Monday, January 29th 2018
Lesson from the Crypto/DRAM Plagues: Build Future-Proof
As someone who does not mine crypto-currency, loves fast computers, and gaming on them, I find the current crypto-currency mining craze using graphics cards nothing short of a plague. It's like war broke out, and your government took away all the things you love from the market. All difficult times teach valuable lessons, and in this case, it is "Save up and build future-proof."
When NVIDIA launched its "Pascal" GPU architecture way back in Summer 2016, and AMD followed up, as a user of 2x GeForce GTX 970 SLI, I did not feel the need to upgrade anything, and planned to skip the Pascal/Polaris/Vega generation, and only upgrade when "Volta" or "Navi" offered something interesting. My pair of GTX 970 cards are backed by a Core i7-4770K processor, and 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory, both of which were considered high-end when I bought them, around 2014-15.
Throughout 2016, my GTX 970 pair ate AAA titles for breakfast. With NVIDIA investing on advancing SLI with the new SLI-HB, and DirectX 12 promising a mixed multi-GPU utopia, I had calculated a rather rosy future for my cards (at least to the point where NVIDIA would keep adding SLI profiles for newer games for my cards to chew through). What I didn't see coming was the inflection point between the decline of multi-GPU and crypto-plague eating away availability of high-end graphics cards at sane prices. That is where we are today.
I would still like to think that my machine is better off than that of someone whose purchase decisions in 2014-15 were guided purely by the pursuit of the "price-performance sweetspot." A machine with a single GTX 970, a $150-ish Core i3 processor, and 8 GB of memory, would find it rather difficult to play today's AAA titles at recommended settings. To play them at 1080p, you would have to water down quite some eye-candy, and in some cases, even use fallbacks to older API versions (DirectX 11) on some games, for playable frame-rates. In a parallel universe without the crypto-plague, a $300-ish investment on a sweetspot graphics card such as the GTX 1070 would be a quick-fix to the problem.
There is still hope that some day graphics card prices will come down, that repeated crypto-exchange heists and growing difficulty levels will make it unviable for just anyone and their dog with a graphics card to mine coins; and NVIDIA and AMD launch new-generation GPUs at sane prices. Save up for that day. Save big, for when that day comes, build future-proof.
You may not have to aim for an HEDT (high-end desktop) build with some high core-count processor, quad-channel memory, and oodles of connectivity; but the fastest mainstream-desktop processor (which is where the Core i7-8700K and the Ryzen 7 1800X stand today), should do. Pair that with an amount of memory that's at least half of what the processor's memory controller supports. My Core i7-4770K, for example, supports a maximum of 32 GB of memory. I paired it with 16 GB of it. 16 GB is just a quarter of what today's i7-8700K and 1800X support.
With multi-GPU showing no signs of a revival, your next graphics card purchase should ideally be the SKU that's just a notch below your preferred GPU manufacturer's halo product (which are often overpriced). The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, is an example of one such SKU. Such a card will give you future-proofing for at least 3 years, and game-developers will point to such SKUs in their recommended system requirements lists for the foreseeable 5 years.
DRAM prices continue to torment gaming PC builders, with memory prices seeing triple-digit inflation over what they should be (a 32 GB dual-channel DDR4 memory kit, which should have ideally been priced around $200, is going for $500 these days). While DRAM prices are hot, NAND flash prices aren't. Solid-state drives, which still majorly implement NAND flash (with 3D Xpoint still in its infancy), are the cheapest they've ever been, with price-per-gigabyte dipping below the $0.25-mark for the first time. The world's largest NAND flash memory makers also happen to be the world's largest DRAM makers, so I wouldn't count on SSDs being forever cheap. I would buy the largest capacity SSD with $0.25-ish price-per-GB while I still can.
There may yet be a future for DIY gaming PCs, provided you buy components that are sanely priced right now, and save up for future-proof components as their prices sober up. Sweetspot products turn bitter sooner than you think.
When NVIDIA launched its "Pascal" GPU architecture way back in Summer 2016, and AMD followed up, as a user of 2x GeForce GTX 970 SLI, I did not feel the need to upgrade anything, and planned to skip the Pascal/Polaris/Vega generation, and only upgrade when "Volta" or "Navi" offered something interesting. My pair of GTX 970 cards are backed by a Core i7-4770K processor, and 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory, both of which were considered high-end when I bought them, around 2014-15.
Throughout 2016, my GTX 970 pair ate AAA titles for breakfast. With NVIDIA investing on advancing SLI with the new SLI-HB, and DirectX 12 promising a mixed multi-GPU utopia, I had calculated a rather rosy future for my cards (at least to the point where NVIDIA would keep adding SLI profiles for newer games for my cards to chew through). What I didn't see coming was the inflection point between the decline of multi-GPU and crypto-plague eating away availability of high-end graphics cards at sane prices. That is where we are today.
I would still like to think that my machine is better off than that of someone whose purchase decisions in 2014-15 were guided purely by the pursuit of the "price-performance sweetspot." A machine with a single GTX 970, a $150-ish Core i3 processor, and 8 GB of memory, would find it rather difficult to play today's AAA titles at recommended settings. To play them at 1080p, you would have to water down quite some eye-candy, and in some cases, even use fallbacks to older API versions (DirectX 11) on some games, for playable frame-rates. In a parallel universe without the crypto-plague, a $300-ish investment on a sweetspot graphics card such as the GTX 1070 would be a quick-fix to the problem.
There is still hope that some day graphics card prices will come down, that repeated crypto-exchange heists and growing difficulty levels will make it unviable for just anyone and their dog with a graphics card to mine coins; and NVIDIA and AMD launch new-generation GPUs at sane prices. Save up for that day. Save big, for when that day comes, build future-proof.
You may not have to aim for an HEDT (high-end desktop) build with some high core-count processor, quad-channel memory, and oodles of connectivity; but the fastest mainstream-desktop processor (which is where the Core i7-8700K and the Ryzen 7 1800X stand today), should do. Pair that with an amount of memory that's at least half of what the processor's memory controller supports. My Core i7-4770K, for example, supports a maximum of 32 GB of memory. I paired it with 16 GB of it. 16 GB is just a quarter of what today's i7-8700K and 1800X support.
With multi-GPU showing no signs of a revival, your next graphics card purchase should ideally be the SKU that's just a notch below your preferred GPU manufacturer's halo product (which are often overpriced). The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, is an example of one such SKU. Such a card will give you future-proofing for at least 3 years, and game-developers will point to such SKUs in their recommended system requirements lists for the foreseeable 5 years.
DRAM prices continue to torment gaming PC builders, with memory prices seeing triple-digit inflation over what they should be (a 32 GB dual-channel DDR4 memory kit, which should have ideally been priced around $200, is going for $500 these days). While DRAM prices are hot, NAND flash prices aren't. Solid-state drives, which still majorly implement NAND flash (with 3D Xpoint still in its infancy), are the cheapest they've ever been, with price-per-gigabyte dipping below the $0.25-mark for the first time. The world's largest NAND flash memory makers also happen to be the world's largest DRAM makers, so I wouldn't count on SSDs being forever cheap. I would buy the largest capacity SSD with $0.25-ish price-per-GB while I still can.
There may yet be a future for DIY gaming PCs, provided you buy components that are sanely priced right now, and save up for future-proof components as their prices sober up. Sweetspot products turn bitter sooner than you think.
26 Comments on Lesson from the Crypto/DRAM Plagues: Build Future-Proof
One upgrade in that time on the GPU.
So what should I do now that I'm ready for an upgrade?
I think the lesson you are suggesting relies on lucky timing.
That took being in the know. Same with DRAM. The nand market showed predictions of being more expensive each coming quarter so...
I have a friend eho wants to build his first budget gaming PC, this shortage is making him miss the train to #PCMR land
This is just mindless and pointless craziness
Take a look at what Maersk and IBM are doing for global shipping for example.
Would you have an issue with it if there was plenty of chip supply for the demand and the prices were capped at MSRP?
Oh and what word is the **** supposed to represent? Is that meant as a personal attack?
Oh, the irony. That's the problem with this whole debate. Both sides are always "me, me, me!" and never do they look at it from the other side.
Just so everyone knows, you can make more money buying cards at MSRP from nowinstock.net and selling cards higher than MSRP at ebay than mining.
Guess what a lot of people are doing?
That's not mining, that's capitalism.
My next GPU will definatly have 8GB of VRAM or more which should help offset the weaker CPU not having enough VRAM in games that require it is often one of the bigger pitfalls to image quality versus performance so I think I'll manage fine. I do alright even with my current setup so I can't really complain I have to turn a lot of settings to low now or off in some cases if it's something I don't really care about anyway and impacts FPS fairly noticeably. That said games still awesome I'm sure the 4K resolution helps offset lowering of some of the other settings anyway in a fairly noticeable way. I'm curious now how shadows/lighting for example looks at like 1080p on high versus upscaled 4k on medium/low in a side by side comparison it would be interesting. I mean obviously resolution impacts and lessens the perceived effect on AA so it probably helps with lighting and shadows too, but I've never seen it really compared between the two on a tech site in depth.
It is a dangerous craziness that must be eradicated. Anyone trying to argue on this is simply blind
A currency that is the distilles essens of the pure speculation.
You are fool, yes a fool if you think such a situation can last longer.
To be good a crypto must be, firs proof of stake, that can be a good to create opportunity tu earn money the way you earn interests. Must be guaranteed by someone, must be legal, spendable and accepted, the amount should not be fixed becaise other way this cripto will became again not a currency but a speculation instrument.
I also don't buy into the idea that crypto is going anywhere, honestly. Nothing indicates that. That's bad short term perhaps but could be very good longterm. It depends largely on how efficient it can be made/implemented.
(ps pardon my bad English)
In the real world even if I didn't have internet access, I could sell it very easily on the street. Hell, I could probably SELL it to a fast food dude who recognized it from the news for a meal.
Or, in the nearest big city to me, Seattle, I could just stop by that weird coffee place that accepts bitcoin and buy a metric ton of coffee cake.
But seriously it's about more than just GPU prices, RAM prices have gone the same way, so did CPU prices when Intel held their monopoly for so many years. In general it feels like we had a golden 10 years or so where prices across the board where very good and even on modest budgets you could build a pretty solid build that would last for 3-5 years. I would say even though the whole PC/desktop computer market has declined in recent years the market for custom PC's/Gaming PC's/HEDT and self made has grown, in turn, manufacturers of components, not neccesarily system builders have noticed this trend and systematically increased their prices across the board to maximise profits, call it supply and demand, fab problems, floods, increased costs etc etc but it is what it is. It will definitely turn again and maybe not so long on the GPU front as a lot of gamers have been holding off for a long time in purchasing new GPU's, same with RAM, it's just a waiting game, how long before people who have put off upgrading and building a new system before the knock on effect is felt by the manufacturers, even with their current inflated prices?
I'm no lawyer of course, so I might be wrong...