GeForce 1080 - Price not comming down after year - in fact its increasing - little competion in market?

[bluepheonix1]

I have been in the market to get a GPU for over a year now. I am in no hurry to buy so I have been waiting for a year for a price drop. I have my eye on and want to get the Geforce 1080. I have been monitoring the price via the website Camel Camel Camel.

Unfortunately, the price of the 1080 has not dropped. In fact, even after a year the price is actually increasing. It is now 2018 and this card came out over a year ago and it is still very expensive. For the price of one 1080 graphics card, one could get a pocket computer (a smartphone) which has a screen, memory, processor etc. Or one could get a few tablets. Or one could get a whole laptop computer (which includes a screen, keyboard, hard drive, RAM etc.). One could get many things for the price of one component (Geforce 1080).

1. Why is the price of one component so expensive?
2. Why hasn't the price decreased on the 1080?
3. Is Nvidia milking the environment due to lack of competition?

 

[MusenMouse]

I would say lack of competition is one of the issues, but it is fairly minor in my opinion. The biggest issue facing graphic card prices in general is that the cryptocurrency mining rage has revived, sort of cooled, and revived again all in 2017. Right now cryptocurrency is at the height of its rollercoaster ride and I think people are betting heavily that it will continue to rise, leading to high demand for all high end graphic cards for mining.

From what I saw, Black Friday was probably the best time to buy a GPU this year as the cryptocurrency market sort of cooled then, but right now it is popping with speculators. These are my own observations so they may be biased or wrong.

 

[King_V]

Cryptocurrency mining, especially Ethereum, has caused an unprecedented demand for GPUs. Predominantly, this demand is for AMD GPUs, which seem to generally be better at the hashing algorithms needed to mine Ethereum than Nvidia GPUs.

The biggest demand for Nvidia GPUs is the GTX 1070, however, this causes an indirect price increase on the other GPUs, both above and below it.


So, the answer to questions 1 and 2 are "Because of the demand caused by cryptocurrency miners."

To answer 3, I find it unlikely, but I couldn't say for sure. I would suspect that being king of the hill is sort of making Nvidia a little complacent. They might not release something more powerful unless something of a threat comes from AMD - hence the rather coincidental timing and price point of the GTX 1070Ti when the Vega 56 was shown to mostly beat the GTX 1070.

 

[mazboy]

From "When Harry Met Sally":

You know what I found? - No, what?
Where? - The point isn't where, Alice.
The point is he's never gonna leave her.
What else is new? You've known this for two years.
You're right. I know you're right.

You know what else? The price of GPUs is never coming down. You've known this for two years. It doesn't matter why.

 

[King_V]

The price of GPUs is never coming down.

I don't think that's a valid assumption to make. It would require the cryptocurrency market to be a profit-generating bubble forever.

 

[delta5]

Why would Nvidia lower the price? I picked up a 1080ti for 700 dollars after rebates and couldn't be happier. Much like the deal I got on my 2015 Audi S5, I don't see any deals on these card until the next new model comes out.

 

[boju]

Which country? Dollar value and imports have an effect on price as well, like Australia's 78c in 1$usd pushes import price up. 1080ti can cost as much as 500$ more than US variant.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I wouldn't directly compare a 1080 to a smartphone, you got to realize that the GTX 1080 is one of the fastest GPUs on the market today, so obviously it's going to be pretty pricey.

I do agree it is lack of competition, but also it's the time of year. The holidays just swung by which means a huge chunk of GTX cards probably got gobbled up from black friday sales and Christmas specials. Now that the special deals are over, prices have inflated back to normal or above normal prices.

Another possibility is the GTX 1070 Ti, when the 1070 ti originally launched it wasn't that far from the GTX 1080 in price point and performance, possible to drive more 1070 ti sales, nvidia jumped up the price on 1080s. Just a theory.

FYI, people hate using the GTX 1080 for cryptocurrency, the GDDR5X the 1080 and 1080 TI uses makes their hash rates plummit vs a 1070 or 1060. Reason why is because G5X has more latency than regular G5.

 

[MusenMouse]

FYI, people hate using the GTX 1080 for cryptocurrency, the GDDR5X the 1080 and 1080 TI uses makes their hash rates plummit vs a 1070 or 1060. Reason why is because G5X has more latency than regular G5.

Some of the other cryptocurrencies based off of equishash algorithims and Lyra2REv2 algorithims seem to be able scale well with the GTX 1080 . According to whattomine the gtx 1080 handily beats out the gtx 1070 for mining those coins like Zcash and XVG. Plus according to present values, they are more profitable to mine than ethereum even when using a gtx 1070. XVG also just took a huge jump for some reason I do not yet understand, so GTX 1080 may no longer be a safe bastion .

 

[TechyInAZ]

FYI, people hate using the GTX 1080 for cryptocurrency, the GDDR5X the 1080 and 1080 TI uses makes their hash rates plummit vs a 1070 or 1060. Reason why is because G5X has more latency than regular G5.

Some of the other cryptocurrencies based off of equishash algorithims and Lyra2REv2 algorithims seem to be able scale well with the GTX 1080 . According to whattomine the gtx 1080 handily beats out the gtx 1070 for mining those coins like Zcash and XVG. Plus according to present values, they are more profitable to mine than ethereum even when using a gtx 1070. XVG also just took a huge jump for some reason I do not yet understand, so GTX 1080 may no longer be a safe bastion .

Ah that explains it. Bummer.

Until mining only cards become mainstream, I have a feeling we're going to have this price problem for the next decade.

 

[shrapnel_indie]

There was about a $100 gap between the GTX-1070 and the GTX-1080.... NVidia released the GTX-1070Ti to compete better with Vega 56. Vega 64 comes close to GTX-1080, but not quite surpassing it like the 56 did to the 1070.

Supply issues mostly keep AMD's offerings from flooding the market though at a lower price point. The 1070Ti is priced to compete with the Vega 56 and is planted about 1/2 way between regular 1070 and 1080.

NVidia left no room to lower 1080 prices at this time. Prices won't get lower until NVidia decides to change the whole price structure on GTX-10 series. It's rare prices change for any other reason than competition. AMD supply, while enough to bite into the pockets of NVidia isn't big enough to warrant a change in the price structure either.

Historically prices don't change really until clearanced out or a short term sale happens, other than adjustments for poor sales and competition. GTX-20 series (whether Pascal Refresh or Volta remains to be seen exactly) isn't here yet. AMD has supply issues, keeping prices up. There is also the crypto-mining demand too, with no real end in sight keeping prices up above MSRP, especially for AMD GPUs.

 

[bluepheonix1]

So, I checked the price of the Asus Geforce 1080 card today and very little places have them in stock even though this card has been out for a while:

The original asking price for the 1080 was around $560. For the little places that do have them in stock here are the prices:

1. Amazon: out of stock: available not from main seller but from off brand sellers: $850 (what a steal for only $300 over original price or only $150 less then $1,000) or $1,800
2. New Egg out of stock: Available from off brand sellers $1,039

The price monitoring website shows the Asus 1080 going from about $600 on December 27th, 2017 to jumping to about $1,800 today

From your responses, I get the crypto mining has driven up the costs of GPUs to exorbitant levels and held them there in general but what is with the recent outrageous price jump and lack of availability of the last couple of weeks. Surely not crypt mining no?

Whats with the exorbitant prices?
Why out of stock at so many retailers?

 

[MusenMouse]

So, I checked the price of the Asus Geforce 1080 card today and very little places have them in stock even though this card has been out for a while:

The original asking price for the 1080 was around $560. For the little places that do have them in stock here are the prices:

1. Amazon: out of stock: available not from main seller but from off brand sellers: $850 (what a steal for only $300 over original price or only $150 less then $1,000) or $1,800
2. New Egg out of stock: Available from off brand sellers $1,039

The price monitoring website shows the Asus 1080 going from about $600 on December 27th, 2017 to jumping to about $1,800 today

From your responses, I get the crypto mining has driven up the costs of GPUs to exorbitant levels and held them there in general but what is with the recent outrageous price jump and lack of availability of the last couple of weeks. Surely not crypt mining no?

Whats with the exorbitant prices?
Why out of stock at so many retailers?

Sorry but the answer is still cryptocurrency. Every since the start of December there has been a rise in prices for cryptocurrency, but in the last 2-3 weeks there has been an explosion in price, especially for cryptocurrencies running mining algorithms unaffected by HBM2. To give you my experience, I was happy to be making $6-8 a day mining between ethereum and the Zcoin family using 4 gtx 1070's. Now according to whattomine, I can make $15 for ethereum or $22 for Z classic a day. Plus while GTX 1080's do not do well for ethereum, they seem to do well at equihash based algorithims, with 4 gtx 1080's mining about $28 a day for Zclassic coins.

So all in all, you might be in the worst time ever to buy a high end graphics card.