Can’t blame the miners for the 1080 prices. Their prices should have been basically stable since the craze hit. Miners don’t want cards with GDDR5X memory, a 1080 is actually worse for them than a 1070.
They might not use them, but the 1080 still could be impacted by them buying up everything else.
Yes, if the prices had changed we could theorize some kind of substitution effect, where games unable to get a 1070 instead find the extra money for a 1080. But when we know that the prices haven’t increased, it seems absurd to blame miners for it.
See for example these graphs: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/video-card/
Is that right? I wonder why.
From what I’ve heard, AMD GPUs are far better for mining anyway.
Yeah, I misread your post. For the most part the price seems to be stable. I did see some out of stock on newegg and some higher prices for 3rd party sellers, but most were mid $500 range.
I am undecided. I can get a used Titan (2013 Kepler with 6G VRAM) for around $200. But for another $100 more, I can get a GTX 1060, also 6GB and new card, new architecture, more FPS than Titan, less power requirement. However, because of lack of supply, that 1060 is now $200 more than the Titan instead of $100. What should I do?
The replies I’ve read still don’t tell me what they’re mining and why they’re mining it.
These days it is most likely Etherium. They do it to make money.
Ethereum price has escalated recently which is around $255, I think. It is still low compare to Bitcoin which is at $2,500. Imagine you are some hopefuls who thinks that in the next 1-2 years, Ethereum will be like Bitcoin, that’s a 10X growth rate… So, why aren’t you mining now :)
Where would one find a guide to getting up and running, from a reliable source that isn’t just going to load my machine up with malware? I imagine there is a burgeoning market for 3rd parties loading up some of these mining tools for their own gain, especially given most scanners will flag miners anyway as they can’t be sure whether you are in control or if your machine has been hijacked into a bot swarm…
Does his help? I discovered a lot of this info over the web, but this is a good (long) summary of what this new fad is all about:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6jl60i/video_card_prices_and_cryptocurrency_mining_whats/
That’s where my coworker goes. He uses their Etherium miner, selling his hashpower on his 1070 GTX for bitcoin.
I’d caution against it. Currency mining can be really stressful on a GPU, especially if you’re running it frequently to maximize profit. My son worked at Microcenter in college, and still has friends there. They recently had to modify their return policy on GPUs because people were using them to mine 24/7 and burning them out in 30 days, then expecting the store would replace them. If mining is that stressful on a desktop GPU with dual fans and plenty of air circulation, I imagine it would fry a more compact laptop GPU in no time.
@vyshka’s posted article is really the only path to a solution. GPU’s designed for mining, sold as separate SKU’s with a different pricing structure. Get the serious miners out of the gaming hobbyist’s market. You’ll still always have gamers who mine part-time as well, but they are not the ones driving the prices up on the current crop of cards.
EDIT : Hmmm…maybe not. In doing some curiosity research online I seem to be seeing an ongoing argument that mining isn’t any more stressful on GPU chips than normal gaming use, some even say it’s less so because the GPU runs at a constant load and temp, unlike gaming where both load and temps vary widely depending on use. I’d probably still recommend against it with a laptop GPU however, if only from the standpoint that if something did happen, it’s a heck of a lot more difficult in most cases to replace a laptop GPU than a desktop one.
More info coming in on Vega FE. Long story short, on an IPC basis, it’s ~5% slower than Fury X in gaming, clock for clock. Of course it runs at much higher clocks so it’s faster overall, but generally speaking it’s a noncompetitive gaming solution. However, it’s a solid 30-40% clock-for-clock faster than Fury X in scientific and rendering applications.
Question is whether the RX-Vega, the gaming card rumored to be released at Siggraph on July 30, uses the same silicon. If so, Vega needs to sell at approximately 1070 pricing to fit its gaming performance. But with HBM2, can they afford to do that?
Even the die-hards at /r/AMD are seeing the writing on the wall. The early benches of the regular Vega are coming in at vanilla 1080 but using much more power.
Crazy that AMD finally got Its CPU division into shape, only to see the GPU division stumble.
Huh, I must be doing something wrong. I have two 480s in my machine, but setting up the Nicehash miner I’m only generating at a rate of $3/day. That barely pays the electricity.
AMD GPUs haven’t been competitive at the high-end for several generations either. The RX-480 is great performance for the money, but a halo product it ain’t.
It seemed like they were doing a good job back around the time of the 4800 series cards. Did they lose a bunch of talent? I went with Nvidia and the 1070 this last upgrade.
The last time AMD was really on top was the 5850/5870 generation, and that was late 2009. That was an amazing generation for AMD and they stayed solidly ahead until 2011. Unfortunately they haven’t been at the pole position since then-- they had great price/performance at spots, like the 7850, but their highest-end generally lost to the green team either straight-up in performance or in heat/power at similar performance.
That’s why Nvidia is indulging in fucknuttery like increasing their prices every generation, doing “Founder’s Editions”, and so on. Without competition, consumers lose out.
So looks like a bunch of volatility hit the mining scene with Etherium prices dropping and difficulty shooting through the roof. Other digital currency having “issues” too. So maybe keep an eye on EBay for some suddenly good deals on cards soon.