Graphics Cards

[berry]

Just over 5 months ago I had bought myself a Ryzen 5 1600 Gaming computer. I did not buy a graphics card, because prices where a little high at the time. I had a spare GTX 1050 so I plugged that in, although it is a HUGE bottleneck! I am sick and tired of waiting, Zen+ is on the way in the next month, and I haven't even gotten a GPU in 5 months! Prices have been so crazy, even after the bitcoin crash. My computer isn't even done and it's a generation behind already, I just wanted to have a fun 1440p experience with any Vega card I could get for a reasonable price so I can get a cheap freesync monitor. I haven't even seen 1440p, never mind 4K! 5 months I've been waiting, that's long enough times 10. Does anyone have a clue when the prices come down? I have so much extra money I can get a more powerful card than I originally wanted, that is, if I get it for MSRP... I hate this, absolute greed! Is their any possible way the prices will come down before Zen+ comes out?

[pokester]

This was probably a General Discussions topic?

I get your frustration. I was in the same dilemma back in November. Wasn't going to pay way over MSRP so I was still making my HD 7905 last. It was still pretty okay for 1080p for most titles. I however had just bought a 1440p freesync monitor for my Photoshop work. It is an IPS model so very good color. Now I was wanting to see some higher resolution games, and that was severely pushing the limits of the card. I then bought a couple newer AAA titles from the last couple years and just couldn't get the frames playable for my taste.

Long story short, having the same frustration as you I took to the net to figure out where to get a card. Someone said watch Best Buy online, the prices change a lot there.

I did that and sure enough. In 2 weeks time, I got lucky. The price on a RX 580 dropped to $300. Seeing as this is still over MSRP I was hesitant but bought because it had been $700 the day before, and super high for months. The next day after buying I saw the price back up to $500 and was glad I jumped on it. I kept watching the prices and 2 weeks later it was in their add for $269 and this was as cheap as I have seen the 8gb version since shortly after release, I called their online help and they price adjusted for me. Very nice they were too.

I have heard that some people have gotten Micro Center to adjust their price for gamers over miners. I think these stores are maybe franchises, or at least some of them, so your mileage may vary. Never hurts to ask.

You can also watch Ebay, just try to figure out if it is a used miner card, don't overpay for a card with tons of mileage. I have been seeing some used 580's going for around $300 recently. Even watch Craig's list, you might find something local.

I feel your frustration!

Good Luck & Happy Gaming!

[nanohead]

Prices are definitely falling big time.  I track lots of them on ebay, as I want to upgrade my 7950s (xfire), and prices are in some cases half of what they were 2 months ago.  There are still plenty of jerks who have $300 cards listed for $2000, but the real prices are auction results, which are what people are truly willing to pay, and those prices are crashing big time, except Vega cards unfortunately.  All others, regardless of brand, are falling like crazy.  Eventually, the retailers will catch up, burn through their expensive stock, and return to whatever the new version of normal is.

There are even a ton of ebay listings where people say they overpaid, thought they would make money mining, lost a ton, and now need to sell.  Its finally happening.....

[quintleo]

Keep in mind that BITCOIN is not mined by GPUs and hasn't been for many years now - it has been ETHEREUM that has been driving AMD cryptocoin sales of GPUs, and Ethereum hasn't dropped nearly as much as Bitcoin has since the big "spike" back in January.

With that said, prices on AMD cards ARE starting to drop some, and availability has gotten a LOT better, over the last couple weeks or so as the Ethereum price drop has finally driven profitability down to the point that very few "new rigs" are getting built to mine Ethereum - but the total network hashrate IS still increasing, just at a much slower pace than in the November-to-early March timeframe.

Vega is a completely different story - it was never a good Ethereum mining card for the price, it was Monero that has driven that shortage, coupled with very short supplies on HBM memory keeping the supply short.

[plumboby]

massive glut in the market give it another month or 2 when supply vs demand starts balancing out. I recomend if going for a new card buy brand new as you got a warranty & know it hasnt been beaten on. Expect to hope the mining boom keeps crashing give us gamers a decent chance for the market to catch up. Doesn't help tho theres a lack of memory around as all the memory makers have been selling it to the phone markets atm. Just hope the memory PC market plays catch up fast & start prioritising the PC brethren as end of the day we are funding there pockets while the cell phone companies make a killing selling there thin crappers end of the day all PC pricing for new gen is ridiculously high thnx to the miners & 3rd party maunfactorers rather supply the miners instead of general mainstream buyer. If in doubt buy a pre build for a decent card & onsell it with your crapper in it or just wait 6moths or so when the next gen cards come online the markets pushing the older stock back to prices they should be or cheaper as they will wanna dump older gen stock as hopefully the miners have given up flooding the market with new cards making it a gamers & buyers market again, hopefully killing the miners in the process. It eventually balances out SSDs are finally at an affordable price again back to being cheaper than 2 years ago.