Thursday, January 4th 2018
Mid-range and High-end Graphics Card Prices Could Rally: Report
Prices of mid-range and high-end graphics cards could rise over the course of 2018, warns a report by Taiwan-based industry observer DigiTimes. The report quotes a USD $5-20 increase (we're guessing that's bill-of-material/BOM cost). Tight supply of memory chips and GPUs are attributed to the price hikes. Crypto-currency mining is a key factor, according to the report. Demand for graphics cards by miners hasn't waned (perhaps associated with Ethereum's all-time high value), which could further strain graphics card supplies throughout 2018.
Major Taiwan-based graphics card vendors, such as ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, benefited from the GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining boom of 2017, and sales went down only slightly towards Q4-2017. On the other end of the spectrum, rising popularity of online multi-player games such as "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds," has triggered PC upgrades, further straining graphics card supply, the report states.
Source:
DigiTimes
Major Taiwan-based graphics card vendors, such as ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, benefited from the GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining boom of 2017, and sales went down only slightly towards Q4-2017. On the other end of the spectrum, rising popularity of online multi-player games such as "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds," has triggered PC upgrades, further straining graphics card supply, the report states.
27 Comments on Mid-range and High-end Graphics Card Prices Could Rally: Report
To put things into perspective it makes much more sense for someone like TSMC to sell most of their wafers to Apple , Qualcomm and other fabless manufacturers of silicon used for smartphones since that market is absolutely huge and it will remain like that consistently.
GTX 1050 Ti are already being sold for 260$ In my country. 1060 for 450, 1070 are absent, with last update pricetags all over 650$. Won’t even tell how much 70 and 80 ti cost - those numbers make the Titan V sense-full purchase.
So where the hell are all those antimonoly comissions? Thinking more often about that they have their cut in this business, so they let the prices rise to the sky...
So, never.
trog
In 2018 people are not willing to spend 220€ on 16gb DDR4, 350€ on a barely maxed out 1080p 60fps GPU and 300€ for a good IPC CPU, to play videogames at their desk. Is 2018 and with these prices, good luck.
And really, ancient or not in GPU years, 1060 (6GB) and up play virtually anything in their associated resolutions they were designed for.
I guess my upgrade will still have to wait.
With these hikes, OEM parts start looking competitive with all the Enterprise premium attached...
Raising prices when some economic contraction starts happening should send a message with reduced prices by the end of the year....hopefully.
Just kinda wished my 280X was the 6GB variant :ohwell:
For AMD they've pretty much all their eggs at GloFo, and have to adjust that "mix" between Ryzen, TR, EPYC, Vega, and 2 variants of Polaris; while then Corporate custom designs (Xbox, PS, Apple/now Intel etc.). Then now there's Ryzen II, and probably now Vega11 (Polaris II) in production that AMD has to juggle starts to maintain markets, sales channels, and profits (that always a good place to be). They sure aren't looking to produce and dumping chips they don't have contracts for, or aren't seeing huge mark-up on (aka Polaris). I'm sure they're building Vega 11 parts, and have told AIB's this is the new price and if mining "goes bust", they'll rebate cost back to them in special cases, but till then AMD won't sell them cheap. (They're not a charity!) Vega... it's strange in they've fulfilled Apple's upfront requirement (to some degree), while it looks like the Intel marriage will suck-out even more production at some point. For gamers "for-get-about" it... seeing any at decent prices is vaporware. I'm sure Ryzen II while being a nice "tick improvement"... so will prices, and less folks will be making upgrades (memory & Graphics $$$!), while I think AMD will see more "wins" in OEM's especially in APU Raven Ridge both in Desktops & Laptops.
Nvidia will slow their roll on GeForce next gen, with them sell everything the have wafer commitments for, while they might adjust starts up, with GDDR memory expensive and tight supplies they can't really fill the pipe. (That 1060 5Gb is an off shot of this whole memory dynamic...it's also why AMD isn't doing a lot with Polaris and 8Gb are through the roof again!) Nvidia will place their focus on the professional market as they have commitments to HPC projects that they are compelled to supply.
At this point my boy's are pigeon-holing cash to have chance at Vega 11 hitting soon (580 replacement) with decent bump, but really just hoping there's stock on AIB aftermarket part that aren't priced in the stratosphere... They're still holding...one with a 280, the other a 280X.
This was way before mining and hbm came about.
Then mining came and went ,now its back.
It's amazing how people come up with a million reasons on why we have this situation instead of admitting we as a customers destroyed any chance of having decently priced hardware by shelling out at every overpriced second grade silicon we got thrown our way.
I said it previously and I'll say it again , people want a '1000$ iPhone X' in the GPU market. Let them have it and pay every penny for it.
I guess buying second hand hardware is a way to have your cake and eat it too. My money did not go to nvidia for a new card, and I got an upgrade. Still, some sacrifices had to be made - I pushed back my plans to upgrade to ryzen, but in the meantime I managed to fix a X79 motherboard (turns out one mosfet popped and one was going bad - shitty Asus VRM design as usual) and am now happily running a i7 3930k I had in my collection. The rig is a far cry from the i5 760 I was stuck with a couple of months ago, so overall I'm pretty happy. Considering current RAM prices I don't regret the decision - I just couldn't pass up a 1080 for that money (especially considering one retails for 650-700$ list price, and when this model is in stock, the price can jump over 750$ in some stores). Pretty sure the card was used for mining since the guy was selling 12 of them, all second had, all complete with boxes and 21 month warranty at the same e-tailer.
That's insane. Wtf is going on? Isn't that around what the 980 Ti went for?