store owners got bored of and raised their prices majorly, in addition to the fact they as well needed to pay more because the AIBs had raised prices. The scalpers are the greedy bastards. And the miners. But the most greedy bastards are the people who invest real money into crypto wishing to double their wealth overnight. And of course the drug baron who has five million euros of dirty money that somehow needs to be laundered. The latter two people are the real reason why we can't buy video cards.

At this point I am convinced the scalpers are actually retailers and distributors selling their stock through stand-ins.

Kaarme:

As long as the cards sold are going into scalper or miner hands, I won't blame the shops for raising prices to scalper levels. There's no way for a store to know what's going to happen to a card as soon as it leaves the store's warehouse.

I agree. It's the same dilemma i have when i'm selling old hardware. On one hand i would like to sell it cheap to a young student. I was there once studying 40+ hours a week while working 20+ hours a week and i was not able to afford better than a crap computer that was not able to run Unreal despite my hard work. But every time i list something for cheap the guy knocking on my door is obviously a reseller. By the time i realize it's a reseller (never 100% sure but i got the feeling) the sell is almost done and at that point i might as well just sell it for the advertised price. so now i list old hardware for the maximum price even if i feel it's a crazy price because well i don't want to sell cheap stuff to resellers. So yeah i agree can't blame the stores for asking the maximum they can. Miners buy the cards with bots anyway. 99% of normal people don't they check what's available then go read reviews and then think about it before buying. So at the end of the day the cards are almost all going to miners so might as well sell them for 2 grands i perfectly understand the stores.

saw a 3070 FE ebay listing, the setller claiming "This retails for $1700" LIAR.

Maddness:

I Paid $1900 NZ for my 3080 from Playtech and thought that was to much. Now they are between $2,600 and 4k. It's just insane.

Lol, did not realize that Playtech is real company. Their yt videos are brilliant, most of the time 🙂

Astyanax:

saw a 3070 FE ebay listing, the setller claiming "This retails for $1700" LIAR.

Retails for 2000+ instead 😀

R.I.P PC gaming.