Graphics card prices skyrocketed, and the wait-and-see party lost. I never expected this.

Meng Chenxiaocha sent from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

I never expected that last year, I was confident and ready to buy a 30 series graphics card, but now I can hardly afford even a 1660Ti.

Not only did the official original price of RTX 3070 soar all the way to over 8,000, it also successfully defeated the next-generation console PS5 with the power of a single card.

Even the antique 10 series graphics cards that have long been discontinued have achieved perfect value retention and can still be sold second-hand at a price close to the original price four years later.

What happened to the promise that the Wait Party will never be slaves?

This time the price surge even alarmed CCTV, and the topic of graphics cards appeared on many news programs in succession.

Crazy graphics card prices

Regarding CCTV's report that graphics card prices have increased by 100%, netizens in the graphics card forum said that this is somewhat of an understatement.

In fact, the price of mid-range graphics cards, which are in great demand among players, has increased by more than double.

The RTX 3070, which was released in September last year, was officially priced at 3,899 yuan, but now it has exceeded 8,000 yuan. The RTX 3060, which was just launched, has been hyped up from the official price of 2,499 yuan to nearly 6,000 yuan, and you have to make an appointment to buy it.

The volatile market conditions make game players' mentality explode. When the market falls, they think it can fall further, and when the market rises, they are afraid that it will continue to rise and buy at high prices.

If you can't afford a new generation graphics card, can you buy a second-hand 10-series or 20-series graphics card to try first? Sorry, they have also increased in price.

On a domestic second-hand trading platform, you can even see that the antique-level graphics card GTX 1060 from 2016 is being sold for 1,800 yuan, even though the official price of this graphics card is only over 2,000 yuan. Graphics cards are now more valuable than second-hand iPhones.

An N card costs more than twice the price, so what about an A card?

The AMD 6700XT, which went on sale this month, has now become an "air card", with the price soaring from the official 3699 yuan to 5999 yuan.

If I don't want to buy an N card or an A card, then I can just buy Intel's integrated graphics card, right?

Facts have proved that as long as the word "graphics card" is involved, soaring prices are inevitable.

Some players found that even Intel's pre-sale i9-11900K (with integrated graphics) is more than 1,600 yuan more expensive than the i9-11900KF (without integrated graphics). The integrated graphics card is actually sold at the price of a discrete graphics card.

Generally speaking, the price difference between a Core desktop CPU with or without integrated graphics should be 200 yuan.

The gaming laptops that originally did not have a prominent price-performance ratio now seem to have become attractive. Although their performance cannot be compared with desktop-level graphics cards, at least they can be bought.

But don’t be happy too soon, because miners have also set their sights on them, and mining with laptops has become a reality.

If you search for "laptop mining" on e-commerce platforms, you can also see specially customized products. Among them, the combination of the 10th generation Pentium processor and the 3060 is obviously prepared for miners.

Although its mining performance is far inferior to that of desktop graphics cards, it is relatively easy to buy, and after mining, it can be refurbished and sold to players in the name of "girls' personal use".

The inability to buy graphics cards affects more than just gamers. For people working in machine learning and 3D rendering, graphics cards are their alchemy furnace and their livelihood.

We asked a friend who is engaged in scientific research, and he said that due to the price increase of graphics cards, the original plan to replace the graphics card for the modeling machine has been scrapped because it is far beyond the budget.

We should look at everything dialectically. Although scientific research has been hindered, somewhere on the planet, a "teen with internet addiction" may have been saved because of this.

Why is it so hard to get a card?

The shortage of graphics cards is partly due to insufficient global semiconductor production capacity. Not only graphics cards are affected, but the automotive industry is also unable to buy chips.

But the most important reason is the skyrocketing price of virtual currency.

Since January last year, the price of Bitcoin has risen nearly 10 times, driving the appreciation of virtual currencies such as Ethereum.

The profits from mining are getting higher and higher, and even purchasing graphics cards at a premium is profitable. Miners are naturally willing to pay a higher price, and it is naturally difficult for gamers to buy graphics cards at the original price.

As for whether the graphics cards are sold to miners or gamers, the manufacturers may not care. Zotac's Twitter homepage in the United States even officially promotes mining, which shows the attitude of the manufacturer.

According to media reports, due to the impact of the epidemic, many Internet cafes in South Korea were unable to operate normally and began to transform into mining.

One of the Internet cafes, which has 200 high-performance computers, can earn about 5,800 yuan by mining continuously for 15 hours, which is even higher than the income from normal business operations of the Internet cafe.

Some people even set their sights on the school's deep learning computing cluster, hacking into the system to mine some minerals before leaving.

△ Picture from Tieba

Driven by interests, everyone dares to take risks and become a "Zhang San". Paying a higher price to buy a graphics card is nothing. The power of individual players will always be small.

Are manufacturers just going to sit back and watch prices soar?

What Nvidia is doing

On the eve of the release of RTX 3060 in February this year, in order to allow players to buy graphics cards, NVIDIA decided to limit the mining efficiency of 3060 to 50%, and at the same time planned to launch a dedicated mining card CMP series.

But soon the unlocking driver was accidentally released by the official, and the 3060 inevitably joined the ranks of shortages and price increases.

As for the mining card series itself, although the increase is not as exaggerated as the game card series, it is still...

The lowest-end model 30HX among mining cards went on sale recently. The initial selling price of US$720 was quickly broken and has risen to US$815 .

This price is more expensive than the GTX 1660s gaming graphics card with similar computing power and power consumption. In addition, the castration of the graphics output interface makes it difficult for resale, so it is probably difficult for mining bosses to let go of the gaming graphics card.

On the other hand, Nvidia doubled the price of its cloud gaming service GeForce Now. Even if you can't buy a graphics card and want to play cloud games, you will be reaped the benefits.

The adjusted price is $9.99/month or $99.99/year, but early users who have subscribed before can keep the preferential price of $4.99/month for life.

Intel is out, and the I-Card is here

By the way, Intel also announced that it will release the new gaming graphics card Xe HPG series on March 26th, US time.

There are 6 models in total . According to reports, the highest-end model will be equipped with 512 execution units, 4096 stream processors, a core frequency of 1800MHz, and 16GB of GDDR6 video memory.

Some netizens commented that as long as Intel has products in stock, it can win the graphics card war even if the performance is weaker.

Reference links:
[1]https://www.polygon.com/2021/3/18/22336899/geforce-now-price-priority-membership-nvidia-founders?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
[2]https://pad.mydrivers.com/1/743/743835.htm
[3]https://tieba.baidu.com/p/7266813262
[4]https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/18/22338702/intel-xe-hpg-gaming-gpu-dg2-scavenger-hunt-march-26th