why are used AMD cards so expensive?

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Oct 12, 2011
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I had planned to wait for pascal / polaris, but my new 29" LG ub67 21:9 monitor forced my hand. My 7770 could no longer cut the mustard. I went on classifieds, ebay, amazon looking for a 2nd hand card cheap. I expected a 7970 to sell for $125 but the cheapest one i could find was $230 + shipping, many over $300!

for $300 thats brand new 970 GTX territory or maybe a R9 390. A few months ago i picked up a Zotac 970 GTX for $229 from jet, though i ended up trading it for other things i needed when i saw a 7770 played my games at 1080p fine.

Long story short, i bought a R9 380 for $135 shipped after $20 mail in rebate and i sell ashes for $20. Its not as powerful as i wanted to go, but i can pass it down to one of my kids when new stuff ships. So anyone know whats going on with the market? are people mining coins again? Which i think is unlikely since new cards are not going up or out of stock...
 
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Not really sure, but used fury x still sell for more than used 980 Ti
 
I don't know where you are looking to see used 7970s sell for "over $300". People try selling shit at stupid prices all the time, doesn't mean others buy it.

The question here is why are you even looking for 7970s?
 
I don't know where you are looking to see used 7970s sell for "over $300". People try selling shit at stupid prices all the time, doesn't mean others buy it.
The question here is why are you even looking for 7970s?
Why because i he wanted super value for the money. hes right though...at one time i considered selling mine and i was going to ask between 100-125. ( with xfx lifetime warrenty at that) I have seen people on here selling them for over 150-200. And in case you didnt know the 7970 murders the 380 in more games than not. He has a point, people be trying to sell this stuff way over actual used value.
 
I've found a 7970 for $100 or $125 and a 280X for $125 or $150, It's been a bit since I bought them so cannot recall exactly, but I'd say that's darn close. I know it wasn't over $150 for sure, as I had budgets to stick to. The 7970 was "new" back from RMA and the 280x was young as well. Not old mining cards.
 
if you wanted a 2nd hand card that could run current titles fluently what comes to mind?

7970 on paper has better hardware then a 380. wider memory bus, more memory, more texure units, more shaders, faster floating point, etc. I just figured after 4 years of depreciation and the dominance of the 970GTX in the mid range would of pushed its value down. I swear a few months ago i was seeing 7970's around $150 or less and 7950's for $125ish
 
if you wanted a 2nd hand card that could run current titles fluently what comes to mind?

7970 on paper has better hardware then a 380. wider memory bus, more memory, more texure units, more shaders, faster floating point, etc. I just figured after 4 years of depreciation and the dominance of the 970GTX in the mid range would of pushed its value down. I swear a few months ago i was seeing 7970's around $150 or less and 7950's for $125ish

You were seeing them cheap, that was when a lot of used cards from that era were available. Scarcity increases price and there are less cards on the market now.

People are buying new R9 380s for less than $180 now, I've seen used ones got for under $150, might be worth a look.
 
Could be a combination of things...

Demand I think may have gone up for the 7970 cards. They were way undervalued for a while.

Depending of the country, the value of the USD versus other currencies right now (ie: CAD) is too expensive and can make eBay show stupid high prices after currency conversion.

There are also people like me; I had planned to sell my two 280x cards (same as 7970), but performance wise they are keeping up fine, heck they even score in the green for Steam VR! :happy: IMO people who were thinking of selling them may just not be selling them right now.
 
Yeah, ordered an R9 380 for $170 and it has a $20 mail in rebate and free game on top of that -- but just shocked at the used market. who would buy a 4 year old ? 7970 over a 380x / 970 GTX if equal price?

I just expected them to be more of a bargain considering their age.
 
The only reason I can imagine is that it's not upgrade time yet. No new gpus compelling enough in the <$400 price point to make 7970/280x owners want to upgrade. (like myself). Sure the GTX 970 is better, but there's going to be some new gpus within a month from nVidia.

AMD... well, nano. heh. Drop the price to something under $350 and then maybe the 7970/280x owners may consider an upgrade. But it'll probably only be a marginal (<20% performance upgrade), so not really worth spending $350.
 
Well most AMD users turn off GameWork's most notorious features or turn them down a notch. AMD even limits their impact via drivers nowadays. When you do that you will find that any game can be run with a 7970 / 7950 quite competently. Like it was mentioned above, a 7970 is faster than the current budget cards. AMD is competing with themselves for best value.
 
AMD cards are still excellent for mining and I'm not entirely familiar with the details but there's a new coin out there which gives good mining profit. You can easily sell a used custom cooled 290x for $275-300, just go check the sold listings on ebay.
 
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Oh yeah that new ether (whatever spelling) coin, forgot about it. It exploded a few weeks ago, I managed to get a small piece of it, but I didn't know people were still buying into it(?)
 
damn, i wish i had known. I LOVED mining... as you can tell from my sig. i mined over 300 bitcoins and a crap load of litecoin / dogecoin
 
Here is a good reason why AMD cards are expensive. Under DX12 the R9 290 is 50% faster than the GTX 970. I hope Polaris raises the bar so I will have a need to upgrade my R9 290.

Eurogamer article on Quantum Break; the newest DX12 game release.
What went wrong with Quantum Break on PC?

 
There is another reason why... Nvidia had HDMI 2.0 all to there self and the 950GTX showcase's that they want us to pay for the tech but Club 3D has released a DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 for $30 so anyone with a 7950 or 7970 can enjoy 4K at 60fps and add in that AMD has added DX 12 support to the old GCN 1.0 which now brings these old friends back to current specs and can now give AMD the card they need to really compete in the 950/960GTX area.

Just to let you know I ordered the Club 3D for my R9-280 which I have had for awhile and tested it on my 42" Seiki SE42UM 4K and it worked great as my desktop showed 4K at 60fps.. the card always did 4K 30fps from HDMI but for the little $30 upgrade it now can do current specs for HDMI 2.0
 
I think it has to do with driver support, it seems the old AMD cards are staying relevant for longer than 6 and 7 series cards from Nvidia of the same release period.

I don't know if it's a lack of driver support for old Nvidia cards. I think that people are just finding out that those 780ti cards (entire 700 series) really weren't as fast as they thought. Especially looking at 2015 - 2016 benchmarks where cards like the 290 and 290x trounce them in most games. The GTX 970 is another dead end card as it can't even handle games like Quantum Break @1080p. Also AMD's driver support has really hit a higher gear in the past year. Enthusiasts are more likely to buy used cards from places like EBAY I would guess, and they know what's good and what's out of date.
 
damn, i wish i had known. I LOVED mining... as you can tell from my sig. i mined over 300 bitcoins and a crap load of litecoin / dogecoin

Well I got in a couple weeks ago on Ethereum Mining on a whim (the odds of no-name coins have a price break out are exceedingly low), but did some more reading and looks like up to 390 (maybe x) can pay for themselves with Ethereum Mining in a month or 2 if this keeps up, good deal IMO. So no wonder these cards are getting bought up, worst case scenario you get +/- half your card paid for by mining. Never thought I'd see this happen again.
 
sooo, I've heard about mining for years now and haven't investigated much. How does one exchange coins for real currency?
 
sooo, I've heard about mining for years now and haven't investigated much. How does one exchange coins for real currency?

You transfer the coins you mine to a wallet on your PC, send it to an exchange that trades those coins for BTC, then sell the BTC on Coinbase, Circle orother exchanges that deposit straight to your bank account. If you don't want it touching a bank account you can use localbitcoins or exchange BTC for gift cards or spend BTC at the growing number of places that accept that.
 
I actually find used AMD cards from 2 gens ago much cheaper than the nvidia equivalents. For instance I picked up a 7970 for $100 and the alternative was 30% more pricey used.
 
Pfft, when bitcoin mining took off at over $500 a coin a few years ago, I had a 7950 that I bought for $200 and sold on ebay for $380 3 months later!
 
I actually find used AMD cards from 2 gens ago much cheaper than the nvidia equivalents. For instance I picked up a 7970 for $100 and the alternative was 30% more pricey used.
I had to off my 280X for only $150 a few months ago. AMD's resale value tanked after the coin crash back in 2014 and never recovered.
If Newegg is sold out and used prices are going up, the first thing I'd check is coin values.
 
I had to off my 280X for only $150 a few months ago. AMD's resale value tanked after the coin crash back in 2014 and never recovered.
If Newegg is sold out and used prices are going up, the first thing I'd check is coin values.
Yea that was definately why. I'm fairly sure the 7970 were coin cards. So a lot of people dumped them hard when it crashed. :)
 
I bought and sold video cards for both coins, i was lucky that i quit mining when i saw the writing on the wall (before the value of the cards crashed) I sold my 290/290x's for what i paid for them brand new. Looks like etherium has peaked and is starting to decline, but im going to try to get into it for at least 6 weeks. last night according to mining calculators it looks like my 270x will make $77 a month and electric should only be about $10 a month. If i put 3 video cards at this, with a little luck they should be able to recoup at least half their value, which kinda feels like really cheap way to upgrade.

I am certain this is why the used AMD cards have shot up in value again, i SWEAR 3 months ago or so i was seeing 7970's for $125 or so...
 
I definitely wouldn't, I see some as high as $200 if you're lucky. Price has nowhere to go but UP, at least until the new GPUs launch.
 
hmmm, maybe I should sell my 7970 - it easily goes up to 1290mhz - had it at 1310mhz (just to noisy for me). Updated Rom to Ghz edition running at 1050mhz without issue for over 2 years now. It is connected to our HDTV set in the living room, 1080p it still does very well in.
 
lol I sold two R9 290's (reference designs) here last week and the going rate was a tad under 200 each... and that's shipped. If you aren't in the US, or are in a place that dings you hard for taxes I could see things being harder... but by and large late model AMD cards are pretty cheap as far as I can see.
 
I don't know where you are looking to see used 7970s sell for "over $300". People try selling shit at stupid prices all the time, doesn't mean others buy it.

The question here is why are you even looking for 7970s?

Especially when I can score factory-refurbished R9 280s for sub-$150 (and at MC Fairfax no less - it chased - literally, the refurb GTX760 I had been considering off my radar by undercutting it in terms of price).

It's not the extra GDDR5 (largely a non-issue in games in my rota). It's not that one GPU is that much more or less power-hungry than the other (if anything, the AMD part is more of a power pig).

Both support DX12 (so that isn't it, either).

It's bang for buck - period.
 
That's good news! Now all they need is to price like GMG ...

Unfortunately many video game purchasers think that pricing a game lower than the competition means that it was stolen off the back of a Russian mobster's truck in Siberia. Just start a topic about any legit discount seller like GreenManGaming in the video game section and watch the outcry begin that they are from some seedy part of Europe where you can buy a house for $1. That's why they can lower the price by 20%, when in fact they are located in the UK and probably have more stricter import / export laws to abide by than Americans.

:)
 
I don't know if it's a lack of driver support for old Nvidia cards. I think that people are just finding out that those 780ti cards (entire 700 series) really weren't as fast as they thought. Especially looking at 2015 - 2016 benchmarks where cards like the 290 and 290x trounce them in most games. The GTX 970 is another dead end card as it can't even handle games like Quantum Break @1080p. Also AMD's driver support has really hit a higher gear in the past year. Enthusiasts are more likely to buy used cards from places like EBAY I would guess, and they know what's good and what's out of date.

This probably has a lot to do with it. When I was running a 680 it was faster then the 7970 I have running in another machine. Fast forward to now, the 680 has been upgraded and the 7970 is still on active duty.
 
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