Question are video card prices headed down yet?

[thilanliyan]

Gah, my Vega 64 is dying, so I'm going to pop in an old HD6870 that I have sitting here, waiting until the new cards come out. I'd really like to buy a card at least twice as fast, and quieter. But I don't want a new two year old card, especially anything out of a mining rig.

What are the symptoms on the dying card? I also have a Vega64 and was wondering what I should be watching out for.

 

[jpiniero]

Should be way under inflated MSRP for a 2 year old card with a new coming.

nVidia's official MSRPs were not inflated. Don't confuse MSRP with the street price.

 

[Aapje]

You might be able to get a good deal if you wait until then but those good deals would have to be from used. I think that was the point of Jay's video.

Yes, but Jay is scaremongering about those 2nd hand cards. At a sufficiently low price, they are a better deal than new cards, even if they are mining cards.

nVidia's official MSRPs were not inflated.

The MSRPs that were set during the crisis were. It's no surprise that Nvidia seems to be lowering the MSRP of the 3090 Ti, 3090 and 3080 Ti now.

Right but nVidia also presumably ended GA102 production. So once it's gone, it's gone.

If many of the cards that went to miners are going to flood the 2nd hand market, there will be a huge supply of 30x0 cards.

 

[jpiniero]

The MSRPs that were set during the crisis were. It's no surprise that Nvidia seems to be lowering the MSRP of the 3090 Ti, 3090 and 3080 Ti now.

Nope. nVidia's MSRPs were about what they had intended in the first place before mining skyrocketed. That they are cutting it now is simply to clear GA102.

The 3080 at $699 was even aggressive pricing.

If many of the cards that went to miners are going to flood the 2nd hand market, there will be a huge supply of 30x0 cards.

This is true. But given how much faster the 4080/4090 likely is, the used market doesn't matter. It could give both companies a good reason to delay N33/4070 though.

 

[videopho]

OMH. eVGA 3090 ti is selling at $1247 + tax in my local MC.
My case is a bit small for this badass so I have to take a rain check on it. LOL

 

[Aapje]

But given how much faster the 4080/4090 likely is, the used market doesn't matter. It could give both companies a good reason to delay N33/4070 though.

Of course it matters when people are already satisfied with 3060-3080 cards and don't intend to upgrade again until the 5000 series or later.

The 3080 at $699 was even aggressive pricing.

Yes, because it was released just before the crisis...

 

[VirtualLarry]

nVidia's official MSRPs were not inflated.

Allow me to LOL at your expense...

 

[maddie]

Of course it matters when people are already satisfied with 3060-3080 cards and don't intend to upgrade again until the 5000 series or later.



Yes, because it was released just before the crisis...

Silly, don't you know that we'll pay whatever our masters demand.

 

[jpiniero]

Yes, because it was released just before the crisis...

The 3080 Ti's MSRP is the exact same as the real MSRP of the 2080 Ti ($1199). The 3080 and 3070 is actually lower ($699 vs $799+ and $499 vs $599+)

It is true that technically you could argue that the 2080 Ti's replacement is the 3090. But those kinds of stealth price hikes at the ultra high end was what nVidia had originally intended.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

nVidia's official MSRPs were not inflated. Don't confuse MSRP with the street price.

RTX 3080 12GB? RTX 3080 Ti? Even RTX 3050 was horrible being a 1660 Super with tensor cores three years later for $20 more MSRP.

 

[nurturedhate]

It's not an inflated MSRP because Nvidia always planned on it being that high, crypto or not! That's certainly one way to argue a point.

 

[jpiniero]

RTX 3080 12GB?

As mentioned, that was the real MSRP of the 2080.

RTX 3080 Ti?

Same real MSRP as the 2080 Ti

Even RTX 3050 was horrible being a 1660 Super with tensor cores three years later for $20 more MSRP.

That they hiked the MSRP $20 doesn't mean mining affected what they charged. You can argue that the 3050 only was released more because AMD unexpectedly dumped Navi 24 in the desktop market.

 

[Aapje]

The 3080 Ti's MSRP is the exact same as the real MSRP of the 2080 Ti ($1199). The 3080 and 3070 is actually lower ($699 vs $799+ and $499 vs $599+)

You seem to confuse the founder's edition MSRPs with the MSRP of the base card. With the 2000 series, Nvidia wanted to position their founder's edition as being better than the cheapest cards, for the higher end.

The initial MSRPs of the 3070 and 3080 were the same as the 2070 and 2080. The 2080 Ti MSRP was $999, with the founder's card being $1299. See:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Graphics Card Unleashed – The Flagship GeForce Graphics Card, $999 US for 11 GB GDDR6, 4352 Cores and Performance That Blazes Past the Titan V

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti flagship is here, an impeccable graphics card that packs 11 GB GDDR6, Turing and more, for $1199 US.

wccftech.com

It is true that AIBs never sold 2080 Ti's for $999 (at least, not until the 3000 launch), but strictly speaking, Nvidia did increase the MSRPs.

 

[jpiniero]

It is true that AIBs never sold 2080 Ti's for $999

That's what I meant by real MSRP. The $999 was a fake number that very few cards sold at. Pretty much all AIB's MSRP was either $1199 or more.

And at least looking back, nVidia was able to wipe out 2080 Ti supply just before the 3080's launch.

 

[Aapje]

The 2080 Ti was about 15% faster than the 2080, though, with extra memory. The gap between the 3080 and the 3080 Ti is smaller. Also, Nvidia introduced the 3080 12 GB, which is closer in performance to the 3080 Ti than to the 3080 and has the same amount of VRAM as the Ti.

Also, the 3080 Ti is no longer even the top tier product with all the bragging rights, devaluing it even more.

Apparently, Nvidia will now set a $799 MSRP for the 3080 12 GB, so even at $999, the 3080 Ti would be very poor value compared to one tier lower, let alone at the apparent new MSRP of $1100 or the old MSRP of $1200.

The 3080 Ti MSRP was simply inflated due to no longer being the top tier product and not giving as much performance benefit to one tier down as its predecessor.

 

[nOOky]

What are the symptoms on the dying card? I also have a Vega64 and was wondering what I should be watching out for.

Mine was exhibiting horrible horizontal banding of colored lines upon startup, after a while it would seem to be okay. Over time it got worse and worse. I replaced the cable etc. to check at first. It may be something where I can remove the cooler and try using new thermal paste, but mine is liquid cooled and kind of a pain.

 

[jpiniero]

The 2080 Ti was about 15% faster than the 2080, though, with extra memory. The gap between the 3080 and the 3080 Ti is smaller. Also, Nvidia introduced the 3080 12 GB, which is closer in performance to the 3080 Ti than to the 3080 and has the same amount of VRAM as the Ti.

That the ultra high end cards are a real bad value for what you get is something they are going to fix with the 40 series.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Mine was exhibiting horrible horizontal banding of colored lines upon startup, after a while it would seem to be okay. Over time it got worse and worse. I replaced the cable etc. to check at first. It may be something where I can remove the cooler and try using new thermal paste, but mine is liquid cooled and kind of a pain.

Things I would do -

Try another card in the system. We want to isolate it to the GPU first.

Monitor temps; HWiNFO is a good utility. If they are good move on. Perhaps the pump is failing, or the liquid has evaporated too much? Or you were right in the first place, it needs the t.i.m. redone.

DDU the drivers in safe mode, then install the latest. It sounds like the problem begins before its drivers even load, so this probably won't solve the issue. But it never hurts to clean house once in a while.

Undervolt the card, and if needed downclock the HBM2 25Mhz at a time until when/if the problem goes away. You can underclock the core if the HBM is no joy, or both concurrently.

Physically reseat the card. I would dust it too. And clean the contacts on the card. Stuff like this is unlikely to solve your issue, but it is another practice I file under cleaning house.

 

[Leeea]

Mine was exhibiting horrible horizontal banding of colored lines upon startup, after a while it would seem to be okay. Over time it got worse and worse. I replaced the cable etc. to check at first. It may be something where I can remove the cooler and try using new thermal paste, but mine is liquid cooled and kind of a pain.

upon startup?

before windows loaded?

If so, that card is not long for this world. Doubt replacing the cooler, repasting, etc would do anything.

Time to buy a replacement.

 

[Ajay]

There were some good deals with Prime Day and Amazon's competitors. I was checking in on an EVGA 3080 12GB which was $799, which is a pretty good price for a FTW card. Also a Sapphire RX 6800XT for about AMD MSRP, again low for a better quality AIB card. So, things are looking up. I hope that they both drop more in a couple of months and don't just go out of inventory. I don't want to pay list for a 2 year old design, but want to by a notch higher than my X70 card, given my typical 4-5 year upgrade cycle (my 1070 hasn't aged well).

 

[jpiniero]

Also a Sapphire RX 6800XT for about AMD MSRP, again low for a better quality AIB card. So, things are looking up. I hope that they both drop more in a couple of months and don't just go out of inventory. I don't want to pay list for a 2 year old design, but want to by a notch higher than my X70 card, given my typical 4-5 year upgrade cycle (my 1070 hasn't aged well).

Given these price cuts, nVidia is surely trying to get GA102 wiped out by the time the 4090 launches. I would think it would be in AMD's best interests to get Navi 21 gone too by that timeframe. Doesn't mean either will be successful.

 

[Aapje]

MLID claims that the big flood of mining cards is still coming:

This is certainly my impression as well. Very many cards are still being used for mining Eth anyway and many of them are going to be sold when The Bomb making mining unprofitable.

 

[DrMrLordX]

This is certainly my impression as well. Very many cards are still being used for mining Eth anyway and many of them are going to be sold when The Bomb making mining unprofitable.

FYI the Difficulty Bomb has been pushed back, but PoS has not. Something worthy of consideration.

 

[Aapje]

FYI the Difficulty Bomb has been pushed back, but PoS has not. Something worthy of consideration.

They misjudged how fast the Bomb would have an impact and pushed it back so transactions wouldn't become very expensive until PoS is implemented. A suggested schedule that one of the ETH people posted has the final testnet merge on August 11th and the mainnet merge on the Sept 19th*. That final testnet merge is supposed to be as close to the real merge as possible, so they seem to be waiting on some client bugfixes for issues they found during previous merges.

* Note that the merge date/time isn't actually chosen, but they set it for a network difficulty, so it depends on how hard people mine. They will choose that difficulty based on their estimate of the date at which it will be reached, but they can be wrong. On testnets, we've seen people spin up extra miners to get to it faster, but it could also take longer if people shut down miners. Although the total mining volume on mainnet is so high that it's hard to one or even a few actors to impact it much. In any case, the Bomb will cause that difficulty to be hit eventually.

 

[jpiniero]

That might be enough to scare AMD out of releasing N33 this year. We'll see.

I'm still not convinced that The Flood will immediately happen if Ethereum becomes unprofitable though, mostly because I think there's plenty who will turn to PoW altcoins as long as those are profitable... and/or shut down but not sell cards and wait and see if the Money Printer gets turned back on in which case altcoins definitely would be.