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Graphics card prices really are something. In late 2019 I purchased an nvidia gtx 1060 used for $120. Now just yesterday I sold that same card with an additiona

Graphics card prices really are something. In late 2019 I purchased an nvidia gtx 1060 used for $120. Now just yesterday I sold that same card with an additional year of wear on it for $220. This is a four-year-old card design that can barely run modern games at 1080p/60fps/medium settings. I'd also been keeping track of used i7-4790k CPU prices, looking to upgrade from my i5-4670k. They started out at $120-$130 earlier in 2020 and are up to $160-$170 now. For an eight-year-old CPU! It used to be the case that computer components aged like milk, price wise, but with the death of Moore's law in the 2010s that is less and less the case. I remember RAM prices spiked a couple years back too.

nimos 6y ago
Huh - wow. I think I have a 1060 in my closet. I bought 2 for 100 each in 2019. Was planning to use one for GPU VM pass through and could never get it to work properly.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Might be sitting on a good chunk of change with those! Especially if they're 6gb models.
mey 6y ago
I have been looking to upgrade my i7-4770k rig to a Ryzen 5900x, but after seeing this insanity and paying attention to what the mfg's are being vague about, looks like I'll be waiting until June (or later). By then, there may be an entirely new generation of chips ready.
- zamadatix 6y ago
  CPUs aren't too bad. I've got a 5950X I bought at MSRP and I just found a site with a 5800X in stock for MSRP. 5900X on the same site is backordered but didn't see how long the wait is but I doubt it's months considering the 5800X was in stock. Intel is releasing Rocket Lake shortly but it won't have any options with more cores than the 5800X. Zen 4 isn't launching until late fall. Not sure availability will be any better on either of these launches anyways. GPUs are a little bit more ridiculous. You can get them if you don't need it to show up tomorrow but getting one at a reasonable price any time soon is much more a challenge than doing the same for a CPU. That being said I did manage to get a reasonably priced 3070 in a build early on but I put that to luck more than anything. Motherboards I haven't had any issues with.
  - bavell 6y ago
    There's okay stock for 5600X + 5800X but the 59xx series is nowhere to be found and probably won't be until later this year if you read between the lines of what the industry is saying. I broke down waiting for a 5950X and bought one off a scalper last week :/ luckily got it before the recent spike in price.
    - ecf 6y ago
      I want an 5900x, but I will end up buying another Intel CPU if AMD can’t get their act together and provide stock that I can buy without jumping through hoops or encouraging scalping.
      - mey 6y ago
        That is the interesting thing I think covering AMD on the GPU side and Intel on the CPU side, there is so much demand vs supply that less performance per price products are viable because MSRP has gone completely out the window.
    - mey 6y ago
      I refuse to pay/encourage scalpers (doesn't bother me others are) so I will wait, unless my system simply explodes.
trhway 6y ago
>Now just yesterday I sold that same card with an additional year of wear on it for $220. This is a four-year-old card design that can barely run modern games at 1080p/60fps/medium settings. a 6Gb version of it would generate about $3/day on Ethereum as of today, so it would be sweet, even by cryptocoin standards, ROI of ~70 days. The rise of Ethereum prices makes even the 2-3x GPU price growth of the last couple months still a good deal. If one wonders where all the GPUs are i think that provides pretty good idea https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2021/01/GeForce-RTX-3080-Mining-Rig-almost-operational.jpg https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2021/01/GeForce-RTX-3080-Mining...
- girvo 6y ago
  I’ve been considering using my 3060 Ti for this due to it. But electricity here in Aus is kind of painfully expensive, so I dunno if it’s worth it. That and it’s already hot enough in my office haha
- hertzrat 6y ago
  Is $90 a month even worth the electricity and nuisance cost?
  - trhway 6y ago
    that depends on your personal situation obviously - for some running say a hundred of these cards makes for a nice pocket change :)
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    A few years ago I made a tool, that removes nuisances except heat: https://losttech.software/Downloads/Mine/ https://losttech.software/Downloads/Mine/ It stops mining when you use the PC.
freedomben 6y ago
Yeah, I went to ebay to buy a used AMD card to replace a very old Nvidia card, and I was shocked at how expensive 5 to 7 year old cards still are.
polka_haunts_us 6y ago
I built a computer with a AMD 5600XT over a year ago, and was having a hell of a time getting it to not crash, so I bought a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 to maybe replace it with (which apparently scared the AMD card into working properly). I feel like a fool right now for not just sticking it in my garage for a year.
- neogodless 6y ago
  Ha! I do believe they cleaned up the drivers roughly around that time. I got my 5600XT in April 2020 and have not had any issues with it. Of course there's luck of the draw, too, but I read a lot of early adopters of the 5600/5700 cards had some issues with drivers. Looking on eBay, it looks like I could sell that $290 card for about $500...
theYipster 6y ago
I sold a 10 year old Asus Rampage III Black X58 motherboard last month on eBay for north of $650, which is more than what I paid for it new (even after accounting for inflation.) Granted, this was a limited edition board, but it is still 10 year old tech!
- ahelwer 6y ago
  CPUs are immortal, it's the motherboards that die. If you want to run a certain chipset, after some amount of time it's motherboard availability that will keep you from doing that!
  - kkaranth 6y ago
    > CPUs are immortal, it's the motherboards that die Can you elaborate?
    - viraptor 6y ago
      There are more separate elements of lower quality testing than CPUs (which go through serious qa and binning). For example capacitors on motherboards break/explode, PCB traces degrade/crack more often than a CPU will break.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      CPUs have a lower failure rate than motherboards, which makes sense if you think about it. (One is an IC, one is a complex assembly of many ICs and passive components.)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - x0 6y ago
      Anecdotally, I'm still running a computer I mostly bought in 2011, i5-2500K still going strong, but the motherboard has a few issues: one of the PCI-E slots works sometimes, one of the RAM slots is completely broken, and the RTC seems to lose a few minutes a week. CPUs should go pretty much forever, provided they're run on clean power. They're a little square, entirely encased. Motherboards are bigger and with physical connectors you need to use force on.
post_break 6y ago
I have a 4770k and because of the shortage rock a 3060ti I just got out of sheer luck. My friend might have snagged a 5950x but until it ships he’s not taking any chances ordering other parts. He’s been trying to get one since launch.
deleted 6y ago
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nickt 6y ago
CPU pricing is weird. If you look at the 6th-10th gen Core i7s they are not too far off in price, [1] - for example the 6700K is currently $272 and for ~$30 more you can get the 9700K. The current generation usually command a bit of a premium. [1] https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671%20601351803%20601321947%20601301612%20601295112%20601295116&cm_sp=Cat_CPU-Processors_1-_-Visnav-_-Intel-CPU_4&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671%20601351803%20601321...
- aquaticsunset 6y ago
  The 6700K has the same "most powerful CPU for its socket" situation going on. When I was looking to upgrade my 6600K, it was absurd how little extra it was to get a brand new Ryzen and motherboard compared to the 6700K.
antisthenes 6y ago
> This is a four-year-old card design that can barely run modern games at 1080p/60fps/medium settings. Nonsense. It runs all games on High/60fps or better, with the possible exception of Cyberpunk and RTX marketing gimmicks. That's why it's still a relevant card 4.5 years later and goes for $200+. I own one. > I'd also been keeping track of used i7-4790k CPU prices, looking to upgrade from my i5-4670k. They started out at $120-$130 earlier in 2020 and are up to $160-$170 now. For an eight-year-old CPU! Funny, since I own one as well (4670k). And I haven't ever felt CPU-limited. Mine is mildly overclocked to 4GHz, and it's been able to crunch everything I threw at it since I bought it in 2014, again with the possible exception of HEVC encoding. It's still a very relevant CPU and handily beats Ryzen 1st gen for example. It's also the last generation of Intel CPUs that lets you run a non-spyware version of Windows.
- User23 6y ago
  > It's also the last generation of Intel CPUs that lets you run a non-spyware version of Windows. Can you elaborate on this please?
  - greatgoat420 6y ago
    I think they mean it is the last Intel CPU generation supported by Windows 7.
- Jonnax 6y ago
  Ray tracing is a marketing gimmick? Just because high end GPUs aren't able to do it well doesn't mean it's a gimmick.
  - antisthenes 6y ago
    As far as it related to gaming, it's absolutely a gimmick. I'm sorry you fell for the marketing.
    - account42 6y ago
      You pretty much need ray tracing for reflections of objects that are not directly visible - hacks like SSR cannot give you that. Even if you don't care about graphics, RT can absolutely have an impact on gameplay too. And if you care about graphics then RT makes realistic lighting so much easier and with much less restrictions. Modern games have to fake so many effects just to make things look good which do come for "free" with RT. Now for the current iteration of RT graphics cards, it is still very limited so calling it a gimmick is a bit more warranted. But the hardware will improve (and has already from the first RT generation) which will allow more games and engines built arround RT instead of having it tacked on as an option.
tinco 6y ago
I bought 12 2070's for our render farm, and the account manager thought I was crazy. The 3000 series had already launched and would come back in stock next month he said. Who's laughing now, I don't think they ever got enough stock of any card to serve our needs. A week later they didn't have any Nvidia cards in stock, just none at all, luckily I had already bought all their 2070's or we would've run into delays.
- dylan604 6y ago
  One month of 12 2070s today produces a hell of a lot more rendered frames than waiting until next month to maybe get our hands on something. Let me just run and ask the client if we can push their deadline back while I'm at it.
lathiat 6y ago
I have a 4790k it's still pretty good work horse but finally getting to the point you'd be worth going up to a older Ryzen instead.. the pricing is similar and you get a memory boost etc. Though you do need a new mobo/ram but still.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Yeah I was weighing just upgrading the whole motherboard to a ryzen chipset or something, but I have an ITX build so it would be pretty expensive for the features that I want.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
Transistor have gotten smaller and transistor counts have continued to rise over the last 10 years. You might be thinking of frequency scaling, which is not the same as moore's law.
Veedrac 6y ago
Moore's Law isn't dead. Dennard scaling died, Intel's process hit a wall, and CPU architectural improvements stalled while Intel was stalling, but transistor density improvements have stayed steady year after year since 1970.
- Shorel 6y ago
  Moore's law is about transistors per dollar. If the cost of chips goes up, Moore's law is not holding.
  - AndrewDucker 6y ago
    Moore's Law is about transistor count per unit area doubling every two years. Nothing to do with money.
    - yaantc 6y ago
      No, the parent is right. Moore's law is about the transistor density of the least cost process. This is a quote from Moore's paper [1]: "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year [...].". When the cost part became tough the "cost side" was progressively dropped by being more and more creative on what cost is considered. First ignoring the NRE part to look only at the marginal cost per transistor. Then even this got problematic and the cost aspect was just ignored. The "true" Moore low creates a virtuous cycle: everybody move to the next node as it's better and cheaper, so there's no point to stay back. Also, because cost gets down the addressable market gets bigger, sustaining more costly fabs. This virtuous cycle operated for a long while, so much that many takes it for granted now. But if Moore's law die by not being lower cost (the other way is by not increasing density, and this is still progressing if slower than before), this virtuous cycle is broken. You can get higher density, but at a higher cost. With cost increasing only a subset of the market will move on to higher density. Little by little, the market size supporting the costlier high end will get smaller, while the fab cost is still increasing, contributing to a slower progress too. The virtuous cycle becomes vicious. This is happening now, although it's not too bad yet with enough very large actor able to sustain higher price (thanks Apple, I don't use you products but do benefit from all the money you're pouring into TSMC ;). And in the end, if this gets to a serious slow down, then there is the specter of commoditization. It won't happen soon, only after a possibly very long transition period as the tech is really hard. But if progress slows a lot, the lagger may eventually catch up. With more competition would come lower margins. Which is definitely bad for stock valuation. We're still far away from this, but it's still a possibility. Look how the process leader has always been the biggest cheerleader for the "Moore low is still alive and well" (and let's not talk cost between friends, shall we?). See how it was Intel when they started selling their 10nm future, and look how more discrete they are now, and how TSMC has replaced them as the "everything is fine" voice. [1] https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/Published_papers/Technology_overview/gordon_moore_1965_article.pdf https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/Published_papers/Technology_ov...
starky 6y ago
That is really interesting. I've got a GTX 1060 3GB that I purchased for $280, looks like I could reasonably sell it for $200CAD on ebay. $80 for 3 years of GPU usage wouldn't be a bad return.
- jtwaleson 6y ago
  But what are you going to do in the meantime? It's like people happy that their houses are increasing in value, but so do all the other houses. You've still got to live somewhere.
  - x4j91 6y ago
    Interest rates have gone down though. Presumably you sell your house and break the current 3.5% mortgage. Then buy a bigger / more expensive house and lock in at 1.5%. Overall your monthly payments remain similar.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > Overall your monthly payments remain similar. This is not a good way to measure things. Did you just exchange 10 years of monthly payments for 30 years of "similar" monthly payments? My mother protested to me over the cost of her new house, defending the idea that she could afford it by pointing out that monthly payments were similar -- property taxes on the new house were about the same size as mortgage payments on the old one. I was kind of horrified by this; conceptually, when you make a mortgage payment, your net worth goes up. When you make a tax payment, it goes down.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      This is how we get a housing bubble. The expectation of never ending credit that gets cheaper and cheaper. One day interest rates will go up and your house will not be as valuable as your mortgage says it is.
  - starky 6y ago
    In the meantime I'll continue to use my RTX 3070. The GTX 1060 is sitting in a box.
ornornor 6y ago
> components aged like milk Sour milk is not worth very much but it then becomes yogurt and cheese which are much more expensive. So I guess your analogy still holds? ;)
scns 6y ago
Well the 4790k is special in that regard. It is the best processor you can buy for the LGA1150 socket. Laid my eye on it too, my plan was to get the biggest performance boost for the smallest capital expenditure. The 4790k would have been a simple swap in and enjoy an at least 33% faster processor in my case. But instead of splunking 140 for one i got a used workstation with a Xeon E3-1271 (the 2. fastest Xeon without GPU) for 180. It included other parts, which made the upgrade free (if you don't count the work i did) by selling my old CPU+Mobo+GPU. The GPU (RX570) i had was at the same price level on ebay as when i bought it. If you badly wan't to upgrade (from a 4670k the delta is way smaller than from the CPU i had), i'd suggest looking for an E3-1281 or 1271 if you have an dGPU, if you need an iGPU replace the last digit with a 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Haswell-based_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E3-1245_v3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Haswell-based_Xe... (edit: clarify, add last paragraph and links)
- onli 6y ago
  > Well the 4790k is special in that regard. It is the best processor you can buy for the LGA1150 socket Little known fact and even less available, but: The best processor for the LGA1150 socket is not the i7-4790K, but the i7-5775C. Faster IPC, significantly bigger cache and a stronger iGPU, and despite not being called a K cpu it's overclockable. https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/cpu/compare?ids%5B%5D=Intel+Core+i7-4790K&ids%5B%5D=Intel+Core+i7-5775C https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/cpu/compare?ids%... shows a comparison with many gaming benchmarks. The Xeon route can be cheaper though, it's a good alternative.
  - scns 6y ago
    Well, it has the faster iGPU thats for sure. But if you use it for work it is usually slower: https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Intel%20Core%20i7-4790K,Intel%20Core%20i7-5775C https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Intel%20Core%20i7-... You can't just swap it out too, you need a mainboard with a 9-Series chipset, which you usually don't if you are running a Haswell.
    - onli 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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jaynetics 6y ago
Mindfactory is one of the biggest sellers of hardware in Germany. They always have a budget GFX card for around 50 EUR on their starting page, but recently they have replaced it every week or so with an older and worse model at the same price. Right now they're featuring the 7-year-old GT710! Two years ago, I'd have thought this could only happen in case of total economic collapse.
mcv 6y ago
GPU prices are really insane. 13 years ago I bought a brand-new Radeon HD3850, which at the time was one of the best GPUs available; the budget version of a line where the HD3870 (and later the HD3870 X2) was the high end. I paid €128 for it. That's not going to get you anything today. 3 years ago I paid €350 for a GTX 1050 TI. Now, everything new starts at €500, and everything older is a waste of money, says everybody.
baybal2 6y ago
GTX 1080 is the most bought, and resold GPU card around. Still not dying, and it was made in enormous quantities because nVidia made a big bet on crypto craze.
- hertzrat 6y ago
  According to steam hardware surveys, the 1060 has been king for years
rasz 6y ago
No need to aim for the top. Xeon 1231v3 will run you ~$70 and be 2x faster than current i5-4670k.
hertzrat 6y ago
My wife uses a 1060 and runs just about everything at high/60fps. It’s still a great card

nimos 6y ago

Huh - wow. I think I have a 1060 in my closet. I bought 2 for 100 each in 2019. Was planning to use one for GPU VM pass through and could never get it to work properly.

ahelwer 6y ago
Might be sitting on a good chunk of change with those! Especially if they're 6gb models.

mey 6y ago

I have been looking to upgrade my i7-4770k rig to a Ryzen 5900x, but after seeing this insanity and paying attention to what the mfg's are being vague about, looks like I'll be waiting until June (or later). By then, there may be an entirely new generation of chips ready.

zamadatix 6y ago
CPUs aren't too bad. I've got a 5950X I bought at MSRP and I just found a site with a 5800X in stock for MSRP. 5900X on the same site is backordered but didn't see how long the wait is but I doubt it's months considering the 5800X was in stock. Intel is releasing Rocket Lake shortly but it won't have any options with more cores than the 5800X. Zen 4 isn't launching until late fall. Not sure availability will be any better on either of these launches anyways. GPUs are a little bit more ridiculous. You can get them if you don't need it to show up tomorrow but getting one at a reasonable price any time soon is much more a challenge than doing the same for a CPU. That being said I did manage to get a reasonably priced 3070 in a build early on but I put that to luck more than anything. Motherboards I haven't had any issues with.
- bavell 6y ago
  There's okay stock for 5600X + 5800X but the 59xx series is nowhere to be found and probably won't be until later this year if you read between the lines of what the industry is saying. I broke down waiting for a 5950X and bought one off a scalper last week :/ luckily got it before the recent spike in price.
  - ecf 6y ago
    I want an 5900x, but I will end up buying another Intel CPU if AMD can’t get their act together and provide stock that I can buy without jumping through hoops or encouraging scalping.
    - mey 6y ago
      That is the interesting thing I think covering AMD on the GPU side and Intel on the CPU side, there is so much demand vs supply that less performance per price products are viable because MSRP has gone completely out the window.
  - mey 6y ago
    I refuse to pay/encourage scalpers (doesn't bother me others are) so I will wait, unless my system simply explodes.

trhway 6y ago

>Now just yesterday I sold that same card with an additional year of wear on it for $220. This is a four-year-old card design that can barely run modern games at 1080p/60fps/medium settings. a 6Gb version of it would generate about $3/day on Ethereum as of today, so it would be sweet, even by cryptocoin standards, ROI of ~70 days. The rise of Ethereum prices makes even the 2-3x GPU price growth of the last couple months still a good deal. If one wonders where all the GPUs are i think that provides pretty good idea https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2021/01/GeForce-RTX-3080-Mining-Rig-almost-operational.jpg https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2021/01/GeForce-RTX-3080-Mining...

girvo 6y ago
I’ve been considering using my 3060 Ti for this due to it. But electricity here in Aus is kind of painfully expensive, so I dunno if it’s worth it. That and it’s already hot enough in my office haha
hertzrat 6y ago
Is $90 a month even worth the electricity and nuisance cost?
- trhway 6y ago
  that depends on your personal situation obviously - for some running say a hundred of these cards makes for a nice pocket change :)
- lostmsu 6y ago
  A few years ago I made a tool, that removes nuisances except heat: https://losttech.software/Downloads/Mine/ https://losttech.software/Downloads/Mine/ It stops mining when you use the PC.

freedomben 6y ago

Yeah, I went to ebay to buy a used AMD card to replace a very old Nvidia card, and I was shocked at how expensive 5 to 7 year old cards still are.

polka_haunts_us 6y ago

I built a computer with a AMD 5600XT over a year ago, and was having a hell of a time getting it to not crash, so I bought a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 to maybe replace it with (which apparently scared the AMD card into working properly). I feel like a fool right now for not just sticking it in my garage for a year.

neogodless 6y ago
Ha! I do believe they cleaned up the drivers roughly around that time. I got my 5600XT in April 2020 and have not had any issues with it. Of course there's luck of the draw, too, but I read a lot of early adopters of the 5600/5700 cards had some issues with drivers. Looking on eBay, it looks like I could sell that $290 card for about $500...

theYipster 6y ago

I sold a 10 year old Asus Rampage III Black X58 motherboard last month on eBay for north of $650, which is more than what I paid for it new (even after accounting for inflation.) Granted, this was a limited edition board, but it is still 10 year old tech!

ahelwer 6y ago
CPUs are immortal, it's the motherboards that die. If you want to run a certain chipset, after some amount of time it's motherboard availability that will keep you from doing that!
- kkaranth 6y ago
  > CPUs are immortal, it's the motherboards that die Can you elaborate?
  - viraptor 6y ago
    There are more separate elements of lower quality testing than CPUs (which go through serious qa and binning). For example capacitors on motherboards break/explode, PCB traces degrade/crack more often than a CPU will break.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    CPUs have a lower failure rate than motherboards, which makes sense if you think about it. (One is an IC, one is a complex assembly of many ICs and passive components.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - x0 6y ago
    Anecdotally, I'm still running a computer I mostly bought in 2011, i5-2500K still going strong, but the motherboard has a few issues: one of the PCI-E slots works sometimes, one of the RAM slots is completely broken, and the RTC seems to lose a few minutes a week. CPUs should go pretty much forever, provided they're run on clean power. They're a little square, entirely encased. Motherboards are bigger and with physical connectors you need to use force on.

post_break 6y ago

I have a 4770k and because of the shortage rock a 3060ti I just got out of sheer luck. My friend might have snagged a 5950x but until it ships he’s not taking any chances ordering other parts. He’s been trying to get one since launch.

deleted 6y ago

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nickt 6y ago

CPU pricing is weird. If you look at the 6th-10th gen Core i7s they are not too far off in price, [1] - for example the 6700K is currently $272 and for ~$30 more you can get the 9700K. The current generation usually command a bit of a premium. [1] https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671%20601351803%20601321947%20601301612%20601295112%20601295116&cm_sp=Cat_CPU-Processors_1-_-Visnav-_-Intel-CPU_4&Order=1 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007671%20601351803%20601321...

aquaticsunset 6y ago
The 6700K has the same "most powerful CPU for its socket" situation going on. When I was looking to upgrade my 6600K, it was absurd how little extra it was to get a brand new Ryzen and motherboard compared to the 6700K.

antisthenes 6y ago

> This is a four-year-old card design that can barely run modern games at 1080p/60fps/medium settings. Nonsense. It runs all games on High/60fps or better, with the possible exception of Cyberpunk and RTX marketing gimmicks. That's why it's still a relevant card 4.5 years later and goes for $200+. I own one. > I'd also been keeping track of used i7-4790k CPU prices, looking to upgrade from my i5-4670k. They started out at $120-$130 earlier in 2020 and are up to $160-$170 now. For an eight-year-old CPU! Funny, since I own one as well (4670k). And I haven't ever felt CPU-limited. Mine is mildly overclocked to 4GHz, and it's been able to crunch everything I threw at it since I bought it in 2014, again with the possible exception of HEVC encoding. It's still a very relevant CPU and handily beats Ryzen 1st gen for example. It's also the last generation of Intel CPUs that lets you run a non-spyware version of Windows.

User23 6y ago
> It's also the last generation of Intel CPUs that lets you run a non-spyware version of Windows. Can you elaborate on this please?
- greatgoat420 6y ago
  I think they mean it is the last Intel CPU generation supported by Windows 7.
Jonnax 6y ago
Ray tracing is a marketing gimmick? Just because high end GPUs aren't able to do it well doesn't mean it's a gimmick.
- antisthenes 6y ago
  As far as it related to gaming, it's absolutely a gimmick. I'm sorry you fell for the marketing.
  - account42 6y ago
    You pretty much need ray tracing for reflections of objects that are not directly visible - hacks like SSR cannot give you that. Even if you don't care about graphics, RT can absolutely have an impact on gameplay too. And if you care about graphics then RT makes realistic lighting so much easier and with much less restrictions. Modern games have to fake so many effects just to make things look good which do come for "free" with RT. Now for the current iteration of RT graphics cards, it is still very limited so calling it a gimmick is a bit more warranted. But the hardware will improve (and has already from the first RT generation) which will allow more games and engines built arround RT instead of having it tacked on as an option.

tinco 6y ago

I bought 12 2070's for our render farm, and the account manager thought I was crazy. The 3000 series had already launched and would come back in stock next month he said. Who's laughing now, I don't think they ever got enough stock of any card to serve our needs. A week later they didn't have any Nvidia cards in stock, just none at all, luckily I had already bought all their 2070's or we would've run into delays.

dylan604 6y ago
One month of 12 2070s today produces a hell of a lot more rendered frames than waiting until next month to maybe get our hands on something. Let me just run and ask the client if we can push their deadline back while I'm at it.

lathiat 6y ago

I have a 4790k it's still pretty good work horse but finally getting to the point you'd be worth going up to a older Ryzen instead.. the pricing is similar and you get a memory boost etc. Though you do need a new mobo/ram but still.

ahelwer 6y ago
Yeah I was weighing just upgrading the whole motherboard to a ryzen chipset or something, but I have an ITX build so it would be pretty expensive for the features that I want.

CyberDildonics 6y ago

Transistor have gotten smaller and transistor counts have continued to rise over the last 10 years. You might be thinking of frequency scaling, which is not the same as moore's law.

Veedrac 6y ago

Moore's Law isn't dead. Dennard scaling died, Intel's process hit a wall, and CPU architectural improvements stalled while Intel was stalling, but transistor density improvements have stayed steady year after year since 1970.

Shorel 6y ago
Moore's law is about transistors per dollar. If the cost of chips goes up, Moore's law is not holding.
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  Moore's Law is about transistor count per unit area doubling every two years. Nothing to do with money.
  - yaantc 6y ago
    No, the parent is right. Moore's law is about the transistor density of the least cost process. This is a quote from Moore's paper [1]: "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year [...].". When the cost part became tough the "cost side" was progressively dropped by being more and more creative on what cost is considered. First ignoring the NRE part to look only at the marginal cost per transistor. Then even this got problematic and the cost aspect was just ignored. The "true" Moore low creates a virtuous cycle: everybody move to the next node as it's better and cheaper, so there's no point to stay back. Also, because cost gets down the addressable market gets bigger, sustaining more costly fabs. This virtuous cycle operated for a long while, so much that many takes it for granted now. But if Moore's law die by not being lower cost (the other way is by not increasing density, and this is still progressing if slower than before), this virtuous cycle is broken. You can get higher density, but at a higher cost. With cost increasing only a subset of the market will move on to higher density. Little by little, the market size supporting the costlier high end will get smaller, while the fab cost is still increasing, contributing to a slower progress too. The virtuous cycle becomes vicious. This is happening now, although it's not too bad yet with enough very large actor able to sustain higher price (thanks Apple, I don't use you products but do benefit from all the money you're pouring into TSMC ;). And in the end, if this gets to a serious slow down, then there is the specter of commoditization. It won't happen soon, only after a possibly very long transition period as the tech is really hard. But if progress slows a lot, the lagger may eventually catch up. With more competition would come lower margins. Which is definitely bad for stock valuation. We're still far away from this, but it's still a possibility. Look how the process leader has always been the biggest cheerleader for the "Moore low is still alive and well" (and let's not talk cost between friends, shall we?). See how it was Intel when they started selling their 10nm future, and look how more discrete they are now, and how TSMC has replaced them as the "everything is fine" voice. [1] https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/Published_papers/Technology_overview/gordon_moore_1965_article.pdf https://hasler.ece.gatech.edu/Published_papers/Technology_ov...

starky 6y ago

That is really interesting. I've got a GTX 1060 3GB that I purchased for $280, looks like I could reasonably sell it for $200CAD on ebay. $80 for 3 years of GPU usage wouldn't be a bad return.

jtwaleson 6y ago
But what are you going to do in the meantime? It's like people happy that their houses are increasing in value, but so do all the other houses. You've still got to live somewhere.
- x4j91 6y ago
  Interest rates have gone down though. Presumably you sell your house and break the current 3.5% mortgage. Then buy a bigger / more expensive house and lock in at 1.5%. Overall your monthly payments remain similar.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Overall your monthly payments remain similar. This is not a good way to measure things. Did you just exchange 10 years of monthly payments for 30 years of "similar" monthly payments? My mother protested to me over the cost of her new house, defending the idea that she could afford it by pointing out that monthly payments were similar -- property taxes on the new house were about the same size as mortgage payments on the old one. I was kind of horrified by this; conceptually, when you make a mortgage payment, your net worth goes up. When you make a tax payment, it goes down.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    This is how we get a housing bubble. The expectation of never ending credit that gets cheaper and cheaper. One day interest rates will go up and your house will not be as valuable as your mortgage says it is.
- starky 6y ago
  In the meantime I'll continue to use my RTX 3070. The GTX 1060 is sitting in a box.

ornornor 6y ago

> components aged like milk Sour milk is not worth very much but it then becomes yogurt and cheese which are much more expensive. So I guess your analogy still holds? ;)

scns 6y ago

Well the 4790k is special in that regard. It is the best processor you can buy for the LGA1150 socket. Laid my eye on it too, my plan was to get the biggest performance boost for the smallest capital expenditure. The 4790k would have been a simple swap in and enjoy an at least 33% faster processor in my case. But instead of splunking 140 for one i got a used workstation with a Xeon E3-1271 (the 2. fastest Xeon without GPU) for 180. It included other parts, which made the upgrade free (if you don't count the work i did) by selling my old CPU+Mobo+GPU. The GPU (RX570) i had was at the same price level on ebay as when i bought it. If you badly wan't to upgrade (from a 4670k the delta is way smaller than from the CPU i had), i'd suggest looking for an E3-1281 or 1271 if you have an dGPU, if you need an iGPU replace the last digit with a 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Haswell-based_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E3-1245_v3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Haswell-based_Xe... (edit: clarify, add last paragraph and links)

onli 6y ago
> Well the 4790k is special in that regard. It is the best processor you can buy for the LGA1150 socket Little known fact and even less available, but: The best processor for the LGA1150 socket is not the i7-4790K, but the i7-5775C. Faster IPC, significantly bigger cache and a stronger iGPU, and despite not being called a K cpu it's overclockable. https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/cpu/compare?ids%5B%5D=Intel+Core+i7-4790K&ids%5B%5D=Intel+Core+i7-5775C https://www.pc-kombo.com/us/benchmark/games/cpu/compare?ids%... shows a comparison with many gaming benchmarks. The Xeon route can be cheaper though, it's a good alternative.
- scns 6y ago
  Well, it has the faster iGPU thats for sure. But if you use it for work it is usually slower: https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Intel%20Core%20i7-4790K,Intel%20Core%20i7-5775C https://openbenchmarking.org/vs/Processor/Intel%20Core%20i7-... You can't just swap it out too, you need a mainboard with a 9-Series chipset, which you usually don't if you are running a Haswell.
  - onli 6y ago

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jaynetics 6y ago

Mindfactory is one of the biggest sellers of hardware in Germany. They always have a budget GFX card for around 50 EUR on their starting page, but recently they have replaced it every week or so with an older and worse model at the same price. Right now they're featuring the 7-year-old GT710! Two years ago, I'd have thought this could only happen in case of total economic collapse.

mcv 6y ago

GPU prices are really insane. 13 years ago I bought a brand-new Radeon HD3850, which at the time was one of the best GPUs available; the budget version of a line where the HD3870 (and later the HD3870 X2) was the high end. I paid €128 for it. That's not going to get you anything today. 3 years ago I paid €350 for a GTX 1050 TI. Now, everything new starts at €500, and everything older is a waste of money, says everybody.

baybal2 6y ago

GTX 1080 is the most bought, and resold GPU card around. Still not dying, and it was made in enormous quantities because nVidia made a big bet on crypto craze.

hertzrat 6y ago
According to steam hardware surveys, the 1060 has been king for years

rasz 6y ago

No need to aim for the top. Xeon 1231v3 will run you ~$70 and be 2x faster than current i5-4670k.

hertzrat 6y ago

My wife uses a 1060 and runs just about everything at high/60fps. It’s still a great card