Having refused to buy at ridiculous prices, I'm happy to wait a bit longer for the panic and inventory clearing to begin in earnest before buying.
After a couple of years of pandemic induced demand catapulting PC component prices sky high (already high priced $1500 items selling for double the price), the perfect storm has arrived for a correction: crypto crash has miners dumping the cards, Russian market is closed, recession is dampening consumer demand, and inventory levels are high as old stock remains unsold with new models on the horizon. The same cards that were selling for $3'000 are now going on the 2nd hand market for $800 with the potential to drop lower as next generation products are on the verge of launching.
I've been waiting for this. Time for an upgrade from my now ancient R9 380
As a secondary question, to what degree have mining cards been abused? Is it safe enough to buy second hand considering these cards have probably been running hard continuously?
I am really happy I bought my RTX3090 in February 2020 for a price that was less than 10% above MSRP, it's been a champ and has satisfied all of my 4k gaming needs and now also powers my Questt2 VR headset really well.
I am going to be buying an RTX4090 on launch.
Many mining cards are undervolted to save power so I wouldn't worry 'too much' about the abuse they took over the course of 12 to 18 months of running 24/7 which is anyway how many run their PC's and not too different a load to heavy gaming. Try and buy using PayPal and it will cover you to a certain extent.
The only moving parts are the fans and fans are dirt cheap to buy and replace.
Really interesting news today. Nvidia have a (deserved) repuation of being a tough company but now EVGA have decided to stop working with Nvidia and kill its graphics card business (worth about 78% of EGVA's revenue)!
Because you are too lazy to provide a source... https://videocardz.com/newz/evga-cea...a-geforce-gpus
It's crazy decision by EVGA and although Nvidia is cited as one reason, no company implodes and downsizes with immediate effect like that, and so drastically affects it's revenue and workforce, unless it has some other very big reasons for doing so. They are not even exploring other options with AMD. I am guessing the company has some real problems beyond 'a souring relationship with Nvidia'. The EVGA step-up program seemed like a logistical nightmare for them and I do not see how it was profitable.
I have a feeling EVGA doesn't want to risk being taken to court, so they are not telling the truth about this drastic measure. It's better to restructure your company now, with your own timing, than to be forced to do it when Nvidia goes bust and you are forced to do it at the same time as other card manufacturers.
I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia is blocking them from selling their 3000 series cards in order to keep the prices high, so they can justify a high MSRP in the 4090 announcement next week. Problem is, there will be millions of mining GPUs hitting the second hand market, there are millions of unsold 3000 series stock, and Nvidia has an order from 2021 worth billions with TSMC which they don't need and can't cancel.
Maybe it's a bit extreme, but it wouldn't completely shock me if Nvidia were to go bust next year, and EVGA is simply preparing for the inevitable restructure. Nvidia's current valuation is still based on demand in the GPU mining days, even if it has been adjusted to 40% of its highest valuation this year. As a gaming company, they are worthless, virtually nobody plays games (although they should!). As an AI company, dunno, they never really had server card supply problems, so I'm guessing the demand is not that great. At work, we only had to wait a month or so for delivery of a server GPU, during the worst times.
I fear the only people that are going to buy a 4000 series GPU are enthusiast gamers. Why would you buy a 4060 for 500chf when you will be able to get a 3060 ti (used for mining, but with upgraded thermal pads) for 150? Or a 4090 for 1700 when you will be able to get a 3090 for 600?
I'm speculating of course, but i think Nvidia is in bigger trouble then we are imagining. Many just assume they are "too big to fail" but it wouldn't be the first time that something of this scale happened. The timing of the Ethereum PoS merge, crazy inflation, rise in energy prices, spells disaster for Nvidia. My guess is that EVGA is probably only the first of many to announce this.
...not sure if serious or engaging some extreme hyperbole.
Nvidia are making boatloads of money and their GPU division is only one profitable part of their business. There is next to no chance of Nvidia going bust next year even if 4000 sells badly.
It's kind of like a doomsday worst case scenario :-) I do hope it's not true though and it's a real shame that EVGA is out, although I haven't had an EVGA card since my 980ti.
Edit: I hadn't realized that non GPU sales make up half of their revenue. So you're right, i suppose they could survive a few bad years and a poor GPU generation.
I didn't expect this move from EVGA to be honest, but NVIDIA knew since April. So no surpise for them.
Now about the prices, hopefully the change in the Ethereum algorithm will bring the prices down. Theoretically new GPUs, will be much faster, but only for gaming, so it'll be crazy to ask 1000-1500-2000chf for a gpu. And we're in a country in which it's possible and "easy" to give this amount of money. On the contrary, other countries have average salaries less than that.
My own stupid way to "punish" nvidia is to support the red side, if they have better pricing. And of course I can live with less FPS on my games.
The common wisdom is, if it works, it works. There is no performance degradation for overuse. This paranoia started creeping the internet and may be rooted in the big companies afraid that you spend your cash in used cards rather than buying new.
I don't see the big GPU price crash everyone is talking about anywhere.
Granted, the high end GPUs dropped in price during summer time. I was attentively monitoring the prices as I wanted a new RTX 3090. The cheapest I saw was the RTX 3090 dropping beginning of August to 800.- for a period of 30 minutes which was enough for me to snapshot with my phone and activate my best price CC insurance
Then I got a second one for about ~1'300, still monitoring the prices
I don't see the claimed flood of high end GPUs in Wish or AliExpress or Ebay for that matter. I think NVidia is clearly manipulating the prices to stay at a level and consistent for the launch of the 4000 series. For this reason I don't expect a major drop in price of the 3000 series.
I think the price crash is yet to come. There's a glut of unsold 3000 series inventory as well as ex-mining equipment that needs to work its way through (a big chunk of which has yet to hit the market).
Nvidia may try to price 4000 series at a ridiculously high level to keep 3000 series sales in parallel to try to help move this old stock.
No surprise that EVGA have thrown in the towel. With their latest pricing, they are loosing $100 per unit sold and STILL are being undercut by Nvidia's own Founders Edition cards. After being screwed over on the 3000 series, there's probably not so much appetite to sign-up for a second round with the 4000 series. Esp. in what looks like a much worse sales environment.
I'm now set with GPUs for a long time but if RTX 3090 drop ridiculously in price e.g. <400.- then I might buy two and have dual GPU systems My AX1600i PSU's can cope with the load np.
NVidia is really incredible, so sneaky. I btw interviewed with NVidia engineering in Zurich and never had before such a fishy sneaky interview process in my life before. So thought to myself never again.
It would be interesting to see EVGA launch its own GPU architecture and obliterate NVidia Haha. May be a dream but I loved EVGA's commitment to customers and quality products. It is really a loss for the sector them stop producing and selling GPUs. I was an EVGA fan boy until I tested the ASUS rog strix series, then stayed with those forever.
btw speaking of which, the RTX 3090 is in a nice sweet spot compared to the hugely more expensive RTX 3090 TI which only tops the non-TI by 5-10% performance improvement while costing up to 30% more and having much higher power requirements out of the box (without undervolting which can be done for both cards).
Order for a Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Gaming OC went in yesterday, finally down to reasonable levels...Can't warrant a 3090ti
It's good enough for me I think I'll play the same game and skip a series 1000 > 3000
Now what to do with the 1080ti it replaces..
Sell the 1080ti, or keep it in case the new card doesn't like you after a while. I've been surprised by some really old cards still selling on Ricardo. A 1080ti would be an upgrade for probably 90% of people, me included.
5pm this evening we can see Nvidias annoucements...
Had it for +4 years standard overclock never any issues, great card all I could put my hands on was a 11gb Palit Super Jetstream. Was dubious at the time but turned out well.