Did GPU bubbles of before "pop" in some way?

CyJackX

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I imagine if miners are buying up GPUs and then they take a bath in the markets, they'll be looking to offload their GPUs quickly for cash instead?
Same with scalpers; is there a chance they start going BELOW MSRP? I'm just wondering what happened last time.
 
Yes. There will be a surplus of sellers and it will become a buyers market. New retail cards will come down below msrp, further driving the secondary market lower. When that will happen is anybody's guess.
 
Yes. There will be a surplus of sellers and it will become a buyers market. New retail cards will come down below msrp, further driving the secondary market lower. When that will happen is anybody's guess.
well no hurry, Zen 3 situation won't ease before 2021 H2 and then it'll be too late anyways to buy a system when DDR5 systems hit the market within 6 months.
 
oh yes remember how cheap cards were in 2018-2019 when all the 1070 cards used for mining were flooding the market?

Their were so many cheap 1070 on the market that the 2060 was sold below MSRP.

/s
 
I think this time around we will be waiting for a while...hopefully I am wrong.
This time is a bit different.
The mining is running in parallel with people working and gaming more from home.
That combination has created unprecedented shortages.
The OEMs and board partners have taken note of how much people are willing to pay.
I suspect that will also come into play in addition to the two reasons already mentioned.
Less stock means the prices can be artificially kept high for longer to increase margins.
 
I have yet to see anything saying that graphics cards are going to be generally available before q3 2021. The scalp prices have held steady since launch week of every gpu type, so those won't be changing soon. Now that we're getting playable framerates at 4k, not as many people will have a hard on to upgrade to the next iteration of cards in a year or twos time.

If anything, I don't believe I ever saw any pop, at any point, in the last 5 years. Prices went up, and they stayed up into the next generation of cards. Nvidia had to offer something at a reasonable price due to AMD's competition, so now we have slightly less awful pricing towards the high end.
 
I don't believe there is anything to do with crypto.
There may by a problem with manufacturing or with the GPU manufacturers who want to stop providing with so huge GPU dies and so create a stress on providing enough GPUs by providing only too big chips and raise the price. This way you may end up being happy with an RTX 3060 12GB at $800 replacing your older Titan Xp or event your RTX 2080 Ti.
GPU manufacturers are saling 4 times bigger chips for GPus than CPUs at the same price at the whole graphics card. They won't stop till they hit a price bigger with a GPU approximatively on par for the silicone die cost with a CPU. This means you may get a price around $1000 for a RTX 3060 which is the price of a Ryzen 5950X, which, all put together, is probably still much less expensive to build than that graphics card.
If someone doubts that, he can ask himself why Intel starts making graphics card for OEM only related to using Intel CPU and chipset, altogether build. Because he doesn't want to be part of this and waiting for AMD and Nvidia to fix the market to make it hugely profitable.

Conclusion is you won't ever see the old prices any more. It's going to be around 3 times the previous price forever. This is also compatible with people living out of gaming. The RTX 3080/3090 are made for them. They may need to put the many $1000 they need as any professional.
 
Agreed on pricing. As much as we may want to complain, the general market has made it clear they'll pay anything to get their hands on a card. Honestly this whole situation has royally screwed up this market for the consumer and I believe will have lasting repercussions.
 
I think this time around we will be waiting for a while...hopefully I am wrong.
This time is a bit different.
The mining is running in parallel with people working and gaming more from home.
That combination has created unprecedented shortages.
The OEMs and board partners have taken note of how much people are willing to pay.
I suspect that will also come into play in addition to the two reasons already mentioned.
Less stock means the prices can be artificially kept high for longer to increase margins.

Manufacturing and shipping are down too this time, causing strain on the supply. It's like a cattle auction bidding for spots on shipping vessels atm.
 
oh yes remember how cheap cards were in 2018-2019 when all the 1070 cards used for mining were flooding the market?
I'm curious why you put /s on this post, because I bought an 1070 that was previously used for mining for *dirt cheap* in 2018. I think less than $200? It's an EVGA FTW with an extra 8-pin connector and temp sensors and everything.
Local craigslist, but still.

(For those curious, its been running every single day since then and there hasn't been a single issue, even as a used mining card.)
 
I sold 64 cards in fall 2019 until the spring of 2020. My average sales price of 1070 was $289.12. The highest one was $339.99. The lowest was $247.17. This was done mostly because I was moving for work from a low cost energy state to a high cost area.

I never saw the cheap flood of cards. Their were lots of cards, especially when the 2060s and 2070s came out, but I never saw the prices collapse.

NVIDA did not either. If you look at what the 2060 was sold for and what the 2070s were sold for compared to what the 1070 and 1080ti were selling for.
 
crypto needs to crash

Don't rule it out being financially regulated to help in that matter. The lack of Eco/Green credentials it offers as a long term financial solution might mean steep levies or taxes on individuals or exchanges.
 
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As others have said, this has definitely happened and popped before. Tons and tons of used GPUs are dumped on the market - for example, right when the next architecture comes out. Initially it's still a problem, as miners attempt to sell them at MSRP (since price has been inflated for so long), within a couple months prices crater. That's when you can either buy a new GPU at MSRP (even a bit lower if you wait it out a little) or you take a chance on a used GPU - considering it's been abused with mining (you don't know, but it's most likely) I would just go for the new GPU at MSRP a year late.

It is kind of amazing though, I wonder how it is possible that GPU prices have broken the scale, but if you want to buy a PS5, XSX or a Switch, well, you might have to wait a bit, but you can always buy them at MSRP. Something's up with how these products are regulated differently.
 
I don't believe there is anything to do with crypto.
There may by a problem with manufacturing or with the GPU manufacturers who want to stop providing with so huge GPU dies and so create a stress on providing enough GPUs by providing only too big chips and raise the price. This way you may end up being happy with an RTX 3060 12GB at $800 replacing your older Titan Xp or event your RTX 2080 Ti.
GPU manufacturers are saling 4 times bigger chips for GPus than CPUs at the same price at the whole graphics card. They won't stop till they hit a price bigger with a GPU approximatively on par for the silicone die cost with a CPU. This means you may get a price around $1000 for a RTX 3060 which is the price of a Ryzen 5950X, which, all put together, is probably still much less expensive to build than that graphics card.
If someone doubts that, he can ask himself why Intel starts making graphics card for OEM only related to using Intel CPU and chipset, altogether build. Because he doesn't want to be part of this and waiting for AMD and Nvidia to fix the market to make it hugely profitable.

Conclusion is you won't ever see the old prices any more. It's going to be around 3 times the previous price forever. This is also compatible with people living out of gaming. The RTX 3080/3090 are made for them. They may need to put the many $1000 they need as any professional.

Really nothing to do with crypto? So you think miners aren't buying up cards and taking advantage of the hugely inflated prices? With the supply being so depressed right now any additional increase on the demand side just makes the situation even worse than it already is.
 
Exactly. Everyone here has seen the pictures of piles of GPU boxes in someone's garage, bedroom, attic, bathroom(?), etc. Even a small mining setup of 8 or so GPU's compared to one GPU per gamer, is a large use:use ratio, and only gets higher with the larger miners. If mining wasn't taking them out of the market, those GPU's would have been on r(e)tailer shelves. I don't buy into the whole covid/tariff/material supply theories. When a GPU can have a good chance at ROI in 4 months even at more than 1.5X retail price, it's easy to see why scalpers are still getting paid.
 
Exactly. Everyone here has seen the pictures of piles of GPU boxes in someone's garage, bedroom, attic, bathroom(?), etc. Even a small mining setup of 8 or so GPU's compared to one GPU per gamer, is a large use:use ratio, and only gets higher with the larger miners. If mining wasn't taking them out of the market, those GPU's would have been on r(e)tailer shelves. I don't buy into the whole covid/tariff/material supply theories. When a GPU can have a good chance at ROI in 4 months even at more than 1.5X retail price, it's easy to see why scalpers are still getting paid.

I haven't really looked at mining since the original Titan cards. Are all cards good at it nowadays? Cause if only top end is good - then why are the mid-tier cards missing off the shelves?
 
I haven't really looked at mining since the original Titan cards. Are all cards good at it nowadays? Cause if only top end is good - then why are the mid-tier cards missing off the shelves?
https://www.nicehash.com/blog/post/best-mining-gpu-in-2021

Best: 3060 Ti

3080 is also favored - both for bang/buck.

3070/3090 because they are not as good of a value as the 3060 Ti/3080, respectively.

GPUs are still very good for mining - esp. for ETH which has tripled in value since last year.
 
I don't buy into the whole covid/tariff/material supply theories.

You should... there was a GPU shortage and scalping well before mining became profitable again in January. Miner's are absolutely part of the problem, but they aren't the only part.
 
I don't believe there is anything to do with crypto.
Oh honey

*some guy on reddit
h5l26j7n13g61.jpg
 
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AMD took action to keep their gaming RNDA2 GPU lineup more for the gaming market, their GPUs are more limited when used for mining, not sure they can ever this generation have a more dedicated mining market. Anyone who bought Navi is doing fairly well now with mining, my 5700 XT AE is getting over $7/day which is obscene and the highest I've ever seen for mining on a single card. If I put the 3090 into mining, double that amount per day. Some of us have older cards which are also put to use vice being stuck in a closet, anyways my cards, I get to do what I want with them. Put them in the closet, use them for target practice even if perfectly operational or sell them on Ebay - My choice. Some think it is ok to dictate to people what they can or not do with their property, want the government force actions on others for their own benefit - history of mankind that has never turned out well in the end when some try to force others against their will.

If you worked hard, figured out a way to get a card or cards, your cards, do what you want with them, I wont bother you. I would work harder, smarter etc. to get cards if needed or wanted and I surely don't want you to then dictate to me what I should do with them. Now it is for Nvidia and AMD and hopefully AMD to maintain a healthy gaming market, PCs, Consoles etc. Should Nvidia restrict their gaming cards with mining? Via drivers? That is up to them. Losing the gaming market to gain a fluctuating and at a point a most likely dying mining segment would seem unwise. So far Crypto coins have not been thoroughly thinned out with the winners and losers, well most are losers but are not showing it yet. There is a point where so much energy will be tolerated to be consumed with arguments from both sides that are valid and should be considered.

  • As for the shortage of GPUs, there are multiple reasons why and the most obvious one is that not enough cards are being made, plain and simple. AMD spent around 80% of their TSMC Foundry dies with Consoles, 20% or so for everything else. Does anyone really think people buying AMD cards for mining which is not that smart to begin with has anything to do with mining for the current drought of AMD GPUs? That is pure BS
  • Nvidia are mass producing Ampere cards, Steam survey pretty much substantiates that and at the current rate it will far exceed Turing rate for gamers
    • Now Nvidia cards are primed candidates for mining if the price is right, otherwise it would most likely would be a losing position unless coins values can be maintained for an extended period of time, no way to really know
    • The more mining done with GPUs, the less profit one can make. In other words there is an actual limit to the viability in selling GPUs just for mining
  • If there are all these used mining cards, tons of them, where were they for sell? Prior to this upswing in Crypto, 1080 Tis where selling way over $400, one of the best older generation mining cards. Gone now for sure. Point is even Vega's never really hit that low in selling points even when Crypto was rock bottom between the market cycles. Meaning the demand has remained high for new and used cards alike for many reasons
  • The current Corvid situation has limited production of cards, caused more people needing cards to work at home, money spent on other things becoming available now for home type entertainment, list is endless -> DEMAND is staggering -> not enough production, more demand
    • While mining may play a part, it is not the only reason, Nvidia selling directly to mining AIBs would not help and not sure if that is continuing. As for AMD they are making Consoles as priority #1 for their allotted yield space at TSMC which is to me the #1 reason the drought of AMD RNDA2 cards and has little to do with mining on AMD side
 
Oh honey

(some guy on reddit)View attachment 327975
Employee at Bestbuy? MicroCenter? Having fun? Someone very smart in working the hurdles for getting GPUs (as long as it is fare and legal)? While others want the government to hand them one while restricting others and eating potato chips on their couch on a old HDTV ( not saying that is you or directed at you ). We don't know for sure what the history of those cards if bought for scalping or mining. Anyways it would take some time for those cards to pay for themselves depending upon what price he actually paid if he paid for them for mining, extra costs as in rigs (CPUs, power supplies, ram, motherboards, adaptors, racks, cables) including setup and having sufficient power and cooling costs all come into play. Really, when I look at it, I would not be wasting my time going this route but that is me and others, a very select few, could make it work out well with a level of gambling on the Crypto market which could crash tomorrow. That is another aspect, all those cards could become virtually worthless overnight if mining and would need to be sold. If there was a whole bunch of cards out there mining, Crypto market crashed, the Ampere cards price would plummet making them lose money.
 
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AMD took action to keep their gaming RNDA2 GPU lineup more for the gaming market, their GPUs are more limited when used for mining,
Which are those ? Was the lower bandwidth but higher cache decision(that is good for game but terrible for mining) an action they took to keep their gaming RDNA 2 GPU for the gaming market or purely an unhappy (always been an excellent market for them) indirect result for them that happened ?

I think it is just a bad "luck" on their part, but they save on memory and memory bus.
 
I highly doubt AMD purposely "mining gimped" their cards. That would make no sense. Since when does a company opt to cut out an avenue of selling their product? Love it or hate it, crypto is a marketplace for GPUs that all manufacturers would like to sell to.
 
Which are those ? Was the lower bandwidth but higher cache decision(that is good for game but terrible for mining) an action they took to keep their gaming RDNA 2 GPU for the gaming market or purely an unhappy indirect result for them that happened ?
I am inclined to think the indirect result. These companies have historically shown that they don't give a rat's ass who is buying their cards.

Think about it, mining really kicked off again in January. Unless AMD has time travelers on the RTG payroll, they didn't design RDNA2 with mining in mind one way or the other. There is no purposeful gimp as the mining came long after the design for RDNA2 architecture was completed.
 
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Which are those ? Was the lower bandwidth but higher cache decision(that is good for game but terrible for mining) an action they took to keep their gaming RDNA 2 GPU for the gaming market or purely an unhappy (always been an excellent market for them) indirect result for them that happened ?

I think it is just a bad "luck" on their part, but they save on memory and memory bus.
They did not design it for great mining output, they could have, add some HBM2e and it would blow away most likely anything out there or a wider memory bus which would probably been cheaper to do. That was one action. As for the driver side not sure. It was made for gaming, while it can mine, it would be stupid to go that route or very costly.
 
I highly doubt AMD purposely "mining gimped" their cards. That would make no sense. Since when does a company opt to cut out an avenue of selling their product? Love it or hate it, crypto is a marketplace for GPUs that all manufacturers would like to sell to.
For market share in one of the most lucrative and growing markets out there -> Gaming! -> They are doing that for Consoles which are blowing out all records, too bad they could not extend that with PC graphics cards.
 
We don't know for sure what the history of those cards if bought for scalping or mining.
We do, the guy's got them all pictured set up in mining rigs. I've seen 100 similar photo-brags similar photo brags from miners. But you're missing the point. It's not about this one guy.

That is another aspect, all those cards could become virtually worthless overnight if mining and would need to be sold. If there was a whole bunch of cards out there mining, Crypto market crashed, the Ampere cards price would plummet making them lose money.
No, they couldn't. Things don't happen overnight, not anymore. Global compute demand was already up before Covid, and before mining's resurgence. Render farms, deep learning, large scale image processing, big corporations amassing bigger amounts of the world's data where profitability is a function of how fast they can crunch and slice that data at speed. The proliferation of CUDA-accelerated everything. GPU's are the new CPU's.

This oft-repeated fantasy about "wait 4 the BuBbLe to pop for floodz of cheap Gee Pee Youz" is by people that don't bother to follow trends or look at any stats or data; they casually and barely observe, and once in a while awaken from their slumber to post a thread like this.
 
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I highly doubt AMD purposely "mining gimped" their cards. That would make no sense. Since when does a company opt to cut out an avenue of selling their product? Love it or hate it, crypto is a marketplace for GPUs that all manufacturers would like to sell to.
Yep. The notion of "we used slower RAM because we love gamers" is cute PR (in fairness I don't know if AMD has actually said that but I continually see people attribute that idea to them), but it's total nonsense with no business case. You design products for broad and universal appeal to create the greatest net demand for them.

They're also a publicly traded company, so they're legally obligated to design products that create the most profit, not products designed "to be cool to gamers".
 
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They did not design it for great mining output, they could have, add some HBM2e and it would blow away most likely anything out there or a wider memory bus which would probably been cheaper to do. That was one action. As for the driver side not sure. It was made for gaming, while it can mine, it would be stupid to go that route or very costly.
A wider memory would have cheaper, made better 4K performance, but they choose something else because of mining in mind ? When the R&D was a lot with the new consoles in mind.... ?

You think that action was deliberate to hurt mining performance ? Why would they have wanted to hurt mining performance to start with ?

I mean maybe, but I have not see any sign or argument made, you just stating that wider bus/faster memory would have been cheaper than their cache solution and the reason for one instead of the other was to hurt mining performance....
 
Yep. The notion of "we used slower RAM because we love gamers" is cute PR (in fairness I don't know if AMD has actually said that but I continually see people attribute that idea to them), but it's total nonsense with no business case. You design products for broad and universal appeal to create the greatest net demand for them.

They're also a publicly traded company, so they're legally obligated to design products that create the most profit, not products designed "to be cool to gamers".
Lots of ways to justify if to the SEC and shareholders if they needed to - margins, etc. Or claim you're building a product for the mining segment and intentionally don't want crossover from the other segment. Not saying they are, but you can do that if you need to. Haven't seen a lot of mining kit out there though based on Navi GPUs - just actual gaming cards being used, so...
 
AMD's position is probably that if you want a card for compute performance, buy a CDNA product, not a gaming card.
 
Prices WILL NOT go down just pre order your bots for the next generation launch I didn't get my 2080 super until january 2020
 
We do, the guy's got them all pictured set up in mining rigs. I've seen 100 similar photo-brags similar photo brags from miners. But you're missing the point. It's not about this one guy.


No, they couldn't. Things don't happen overnight, not anymore. Global compute demand was already up before Covid, and before mining's resurgence. Render farms, deep learning, large scale image processing, big corporations amassing bigger amounts of the world's data where profitability is a function of how fast they can crunch and slice that data at speed. The proliferation of CUDA-accelerated everything. GPU's are the new CPU's.

This oft-repeated fantasy about "wait 4 the BuBbLe to pop for floodz of cheap Gee Pee Youz" is by people that don't bother to follow trends or look at any stats or data; they casually and barely observe, and once in a while awaken from their slumber to post a thread like this.
I don't see hundreds of images of said mining rigs, does not mean they don't exist. Like to know how these supposed individuals are able to get cards at whim. Anyways Google search, last month worth, Nvidia Ampere Mining rigs, seems more notebooks are being used -> kinda hard to get the cards if folks are that desperate is my first thought
As for Crypto mining, anything memory intensive is anti ASIC in general making it more GPU friendly. EHash or algorithm for Ethereum is very memory intensive. If AMD was designing the RX 6000 series with mining in mind they would not limit the memory bandwidth as they did. The cache which allows any CU cache to be cache is great for shaders, compute operations and even RT but without the memory bandwidth from the memory it will be more limiting for the algorithms that are memory intensive and more GPU based. I have not seen much in the way of AMD RNDA2 large scale mining rigs (not the ideal card for mining for the cost, it is OK for those who want to mine on the side to make up some of the extra costs, return on investment most likely very poor). Mining has from I can tell zero bearing on the shortage of AMD RNDA2 cards.

As for mining, to spend that kind of money on 3080's, lol 3090's which can collapse in a matter of weeks I think is a rather big gamble and would be foolish. Maybe it will pay off, probably not. As for 3060Ti's that to me would be the sweet spot for Ampere Mining. For AMD, the 5700 or 5700 XT unless one was lucky enough to buy a boat load of Vega 7's. To buy a ton of RX 6000 cards for mining would not be smart.
  • Let see, if my 3090 made $12/day after electrical cost, paid $1700 after taxes -> 1700/12 = 142 days if all went well, prices stayed high in general, no significant down time, card or cards not failing etc., time invested and that is the time before I even see $1 in profit to my bank account. If I had to sell them, it would probably mean others are doing the same driving the cost down. Now it does not matter if it is one card or one hundred cards. There are additional costs, CPUs, motherboards, memory, adaptors, frames, power supplies, cooling, place to do it extend that time period before I make !$ profit. It is much more than just the cost of the GPU if one has a serious amount of GPU's to do mining. Many mining farms went down the drain quickly loosing money last big cycle
  • So the shortage of 3090s I doubt has anything to do with mining by large farms, now you or I can mine on the side to help make up some of the cost but that is just using a gaming card already used for gaming
  • 3080's would be better but still it will take several months before one made 1$, of course if Ethereum went to the moon it would all pay off and one could pat one on the back thinking they are the chosen ones, what ever. When and if it tanks one would be holding cards doing nothing.
  • 3060 Ti's, not sure about the 3060, if they can be had at $399 would actually be very enticing. If Nvidia is selling directly at much cheaper cost, let say the 3080's, yep that also could come into play as well - don't know if the case. For you and me, hobby miners, probably not worth it besides almost impossible to get sufficient number of cards to make a difference in availability
  • People also forget Nvidia allot GPUs for GeForce Now, that makes any or even 100 mining GPU farms look like a drop in the bucket -> You want serious GPU clusters, go to Nvidia, I would not be surprised if over half of Ampere GPU made it to a GeForce Now gaming farms. My guess.
Crypto looks to be in another bubble which most likely will go pop, when is any ones guess. Now if it doesn't, some of us may make out like bandits.
 
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A wider memory would have cheaper, made better 4K performance, but they choose something else because of mining in mind ? When the R&D was a lot with the new consoles in mind.... ?

You think that action was deliberate to hurt mining performance ? Why would they have wanted to hurt mining performance to start with ?

I mean maybe, but I have not see any sign or argument made, you just stating that wider bus/faster memory would have been cheaper than their cache solution and the reason for one instead of the other was to hurt mining performance....
Yes I do, believe AMD indicated this as well. Keeping gaming eco-system going is probably way more important then a temporary gold rush from mining. Getting more and more users using your product on a long term steady growth market, gaming, would be prudent.

The cache is much more effective with game type loads, shaders, compute, RT than over a wider memory bus (which would be much slower for these operations). Mining in general for GPU based algorithms need memory bandwidth, for ETH, 4gb of vram to even run. No cache can even remotely be effective when you are constantly hitting the vram, it fact it could cost with cache misses and make it worst. Yes under certain loads Infinity Cache can be a handicap. Look at this way, the RTX 6900 XT has double the number of shaders of the 5700 XT, can run over 500mhz faster yet it has like 62mh/s while the 5700 XT has 55mh/s -> It is very obviously AMD built something not that optimized for mining, at least for Ethereum.
 
Yes I do, believe AMD indicated this as well. Keeping gaming eco-system going is probably way more important then a temporary gold rush from mining.

This is why you aren't running a GPU company. You sell GPUs. Doesn't matter if the Devil himself wants to buy one. Is his money green? He gets what he's willing to pay for, if so.
 
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