R9 290x prices are jumping again

I

Igg

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2002
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Last week I bought an XFX R9 290x for 480, now they're all either out of stock or are north of $650.

What's causing this massive spike this time?
 
I was talking about Amazon :p

I avoid newegg like the plague but I guess for $150 in savings.
 
Looks like amazon ran out of stock, so it jumps to the next cheapest 3rd party retailer.
 
I know on the Saphire 290x Tri-X OC Newegg would offer it for $540 and when they ran out of stock they raised price $150 then when it came back in stock they lowered price $150. They have done this twice now in the last week and a half. Kind of silly if you ask me but this is the Egg we are talking about so...
 
Prices have stayed the same pretty much after the bitcoin bubble burst as it were. I saw an Asus R9 290x at Fry's yesterday for $499.99 with a $20 MIR. Not a bad deal.
 
HFBallad said:
I thought graphic cards were no longer used to mine BTC?
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They aren't. The last bubble was caused by LTC (litecoin). ASIC's have flooded that market (just like they did with BTC), so no-one smart would be buying a GPU to mine that. There's other algorithms out that people use the GPU's for now. But I doubt people are buying them up like before. Probably just low stock.

If you're willing to take a gamble on a miner card, you can get a used 290 for around $250 on Ebay. I'd replace the thermal-paste though, as I'm sure it's worn out like a mofo - stock TP is never that good to begin with.
 
GameHard6 said:
Nobody mines BTC with GPU's. They mine scrypt based coins with GPU's and trade them for BTC. This is why the market rises and falls with BTC prices.
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Scrypt has ASICs now, a lot of GPU miners are either selling (check out ebay, really makes me wish I could rationalize an upgrade) or have switched to x11/x13. Thankfully the heat and electricity usage of the latter two are much lower than scrypt.
 
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