I do think the shortage is do to vram. The merchants are selling the few they have at a premium. II seems cards may be more plentiful now: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=rx+vega&N=-1&isNodeId=1

They want some of that mining pie.

Rich_Guy:

They want some of that mining pie.

... which is rapidly shrinking. Ethereum is down to $530 as of now, a precipitous drop from the $1400 at the end of last year. Combined with the rise is difficulty and you're looking at a ROI of well over a year. I'm surprised that miners are still buying cards at inflated prices (I wouldn't be surprised if retailers are artificially keeping prices high).

D3M1G0D:

... which is rapidly shrinking. Ethereum is down to $530 as of now, a precipitous drop from the $1400 at the end of last year. Combined with the rise is difficulty and you're looking at a ROI of well over a year. I'm surprised that miners are still buying cards at inflated prices (I wouldn't be surprised if retailers are artificially keeping prices high).

People are banking on the idea that it'll go back up, which could happen, and most people hold their coins, so them mining it now, or when(if) it goes back up, it wouldn't have mattered if they had mined the coins when it was much cheaper. That being said, Ethereum is not the only coin out there. It's not even in the top 10 most profitable coins.

Aura89:

People are banking on the idea that it'll go back up, which could happen, and most people hold their coins, so them mining it now, or when(if) it goes back up, it wouldn't have mattered if they had mined the coins when it was much cheaper. That being said, Ethereum is not the only coin out there. It's not even in the top 10 most profitable coins.

Well, if that's the case then it would be better to just buy the coins directly - no sense in buying GPUs which would take years to pay off. I think you're right about the type of people though - it's the true believers who are still buying. I see that availability is coming up again (most GPUs now show as in stock in Newegg), but prices are still high. Don't want to jinx it, but I see some light at the end of the tunnel.

D3M1G0D:

Well, if that's the case then it would be better to just buy the coins directly

Eh, it depends on the way you think about it. Buy the coins outright, lets say $400, and if it increases by 6 times in 1 year, you got $2400 Whereas buy a $400 graphics card that might make you $1.80 per day right now, and say you ran for a year, and say for simplicities sake the amount of coins was the same every single day for that whole year, and you'd have $657, and after that same 6 times increase, you'd have $3942 But, it's also possible that the market just continues to decrease throughout the year. This would also favor buying a GPU rather then buying the coins directly, since the coins you bought will only decrease in value, whereas you'll continue to obtain more coins if you were mining. Now, if you hold them, you'll still ultimately increase your value compared to buying the coins directly, but if you sell each day to USD whatever you mind (which some people do) you'll guaranteed increase in value compared to buying the coins outright. There's a lot of factors that both these scenarios do not take into consideration, such as power costs, if you day-trade and if you sell daily even if the market is going up. But point of the matter is, it's hard to say, no matter what you do, what will make you more, or less money.

Thats great news, always had great luck with their stuff. Now I wish they do the same crazy overclockable but this time for graphic cards 😀