Time for the 3 yearly graphics card upgrade!

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Well guys, AMD have finally launched Radeon VEGA and also destroyed any chance it had at success within just one month.

The AMD VEGA 56 and 64 cards launched earlier this month, at a price of about £400.

Within the last two weeks (as the stock rapidly became sold out), they have slammed £150 on top of that, making the cards retail at £550 or more. Add 20% VAT onto that, and we're looking at around £660 for a VEGA 64 card.

Not worth it. This is nearly as bad as Apple's long-standing iPhone pricing. I shall wait for the prices to drop before even considering buying one of these. Maybe by then, this stupid mining craze will have died out and there will be more stock readily available.

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Ian]

Yup, a huge shame.

The huge scale of mining has really surprised me - to the extent that AMD have had to issue statements to their investors about the impact of it . Is there really that much money to be made in mining that people buy up the entire supply?

On the flipside, if BitCoin or Ethereum crashes, maybe we'll get some nice cheap 2nd hand cards .

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Yup, a huge shame.

The huge scale of mining has really surprised me - to the extent that AMD have had to issue statements to their investors about the impact of it . Is there really that much money to be made in mining that people buy up the entire supply?

On the flipside, if BitCoin or Ethereum crashes, maybe we'll get some nice cheap 2nd hand cards .

That would be great, one can only dream. But at the time of writing, AMD VEGA cards remain as expensive as ever.

I'm not even sure what's more worth it saving up for, AMD VEGA now or DSLR camera for holiday in January, as all smartphone cameras are terrible. I have a hunch that saving for a DSLR will be a more worthwhile investment than buying an AMD VEGA at its current price tag.

To be fair, I haven't bought any games recently, I intended to buy Agents of Mayhem, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm, Dirt 4 and Syberia 3 this weekend, but all 3 major GAME stores near me don't have stock for any of these games...

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Ian]

Given the prices of graphics cards, it seems like one of the worst times I can remember to buy one . Mining, memory costs and demand seem to have made for an awful mix at the moment. May be worth going for the DSLR and see what happens to VEGA early next year.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Given the prices of graphics cards, it seems like one of the worst times I can remember to buy one . Mining, memory costs and demand seem to have made for an awful mix at the moment. May be worth going for the DSLR and see what happens to VEGA early next year.

That is the best idea. I am going to hold off on AMD VEGA for now, my R9 290 can live inside The Black Pearl for slightly longer than planned. Maybe early next year, immediately after Christmas, hopefully the prices for the AMD VEGA will be reduced.

For now, I am going to focus on saving some money for a DSLR because it might be cheaper than the current price of the AMD VEGA and I'm going to Tenerife soon, so it'll be nice to take pictures with a camera that's actually worth using.

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Akshat Verma]

Due to mining boom all the AMD graphics cards are overpriced and are very hard to find too. I advise is switch to Nvidia and go for GeForce GTX 1060 or GTX 1070.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Due to mining boom all the AMD graphics cards are overpriced and are very hard to find too. I advise is switch to Nvidia and go for GeForce GTX 1060 or GTX 1070.

Unfortunately, I can't consider that because Nvidia 8GB cards are notoriously expensive in the UK and their drivers are horrific (not that AMD is really any better here). Oh, and I have a personal vendetta against Nvidia because their corporate attitude is shocking.

This mining crap will soon die out, once people realize how much time and money they've pumped into it, only to receive next to nothing in return. And they will deserve it. And I have no sympathy for them.

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Self-quote from half a year ago:

It's that time of year again, I think it's time for a beefy graphics card upgrade.

Currently, I have a Radeon R9 290 (not the 290X model), which is really struggling in Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p.
You can find my full specs in my profile.

But anyway, here they are if you're lazy:

"The Black Pearl V3"

Motherboard: ASRock 890FX Deluxe5
CPU: AMD FX-8370 (4.0 GHz base, 4.3 GHz TURBO-DIESEL)
Graphics: MSI Radeon R9 290 GAMING 4G (4GB VRAM)
RAM: 32GB HyperX FURY Blue 1866 MHz DDR3 RAM [underclocked to 1600 MHz] (4 x 8GB)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower XT 875W
Storage: FDD, slot loading DVD, 1 x PNY 480GB SSD, 1 x 1TB HDD, 1 x 500GB HDD, 1 x 640GB HDD
OS: Windows 7 Professional x64​

My current card, the Radeon R9 290 uses a 512-bit memory bus (external link, TechPowerUp), with 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The current flagship card from AMD's gaming range is the Radeon RX 580 8GB, which uses a 256-bit memory bus (external link, TechPowerUp), only yielding 256 GB/s memory bandwith (really, AMD?!).

So here's my dilemma. I have to get a new graphics card because AMD have broken the HDMI audio output driver on all R9 series cards and they are useless when it comes to drivers, so I don't expect them to fix it anytime soon.
The RX 580 8GB looks like a pretty tasty option, but the lower memory bandwidth is really putting me off. Do you think that I should I just pick up the RX 580 8GB anyway, or wait for AMD's 'Vega' gaming range of GPUs?
Not much is currently known about AMD's Vega range right now.

I want to run Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p / 60FPS right now, but in the future, I want to play Life is Strange: Before the Storm. I am also looking at getting Syberia 3 which I've heard is horrifically optimized, largely due to the fact that it uses the Unity game engine. Other than that, I don't really have any other games in the pipeline which I'd like to play. Developers are flooding the PC market with mindless first-person shooters featuring a weak (if any) storyline, I hate this kind of thing.
There is a major gap in the PC market for a good third-person horror/adventure/shooter style game which actually has a storyline worth following.

Let me know what your guys think.

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

So it's been a few months. Finiancially, I'm also in a slightly better place than I was when I started this topic.
Aaaand...

I STILL CANNOT AFFORD A RADEON RX580!!
The RX580 had a launch RRP of around £220, but I can't find any that are in stock for under £450! What the (...) is wrong with this world?!

Those evil cryptocurrency miners are driving up the prices of what previously were affordable graphics cards, yet somehow still managing to sell them out at every major retailer, despite the prices nearly doubling. Are they made of money?! If they already have this much money, they should not be mining imo.

I hate cryptocurrency miners so goddamn much. I consider them as borderline scum of the Earth.

Opinions please? Have any of you had issues purchasing a graphics card in recent times?

I'm so mad right now.
Sorry, I had to vent somewhere.

I'm going to leave this (for now) with an awareness video. Somebody needs to set up a charity regarding this...
(Safe for work viewing - contains adverts)

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Ian]

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this thread the other day when looking at GPU prices. It's just crazy how much they've gone up by, enough that it can't last long otherwise it will start to have an unexpected impact on PC Gaming in general (i.e. people moving to consoles).

I wonder what GPU companies can do... should they ramp up production (and risk a sudden crash when Cryptomining runs in to problems), or do they try and limit sales to 1 product per person to slow the takeup?

 

[Becky]

Sorry to hear that, @Captain Jack Sparrow I agree with you re crypto-currency. The technology itself is fantastic, and I'm sure it'll have great application in the future... but it is open source, therefore all the money invested in crypto is driven by greed, there is no actual value.

I hope people come to their senses so that things can get back to normal! In the meantime I think @Ian's suggestion of 1 gpu per person is a good idea. However I doubt manufacturers will choose to decline extra sales! Again, everything is driven by greed.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Hi all,

Hope we all had a good Christmas and new year. Have been a bit busy over the festive period (searching for graphics cards, VW Polos, DSLR cameras, holidays, smartphones etc.) so haven't been as active as normal.

(i.e. people moving to consoles).

I wonder what GPU companies can do... should they ramp up production (and risk a sudden crash when Cryptomining runs in to problems), or do they try and limit sales to 1 product per person to slow the takeup?

Exactly my fears! If it kills PC gaming, then there would no market for gaming GPUs when/if mining crashes! Which would be good, cause then everyone would be selling them at rock bottom prices...
I can only dream the days when an AMD Vega 64 sells for less than £200!

I hope people come to their senses so that things can get back to normal! In the meantime I think @Ian's suggestion of 1 gpu per person is a good idea. However I doubt manufacturers will choose to decline extra sales! Again, everything is driven by greed.

In concept that would be a good idea, but in reality, it wouldn't work. Not so much because of increased sales (GPU manufacturers are already operating at capacity), but because it simply would not be enforceable. If I really want something which is limited to one per customer, I would just buy it from multiple suppliers, use different credit cards and even get friends to buy it on my behalf. This would be impossible to track.

But I don't understand why everyone is buying gaming GPUs for mining. If mining really relies solely on compute power, then gaming GPUs are rubbish!! For comparison, if I want to render a video in Adobe Premiere Pro, I would use the GPU compute power for hardware acceleration. I have a mobile workstation laptop, the Dell Precision M4800 which boasts a workstation-class NVIDIA K2100M. This can render a four minute 1080p video in less time than that.

The Black Pearl on the other hand, with the Radeon R9 290 would take around an hour to render the same video. Needless to say, this runs games better than the Dell Precision would. The best you'll get out of the NVIDIA K2100M gaming-wise is CoD: MW2 at 720p, 60fps.

Why aren't miners buying all the workstation GPUs?! Surely it'd be a better investment if their sole application is mining cryptocurrency. Or are they just being cheapskates, doing this deliberately in spite of PC gamers. With all that virtual currency they have, I'm pretty sure that they can afford a workstation GPU which is more suited to the task.

Here's what I think GPU manufacturers should do...
Release a line of built-for-mining GPUs. These should be based on their line of workstation GPUs and have poorer gaming performance than the gaming counterparts. That should keep the miners away from gaming GPUs.

Next, both AMD and NVIDIA should release their flagship gaming GPUs with a hardware 'trip-switch' on the chip - similar to the 'have I been rooted e-fuse' found on some Samsung smartphones. Once this has been activated, when the GPU detects that it is being used for mining, throttle the clocks down to 10% and strangle the VRAM bandwidth. Additionally, make nag screens appear in the driver software if this has been triggered. Bonus points if this can be considered as voiding the warranty. This should not trigger for other computing tasks, such as video rendering or using video game console emulators, so I'm not sure how feasible this would be.

Theoretically, that would push the miners towards workstation GPUs and then all the corporations will be crying if those become out of stock!

I know it's drastic, but my hatred towards miners who use gaming GPUs is extreme.

- Capt. Jack Sparrow.

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I started this thread back around July last year. I've since bought my DSLR, so it's now time to prioritize the big graphics card upgrade. I've decided on two options.
Vega 64 or Vega Frontier Edition? That is the question.

The AMD Vega prices between a used Vega Frontier Edition (16GB HBM) and new Vega 64 (8GB HBM) are quite similar, well, at least in the UK. The Vega Frontier Edition is a semi-professional graphics card, and the Vega 64 is a conventional gaming graphics card. Nonetheless, they have both become favourites in the mining community.

I can't wait any longer for the prices to fall, I'm going to take out a loan i so I can buy one. I will not be using it for mining whatsoever. So does anybody have any input on what the gaming performance is like between these two cards?
Mining doesn't really concern me as I don't think it's possible to get a sizable return with just one GPU, after factoring the increased electricity costs.

- Captain Jack Sparrow

 

[Becky]

It's a difficult situation - I've read some recent reports suggesting that graphics card prices are set to fall (here), but it's difficult to know how long to wait and see if that's the cases. If it were me I'd wait, but then I am super cautious!

 

[Ian]

Good to see you again . Such a shame GPU prices haven't dropped in the mean time!

I think it may be better to go for the Vega 64 over the Vega FE (I was surprised that there was much of a difference), particularly as AMD may try to segregate the cards in the coming months (in terms of driver optimisations for games vs work).

I thought this video was pretty interesting, as it runs them side-by-side and the 64 comes out on top:

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Hi Ian,

I did see that exact video earlier today, but I feel that the performance difference is negligible.

It’s also important to note that they’re running the game at 4K resolution. It is unlikely that I will be doing this in the near future as I don’t have a 4K TV and “gaming” monitors seem like a huge scam to me, give me a professional monitor over a “gaming” monitor any day. 1920x1080 resolution at 60fps is my only requirement here.

Nowadays anybody can market anything as a “gaming” product and use this as an excuse to double the price tag of what its really worth. Whereas professional monitors, while they may not be capable of high resolutions, their colour reproduction is usually much more accurate than “gaming” monitors. Their price tags reflect the quality.

Back on topic, does anybody have any direct experience with these cards? Gaming performance is important, but what about computing power? I use Adobe Premiere Pro and found that rendering performance is exceptionally bad with my current R9 290 (taking 30 minutes to render a 4 minute 1080p video), so having decent hardware acceleration would be good.

I also use some video game console emulators which require hardware acceleration to avoid running like a slideshow, I think this also requires a GPU with big computing power.

- Captain Jack Sparrow

 

[muckshifter]

Well, if my Radeon RX580 'Nitro+' 8GB Graphics Card is anything to go by, then I'd be opting for the Vega 64

just my two squids worth.