Thursday, June 17th 2021

Secondary Market GPU Pricing in Downtrend, Better Times to be a Gamer May be Ahead

Millions of bytes have been written regarding the current GPU market conditions already, which pairs strained logistics channels due to COVID-19 with increased quarantine-fueled demand by gamers - while also throwing in semiconductor manufacturing woes, miners, and scalpers. All in all, it seems that miners and scalpers managed to get their hands on roughly 25% (around 700,000) of distributed current-gen graphics cards during Q1 2021 which, for some reason, seems much lower than the general perception on their impact on this market.

With that said, Reddit user @gregable aggregated daily pricing for GPUs on Ebay and then calculated the GPU's $/hashrate for Ethereum mining. With hashrates remaining steady for graphics cards, this effectively establishes a price trend for GPUs. The news are good, for once: prices are falling, with the average $ cost per MH falling from $26 on May 16th down to $20 as of yesterday. The move is supported mostly by price drops on high hash-rate graphics cards such as the RTX 3090 (a 32% price drop during this period) and RTX 3080/RTX 3070 graphics cards (which dropped by 25%).
That these are the cards being flipped the most at this point in time makes sense for two reasons: ETH 2.0 being around the corner, which will render Ethereum mining obsolete, and the relative improvement in graphics cards' availability, which helps bring prices further down. Since these are the costliest graphics cards, and present the greatest investment risk should their cost not be recouped via mining, miners are offloading these first, in an attempt to make up for their investment and/or to still get some $ in while pricing is still high. Summer might bring in added demand from the consumer market for GPUs, and then there's the backlog of orders that still have to be served and which will keep availability lower than usual, but it seems things are generally improving for the average gamer.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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45 Comments on Secondary Market GPU Pricing in Downtrend, Better Times to be a Gamer May be Ahead

#26
AusWolf
AuerThere are no "overkill" GPU's.
There are, depending on the use case. Even my 5700 XT was overkill for 1080p, hence my downgrade to 1650 which I didn't regret (as I made a profit).
Posted on Reply
#28
AusWolf
Legacy-ZANormally I would agree, but they are RTX cards, look what happened to everyone that turned on raytracing in Resident Evil Village @ 1440p/4k. I am sure you will see the same thing happen with 4GB @ 1080p. That is why there always needs to be a little more VRAM for headroom and to make sure your card isn't already absolute after the first year because games started to demand more.
I'd say VRAM usage and VRAM requirement are different things. Almost everybody advised me to stay away from Cyberpunk 2077 with just a 4 GB 1650, and here I am, playing it at 80% 1080 high with a VRAM usage of around 3.5 GB average.
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#29
R0H1T
Well this would usually coincide with the popping of crypto bubble, let's see if the trend actually continues like in the past!
Posted on Reply
#30
Caring1
trparkyI was able to snag a RTX 3060 two days ago at a Microcenter. My brother needed to buy a notebook cooling pad, so I went back to the DIY section to see if they had any cards in stock, sure enough... they had one card left. Two people walked up behind me walked away when they noticed that I was going to buy it. I was lucky as hell to be there at the right time.
Congrats, I'm jelly you have the money to be able to do that kind of impulse buying. :clap:
I'd have to save for a year (maybe longer) to get one.
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#31
Auer
AusWolfThere are, depending on the use case. Even my 5700 XT was overkill for 1080p, hence my downgrade to 1650 which I didn't regret (as I made a profit).
You downgraded your GPU instead of upgrading your monitor?
GTFO
Posted on Reply
#32
AusWolf
AuerYou downgraded your GPU instead of upgrading your monitor?
GTFO
To be fair, I only downgraded because I earned about £200 doing so. :pimp:
Posted on Reply
#33
MxPhenom 216
ASIC Engineer
I spent $1800 retail from Newegg the next day they launched on my 3080Ti and I don't feel bad about it at all.

Oh and i sold my 1070 on ebay for $400. POGCHAMP
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#34
R-T-B
Legacy-ZAThen you get these people that have the audacity to say "These shortages were not caused by miners" Oh give me a break. :roll:
I mean... they weren't. Just because you keep saying it does not make it so. These cards were out of stock at launch, before mining blew up, hence mining was not the "cause" of the shortage.

One thing is certain though, mining has made it a lot worse.
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#35
Tom Sunday
trparkyI was able to snag a RTX 3060...
Have already tugged away $80 for a new GPU upgrade. Will probably go to our local computer show as the Bangladesh boys supposed to be getting in a slew of used RTX 1080ti & RTX 2080s. Most likely former miner inventory. Working at Walmart "third-shift" as a lift truck driver. So things are tight. But yet a used '2080' is still a piece of a dream for me. Concrats to you my friend!
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#36
trparky
Caring1Congrats, I'm jelly you have the money to be able to do that kind of impulse buying. :clap:
I'd have to save for a year (maybe longer) to get one.
I'm not made of money, nowhere near being made of money. I've been putting away money for some time to buy it so I had the money to buy it but for the longest time I had no card to buy.
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#37
Minus Infinity
No longer care about current gen. I got a great deal on a 2080 Super and only game at 1440p and can play anything maxed out. With DLSS 2 and soon FSR I'll be in a better position. I'm now waiting for RDNA3 and Lovelace.
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#38
64K
It will be a couple of years before we see Cards selling for close to MSRP. Miners, scalpers, the Pandemic have all done their damage and it's going to take time to sort it out.
Posted on Reply
#39
Hyderz
u know what ive noticed... there is alot of prebuilt systems on ebay with no gpu and they are selling for around 500 dollars...
complete with cpu,ram,mobo,ssd, psu, case .... if anybody wanting an upgrade to their systems, its a good time to buy.
theres quite a few 10,11th gen i7's and amd 5600x 5800x systems..
Posted on Reply
#40
Legacy-ZA
R-T-BI mean... they weren't. Just because you keep saying it does not make it so. These cards were out of stock at launch, before mining blew up, hence mining was not the "cause" of the shortage.

One thing is certain though, mining has made it a lot worse.
Yes and no.

So it has always been with every new generation that launched, the first month or two you would see stock disappear fast, unfortunately, this time, the launch coincided with the crypto bull market, making the problem 100x times worse.

It's not just me saying so. The evidence is there if you want to look, don't look at what nVidia's chart says, look at where the cards are actually at, an example? Okay, this is just 1x person, in his home... this isn't even the countless other warehouses that are also owned by only one person, that have thousands of cards in them, THOUSANDS.

EtherMining/comments/nfppnv
We are but gamers, some of us at least, can't tell anymore these days, we only buy 1x card, maybe two if there was still SLi / Crossfire.
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#41
R-T-B
Legacy-ZASo it has always been with every new generation that launched, the first month or two you would see stock disappear fast, unfortunately, this time, the launch coincided with the crypto bull market, making the problem 100x times worse.
Maybe I'm a stickler for words, but that's more or less exactly what I said, and still not "cause"
Legacy-ZAWe are but gamers, some of us at least, can't tell anymore these days
Keep in mind, TPU has never been a gaming exclusive community.
Posted on Reply
#42
AusWolf
R-T-BI mean... they weren't. Just because you keep saying it does not make it so. These cards were out of stock at launch, before mining blew up, hence mining was not the "cause" of the shortage.

One thing is certain though, mining has made it a lot worse.
So you could say, it's not "the cause" but "one of the causes".
Posted on Reply
#43
Legacy-ZA
AusWolfSo you could say, it's not "the cause" but "one of the causes".
One of the major causes. :)
Posted on Reply
#44
Chaitanya
Even Camera industry is hit by the same shortage and scalpers.
Posted on Reply
#45
R-T-B
Legacy-ZAOne of the major causes. :)
That I can agree with.

See, you aren't entirely wrong, I'd just word it differently. Probably my former journalist trying to correct myself still... lol.
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