WhiteSnake91 said:
I've been wondering the same as well, I've looked it up before and all the initial investment as well as power bill,etc from mining just doesn't seem worth it to me at all. I think it is utterly ridiculous how much it has driven up prices. About a month ago I was going to buy a 2nd hd7950 and it was around $150-175ish and now they have shot up to almost 500 dollars everywhere. I have only seen r9 280x and not the plain r9 280 which is supposed to be basically a rebranded 7950. (If I'm not mistaken)
It has made me look at nvidia gpu instead for my bro's gaming pc. Hell you can find plenty of 660ti for around ~$150-175ish in good condition on sale even here.
If you're looking for a powerful but still cheapish gpu right now, I'd say the regular 2gb GTX 770, or the ~$200 r9 270x, the high end on AMD side seems to be screwed right now thanks to the greedy and dare I say foolish miners.
Thank you sir, for the reply.
I actually went out and bought the 770 2GB edition since starting this thread.
I was VERY disappointed with the performance from it, compared to the 7950 i had.
(not comparing the two exclusively, knowing the 7950 had better specs. But the expectation and reality were in opposing universes.)
I had to refund it, it was that bad.
Since then, i am looking into the 280X (7970 GHz edition rebranded).
Maybe after the holiday season, say end of January, the prices may start to decline again.
This is wishful thinking, as predicting these things are horrendously inaccurate.
I am completely impartial when it comes to PC hardware, but AMD has won me over in this round in GPUs.
They just provide that bang for your buck i'm always looking for.