Thursday, May 12th 2022
Bitcoin Bloodbath Brings Cheer to Gamers as Graphics Card Prices Plummet
Bitcoin, along with most cryptocurrencies are going through a cycle of devaluation. They may rebound in the future, but for now it means that crypto miners will halt purchases of graphics cards, and possibly even sell what they have, to raise capital for next-generation GPU purchases (late-2022). What this means is a flooding of the market with used graphics cards, which will put tremendous pressure on graphics card manufacturers to lower prices. It's also a means for NVIDIA and AMD to clear out their current-generation inventory, to make room for the next-gen. The inflection of all these factors brings cheer to PC gamers, who can finally have an NVIDIA "Ampere" or AMD RDNA2 graphics card at prices that are either at or below MSRP (launch prices).
Bitcoin has crashed nearly 60%, from its November 2021 price of 65,000 USD, to 27,150, as of this writing. This will have a direct impact on the economics of mining cryptocurrencies using power-hungry high-end graphics cards. Those with mining farms will look to stop mining, and possibly get rid of some of their graphics cards while their market-value are still at an acceptable level. The competition between pre-owned graphics cards and brand-new ones from the market, will bring down prices of both.
NVIDIA recently announced the "Restocked and Reloaded" marketing campaign, where the company is reaching out to gamers, telling them that their RTX 30-series cards are back in stock, at MSRP pricing. AMD, on the other hand, has refreshed its RX 6000 series product stack with three new SKUs, signaling gamers that it has new hardware on the shelves.
An AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT can be had for as low as $899, which is also the price for the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. The cheapest RTX 3060 Ti is $529, while the cheapest RX 6700 XT is $498. The cheapest RX 6600 XT is at $399, while the cheapest RTX 3060 is going for $419. Rejoice!
Bitcoin has crashed nearly 60%, from its November 2021 price of 65,000 USD, to 27,150, as of this writing. This will have a direct impact on the economics of mining cryptocurrencies using power-hungry high-end graphics cards. Those with mining farms will look to stop mining, and possibly get rid of some of their graphics cards while their market-value are still at an acceptable level. The competition between pre-owned graphics cards and brand-new ones from the market, will bring down prices of both.
An AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT can be had for as low as $899, which is also the price for the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. The cheapest RTX 3060 Ti is $529, while the cheapest RX 6700 XT is $498. The cheapest RX 6600 XT is at $399, while the cheapest RTX 3060 is going for $419. Rejoice!
122 Comments on Bitcoin Bloodbath Brings Cheer to Gamers as Graphics Card Prices Plummet
Still way too much though for this class of card.
Anything else is a garbage noisy 2 slot design, except the MSI Trio, but it has LEDs on the PCB, screw that.
Well, honestly, the reason 2 slot designs are garbage is not because of the shrouds on it, but the chip under it, which is way too power hungry at this tier. Ampere to be fair is really not that fantastic if you need massive coolers at bottom midrange, I mean how did that happen... I'm looking at a 225W TDP 2 slot x80 here...
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Buying expensive midrange cards never makes sense when you can just buy a higher end card for the same money. Like you can almost get a 3080 for the price of the Strix. The reason the Strix is rising again is because it just seems EOL as there's no market for it. There's only one store selling it with no immediate stock.
For the record, it's a damned good card (see specs) but I wanted the 3000 series at the time and was just waiting for it to be released. Then it all went south.
Edit: besides NH is just a small and insignificant fraction of the mining market. It's for the noobs basically.
Ideally i want a ASUS x Noctua 3070, but not the shit brown tint.What isn't noisy for you may be noisy for me.
Just to give you an idea. I can hear the Noctua NF-A12x25 above 900 RPM and the NF-A14 above 750 RPM.
So yeah, modern cards with those shit 10MM thick fans will be noisy for me, especially since they run at 1500 RPM+.
I need a Strix and deshroud it with 25mm think fans. I will most likely end up with a RTX 4060, seeing the RTX 3070 is rated at 300 watts, and i want to stay below 250 watts.