# What has happened to the graphics cards market?



## PMc (Jul 3, 2021)

I currently find it difficult to obtain a graphics card. Even for a 12-year-old FX-1800 (which is of not much use for usual computer users) people are still willing to pay a few coins. (I would expect such old and specialized piece to not find any bidders on ebay at wednesday). Everything else seems to have become dead-cheap, but not graphics cards. I don't understand it - normal users don't need a graphics card because consumer cpu have it integrated, and gamers usually want the fastest and newest they can afford?
(I for my part just want 1 or 2 WQHD panels filled with my editors, xterms etc. - that needs neither much memory nor shaders, only a few connectors that can cope with the resolution.)


----------



## Hakaba (Jul 3, 2021)

Maybe mining crypto currency ?
I have a colleague that buy all graphics cards on eBay and resell it to a farmer with benefits...
Strange and risky attitude but this may be a part of the explanation ?


----------



## phalange (Jul 3, 2021)

This has been going on since the middle of the pandemic. Manufacturing was interrupted, inventory was wiped clean, and even now that production is back there remain massive shortfalls. Here's one of a thousand articles on the topic:









						Average GPU Pricing Skyrockets as Market Quadruples to $12.5 Billion, Report Says
					

GPU makers enjoy robust demand and absurdly high pricing




					www.tomshardware.com
				




Every tier from top dollar to EOL crap is selling like hotcakes and has been for months.


----------



## astyle (Jul 8, 2021)

GPU prices are coming down these days, though... $3500 RTX 3090 on Amazon is now $2500... I'm gonna wait until next year to get my next GPU, though.


----------



## SirDice (Jul 9, 2021)

phalange said:


> Manufacturing was interrupted,


Nope. Both Samsung and TSMC never stopped producing. The "problem" is that chip orders need to be put in a long time ahead. Sales were not expected to increase so the orders were for 'normal' quantaties. Combine this with a lot of other chip orders by car manufacturers, phones, etc. manufacturers simply didn't order enough. And you can't just say, hey Samsung/TSMC, that order we put in, yeah, we're going to need a lot more. Production runs need to be planned nearly a year in advance. So supply was good, it just wasn't enough to meet the demands.


----------



## astyle (Jul 9, 2021)

SirDice said:


> Nope. Both Samsung and TSMC never stopped producing. The "problem" is that chip orders need to be put in a long time ahead. Sales were not expected to increase so the orders were for 'normal' quantaties. Combine this with a lot of other chip orders by car manufacturers, phones, etc. manufacturers simply didn't order enough. And you can't just say, hey Samsung/TSMC, that order we put in, yeah, we're going to need a lot more. Production runs need to be planned nearly a year in advance. So supply was good, it just wasn't enough to meet the demands.


Ahh, combine that with the Evergreen getting stuck in Suez canal for a few weeks, and shippers getting stuck outside of ports due to coronavirus concerns. Oh, and for good measure, we can also throw in the fact that the global transportation infrastructure was prioritized for distribution of the vaccine and hunting for canned oxygen.


----------



## phalange (Jul 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> .So supply was good, it just wasn't enough to meet the demands.


This statement is an oxymoron. This article is the most thorough I've seen: Bloomberg - Chip Shortage.


----------



## astyle (Jul 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> And you can't just say, hey Samsung/TSMC, that order we put in, yeah, we're going to need a lot more


Major makers (Samsung/AMD/Intel/etc) do exactly that... with the work-at-home movement, demand did spike, and outstrip the supply. 

This is why the situation we have is called 'Chip Shortage'. Just simple math of the supply/demand race. You have 8 chips and want 10? that's a shortage. So you address that by making 800? Great. Everybody else finds out that you make 800, and demand 1,000. Still a shortage, even though you made more chips this time around.


----------



## SirDice (Jul 10, 2021)

astyle said:


> You have 8 chips and want 10? that's a shortage. So you address that by making 800? Great.


That's a problem though, because you can't do that with chip manufactures. Your new order of the extra 792 chips will be added to the end of the line. Because there are other orders to fill first.


----------



## astyle (Jul 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> That's a problem though, because you can't do that with chip manufactures. Your new order of the extra 792 chips will be added to the end of the line. Because there are other orders to fill first.


Yep, and then everybody has to wait for the whole pipeline to unclog.


----------



## SirDice (Jul 10, 2021)

In the meantime demand for your product skyrockets and you can't deliver. So prices go through the roof. Because there's a high demand and low supply scalpers get in on the action too, driving up prices even further. Even the second hand market is affected by it.


----------



## ralphbsz (Jul 10, 2021)

The DRAM shortage is actually very serious, and driving up costs (quite astronomically) worldwide.

In the department of humor, from The Register:



> Not all chips are scarce, however. GPUs are now easier to buy, thanks to Beijing's ruling elite and its hard-line stance on crypto-coins. Cryptocurrency miners in China are getting rid of their graphics accelerators as the communist government continues to crack down on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like. Mining plants have been shut down across Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, at least, and the digital dosh has all but been banned. As such, there's no need for miners to hang onto GPUs, and so they're flooded onto the market.
> 
> One seller is peddling second-hand GeForce RTX 3060s, for example, for just 1,760 yuan or $270; that’s nearly 60 bucks off its retail price of $329, according to crypto-trading site The Block.


----------



## PMc (Jul 11, 2021)

SirDice said:


> Even the second hand market is affected by it.


It is horrible. This is what I finally received, wrapped in plastic(!!) sheets without any antistatic protection. And there is Cthulhu tentacle slime on it!







It is 7470 Caicos with the cooler ripped off, and instead a passive cooler from an ASUS GT210 mounted. And that cooler was cut to shape by somebody not really capable of proper metalworking.


----------



## astyle (Jul 11, 2021)

I'd suggest looking for something brand-new on Amazon, Best Buy BHPhotoVideo or NewEgg instead.


----------



## PMc (Jul 11, 2021)

astyle said:


> I'd suggest looking for something brand-new on Amazon, Best Buy BHPhotoVideo or NewEgg instead.


Oh, I did. And couldn't find something suitable.

What specifically would You suggest? I want to run a Haswell Xeon serverboard (mfd ca. 2016) as a desktop for a few weeks, and for that time need a graphics card to drive one (or two) 2560x1440 screens for the usual desktop stuff (browser, office, videos). (And I need a soundcard, also.)
Normally that desktop runs with an i5-3570 (mfd 2012), and the integrated HD2500 GPU suits just fine - so I won't need anything newer. The shops You mention above, they offer graphics cards for 500 or 1000 $. What do these things actually do, to what use can they be put on FreeBSD (except eating lots of electricity)?

Furthermore, I am longterm unemployed without chance to get a job, and have no money for new stuff, simply because I have no money at all.


----------



## astyle (Jul 11, 2021)

PMc said:


> Oh, I did. And couldn't find something suitable.
> 
> What specifically would You suggest? I want to run a Haswell Xeon serverboard (mfd ca. 2016) as a desktop for a few weeks, and for that time need a graphics card to drive one (or two) 2560x1440 screens for the usual desktop stuff (browser, office, videos). (And I need a soundcard, also.)
> Normally that desktop runs with an i5-3570 (mfd 2012), and the integrated HD2500 GPU suits just fine - so I won't need anything newer. The shops You mention above, they offer graphics cards for 500 or 1000 $. What do these things actually do, to what use can they be put on FreeBSD (except eating lots of electricity)?
> ...


In that case, I can suggest craigslist for your area, and expand your search area as much as you're willing to. you can also use pcpartpicker.com to look for compatible stuff for your hardware. FWIW, I used pcpartpicker to get the parts for my rig. It is perfectly possible to use a spreadsheet to do a little bit of thinking and adding things up. I actually wanted to do a Xeon + high-end Nvidia rig back in 2017. Played with pcpartpicker, priced a few builds for myself - before settling on a Ryzen 5 1400 and an RX 550 4 GB. Found the stuff on Amazon for very cheap back then. Nowadays I check back - the exact same specs AND components would set me back close to $2k today, after paying just $800 (including about $150 in low-quality components that fried and needed to be replaced). But my point is, I'd rather deal with a reputable shop, and maybe shell out a bit more, than take a risk with an unscrupulous, opportunistic, newly launched shop that offers unheard-of low prices.

I mentioned in other threads that I'm trying to get GPU computing going under FreeBSD... It's still a goal for me.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jul 13, 2021)

PMc said:


>



That water looks very choppy. Are you not worried about it sinking?


----------



## neel (Jul 13, 2021)

While the GPU shortage sucks, period, a non-gamer like me did take advantage of cheaper non-GPU hardware which resulted from it.

Since I'm not a gamer, I was able to upgrade my workstation on the cheap by buying an AMD Ryzen 5800X-based PC without a GPU (HP Omen 30L), putting my current GPU (Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti) in the 30L, and loading FreeBSD.

This scheme works with (less-savvy?) scalpers buying a gaming PC from Best Buy/Newegg/etc., stripping out the original GPU, and reselling the two independently on eBay. I don't recommend you participate in the scheme yourself (you're better off investing in stocks, crypto, real estate, art, et al.). But if you need to upgrade your PC on the cheap and already have a GPU, this is (or was) an option.

Since I'm not a gamer, the GTX 1660 Ti is more than enough for accelerating a 4K display with GNOME/Xorg. If I was building a PC (like I did with a recent home server), my GPU would be much worse. I had a GT 620 in my last desktop build, and that because FreeBSD didn't support Intel Haswell graphics at the time).


----------

