Good news is Samsung started mass production of GDDR6 so maybe Nvidia started producing the next generation of consumer Gpus

I just hope they can find a way to separate the usage, meaning that they can design some GPU's that are more effective for mining but not for gaming, and visa versa. Computer gaming has been on the decline for years, and video cards costing so much is only going to accelerate that process of decline if they can't figure something out.

I'm all about the average person getting ahead, but something needs to change with these god damned miners. They single handedly devastated the gaming pc parts market.

I bought a GTX 1060 6gb for $270 in 2016. I hear they're at least double that now?

I don't even understand the point of cryptocurrency. What can you even buy with it legitimately, other than a handful of sites on the 'net?

Two months ago there was a news from Austria about a brothel that now accepts bitcoins. *link* (an austrian news site, obviously)

I leave it up to you to decide how "legitimate" this is.

Thankfully, by the time I bought my GTX last year the prices hadn't gone up much. It sucks that mining is having adverse effects for PC gamers, but then again I don't think companies care much as long as they're selling their products to someone, you know?

Good luck finding your 1080, OP!

Ideally you sell it, presuming the fees don't eat into your profit. It's basically digital real estate.

Why would you want to spend several hundreds of dollars for a 1080 Ti card that is going to be obsolete in 6 months when Volta comes out? That's not a wise investment at all. The miners actually inadvertently helped you not to waste your money.

Years ago, I would've loved to have a top of the line GPU. Nowadays, I can't think of any game I want to play that can use one.

I have a (second hand) GTX970 and if it weren't for The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition, I would've been fine with a lot less.

I still can't quite wrap my mind around this digital mining craze. I know it's apparently profitable, at least for people who know what they're doing... But the thought that thousands ( millions? ) of people around the world spend so much money on hardware, and then waste ridiculous amounts of electrical power ( in addition to the rare resources used to build their PC components ), all to generate some entirely virtual currency... It's all rather bizarre.

At OP: Yeah, the prices for GPUs and various other components have been messed up for about a year now. I've also been waiting to buy an upgrade at a reasonable price, but at this rate, maybe I'll just wait for the next hardware generation. If we'll see new GPUs later this year, at the very least it should bring down the price of the current generation.

I am currently loving my AMD Radeon HD 7950 3GB. It can't do PhysX, and it had some trouble with Lara Croft's super something or other hair in the last game. And I haven't tried to run TW3 on it lately...

But, it plays XCOM and Civ VI and PIllars of Eternity and stuff like that re-e-e-e-e-e-eal good.

And some day the miners will crash and sell their cards cheap, and I'll get build a new PC based around Ryzen tech and the new shiny R690 12GB or something.

For now I'm running a 6 year old rig and loving it.

These are not people. Most likely banksters are doing this.

On one of the Russian discussion website i've read about a guy, who posted fake sale offer for a batch of videocards. And he instantly got an offer from a guy, who was ready to shell out more than 50 000 USD for those.

It depends on how much of a performance increase they'll bring. If it's just a rehash of the current generation, miners will be happy to keep buying them all out as they're doing right now.

As to the craze, I too think it's a horrible way to waste electricity, even if some people are now living off of it exclusively.

Also, ehm, relevant: the right kind of mining.

There's that... I'm currently using a GTX 960 4G, which I wanted to replace with a GTX 1060, but I guess it's really more of a need for some shiny new toy, rather than a real necessity. I don't play recent AAA games often, so my current GPU still runs most of the games I'd like to play. Currently playing the PC version of Dark Souls 2, which runs smoothly at maxed settings in ( downscaled ) 4K.

And buying a GPU second-hand seems risky these days. There's the chance someone used it in a 24/7 mining set-up, so who knows how much longer it might last.
No doubt there are larger, professional groups involved, but there are also plenty of private/"amateur" miners. Anything from individuals with a single mining PC, to large professional hardware farms.

Exactly, it all seems terribly wasteful, and we should probably all hope for an end to this craze, for that reason alone. As for the new GPU generation, let's wait and see. Maybe hardware manufacturers will come up with a solution for the supply shortage.

I hear Minecraft is pretty fun too. :)

deleted