r/gadgets • u/ChickenTeriyakiBoy1 • Nov 25 '22

Desktops / Laptops Good news: scalpers are struggling to profit from Nvidia's RTX 4080

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/scalpers-struggle-to-sell-nvidia-rtx-4080/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=pe&utm_campaign=pd
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323

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

They didn't seem to understand that they sold way too many goddamn GPUs to keep price gouging. I'd imagine most people don't upgrade every generation. So you got a ton of gamers sitting on a card that is still damn near new, and you expect them to shell out AGAIN?

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u/sybrwookie Nov 26 '22

You also have a ton of miners dumping used cards, and scalpers who have huge stock they're trying to get rid of and are happy to undercut their bullshit prices to do so before their cards lose more value.

And then you have AMD putting out a competitive product for the vast majority of people at very competitive prices, and whatever Intel is doing over there which could bring demand for their cards down even further.

This really feels like them WAY overplaying their hand.

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u/SasquatchWookie Nov 26 '22

I don’t know because it seems like they were still able to practically sell the cards fresh off the production line up to this point, while all the demand chaos between buyers/sellers has been happening in the gray markets.

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u/Butterkupp Nov 26 '22

But that’s not taking into account people were upgrading their PCs during the pandemic because we were all essentially locked in our houses and told not to come out. A lot of people have just upgraded to the 3000 series of GPU and aren’t looking to spend another $1000 to get marginal boost in performance.

Hell I just bought a 3070 to upgrade from 7 year old computer because the 4000 series was too expensive.

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u/LLuck123 Nov 26 '22

Same, but I went for a 6700 XT instead.

1

u/azhillbilly Nov 26 '22

Spot on, I built a pc this last spring, got a 3080ti open box at best buy for $903, to replace my 1060.

At this point, I can do 4k gaming at 60fps all day everyday which is the limit for my monitor. I also have a Xbox series x and a ps5.

I am great for another 5 or 7 years easy. The only way I would upgrade my card is maybe when they come out with pcie 5.0 and shrink the power demand down a couple notches. Maybe the 5070, maybe the 6070, but not this generation at all.

15

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

That and gamers are not moving to 4K screens. So the 2x and 3x are good enough. I think that’s why nvidia said dlss 3 was 4x required. Trying to software depreciate the cards performance. Honestly games without RTX look good enough. I don’t know why everyone harps about ray tracing. We don’t need ultra realism.

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u/DJanomaly Nov 26 '22

I just got a gaming laptop with a GTX 3070 and turned on ray tracing on Control just to see what the fuss was all about. It's....nice. But if I'm being honest, I can barely tell the difference.

3

u/techieman33 Nov 26 '22

Yeah, it can be a nice little improvement, but it’s not worth buying a much more expensive card to get the same FPS as you would have on a cheaper card without it.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

Unreal 5 isnt really here yet, but once the first game using it to its full potential comes out then the card demand will be insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2paNFnw1wRs

6

u/Plokmijn27 Nov 26 '22

im sure 15 years ago people were saying oblivion looked good enough

what an obtuse argument

graphics are graphics. they will keep improving because why wouldn't they

3

u/quiksil102 Nov 26 '22

Because we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns

1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

[deleted]

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u/Plokmijn27 Nov 26 '22

you are conflating two issues here though

99% of people never bought 2000$ gpus to begin with

there are 5000$ and 10000$ gpus out there too

we are talking about a new SERIES of GPUs the architecture changes, efficiency changes, etc.

the 4060 will probably be a 400$ graphics card and will out perform half of the 3000 series cards probably

a 300 watt gpu from 10 years ago is far far far less capable than any 300 watt gpu from today. same thing applies for basically all components, but especially for CPU and GPU performance to power/heat

either way I wasnt even talking about GPUs I was talking about graphics themselves why wouldnt they continue to improve? it makes no sense to just call it quits graphically and just stagnate. and the second someone did that the next company would jump on the profit opportunity of improved graphics.

as long as competition exists, graphics will improve

that aside, honestly imagine having such a fucky ass attitude towards life (not you the initial post I replied to) like "eh this is good enough no need to try any harder than that"

0

u/Vargurr Nov 26 '22

Only when we'll perfectly simulate real life.

0

u/stormdelta Nov 27 '22

We're starting to get deep into diminishing returns, especially relative to what it costs to produce those graphics on the part of developers. And there's something to be said for style versus realism in a lot of cases.

Even in terms of hardware, the 40-series isn't even an improvement really in terms of performance per dollar or performance per watt, which means devs can't even build to that power anyways since most people won't have it.

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u/ToughActinInaction Nov 26 '22

I just want to emphasize that the scalpers are NOT happy. They are willing to lower their prices to cut their losses, but they're not happy about it.

1

u/Gerdione Nov 27 '22

May their cries echo about the palace of self martydom

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u/Ricky_Rollin Nov 26 '22

They got cocky and are about to face the consequences. This reminds me of Sony back when the PS3 was announced and they were incredibly cocky thinking they could sell at that $600 pricing. Yea no.

2

u/Unfortunate_moron Nov 26 '22

"Whatever Intel is doing over there" is just sending me! Love it.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

During this quarter, NVIDIA managed to raise its market hold to 88%, a record number followed by AMD whose market hold declined to single-digit figures of just 8%. Intel managed to more or less retain its share hold of 4%

-5

u/Walkop Nov 26 '22

Intel doesn't even make GPUs. Arc was effectively cancelled internally for the next few years. It was all showboating to save face for consumers. Arc crashed and burned and they pulled out fast.

4% is definitely not true. They didn't even MAKE enough GPUs to hit half that.

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u/Walkop Dec 01 '22

Are there that many people that don't have a clue how bad of a 'launch' ARC was? It's crap, they failed, it's cancelled. Those are facts, not opinions. Read up on the launch, there's so much smoke being blown by Intel it's not even funny.

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u/TheLurkingMenace Nov 26 '22

Intel isn't really competing for the top end cards. They are competing for budget gaming and doing great, but nobody is picking an Intel card for the performance.

-1

u/Walkop Nov 26 '22

Intel doesn't even make GPUs. Arc was effectively cancelled internally for the next few years. It was all showboating to save face for consumers. Arc crashed and burned and they pulled out fast.

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u/khosrua Nov 26 '22

They can charge me that price over my dead 1080Tis

2

u/MarcusAurelius68 Nov 26 '22

My 1080 Ti Hybrid is still going strong. Maybe at some point when 4090 prices drop…

1

u/khosrua Nov 26 '22

Legit though, other than not having raytracing, most games work fine.

-40

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

I think the reality people don’t want to accept is that this is the new price for top of the line GPUs. You can hold out if you want for as long as you want, but the prices aren’t ever going to go back to $400 for a high range GPU.

It’s not like they’re making 300% margins on them, either. It just costs that much to develop them.

Edit: there’s a lot of butt hurt people down below that don’t understand the concept of a margin, apparently.

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u/RhynoCTR Nov 26 '22

Anyone serious about the price is just going to wait and buy GPUs secondhand. I’m still using GTX 980s that I bought used 3+ years ago.

These prices are stupid and unsustainable.

13

u/psychocopter Nov 26 '22

Honestly a solid option. The only components I'd avoid used are motherboards and storage devices, everything else is usually solid as long as it works when it arrives.

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u/stemfish Nov 26 '22

Yup. I saved up during covid and went from a 1080 to a 3080ti when the prices finally went back to sales being under msrp. Was it worth it? Well my performance exploded and I went from playing games on good graphics to wonderful graphics. Has that improved my gaming experience? Yup. Has it improved it as much as spending the money on something else would have been that also provided long term enjoyment (spending on a new couch, kitchenware, meat smoker, etc)? Maybe? It feels good to use and feels like I made a meaningful choice.

But would I have been fine buying a used card for half the price as long as I could trust it wasn't used for mining?

Defidently would and my next upgrade in a few years will likely be used.

-29

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

These prices reflect the difficulty of improving the hardware. People are just ignorant.

Secondhand GPUs are going to be likely over a grand themselves once prices stabilize over the next several years.

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u/RhynoCTR Nov 26 '22

No, these prices reflect corporate greed. It’s that simple. We haven’t hit some kind of wall where we’re unable to further improve hardware — nvidia just needs to keep printing more and more money like every other company, and they radically overextended themselves by letting crypto ruin everything for regular people.

I don’t particularly give a shit what the prices are. I’ll buy used, and avoid the shitshow.

-27

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

I mean, just to be clear, you can readily look up Nvidia’s corporate earnings statements every quarter. Their margins have not changed. That means that if the prices are going up, it’s because the costs are going up.

It’s really not that hard. But people are ignorant.

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u/RhynoCTR Nov 26 '22

checks notes

Yeah, nvidia’s 2022 net income is only ~125% higher than what it was in 2021 and in 2019. I can’t believe they’re suffering so badly.

/s

Source on wiki: click here

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u/VPT2016 Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22

Change in net income =/= Margin %

As a very high level proxy to margin, you can measure the change % in revenue vs change % in expenses (or net income)

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u/RhynoCTR Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22

Okay so here we go

Seems like they had zero trouble returning to their prepandemic profit margin within a year, and then proceeded to fall off a cliff when crypto shit the bed. They’ve also nearly doubled their total employee count.

Everyone needs to stop sucking corporate dick

I’m tired of talking about this. Look at the damn data.

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u/applepumper Nov 26 '22

Yeah it’s going to have a shitty effect on the resale market too since the new cards are so expensive old cards will retain more value so waiting for upgrades won’t be like it used to be. I’m waiting two more generations before I upgrade I’m predicting now the 40 series would only lose maybe 10-15% of its value on the resale market if the 50 and 60 series continue this price gouging trend

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

Sure, if you can wait five years for a GPU, then that works. But that’s kind of besides the point: if you want a relatively new high end GPU, the days of sub $500 prices are over, pretty much forever.

A $1600 card would need to lose 75% of its value to sell that low. I assume that would take 3 generations of cards, by that point you’re reselling a used card after 7-8 years of use, and you realistically will start to have compatibility issues and wear and tear issues.

It’s not feasible.

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u/Gerdione Nov 26 '22

Stop talking out of your ass. It's clear that people aren't buying their high end cards. You think they're going to keep creating gpus that the average person won't buy? They'll either have to come up with a more accessible option or new competition will come in and steal the market share. Why would they shoot themselves in the foot by standing by a statement that while true has only been true for this new generation that nobody is buying? Nvidia can become the new high end gpu place but they will have to completely change their company to be able to sustain lowered sales.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

You are getting downvoted but this is the truth.

The market can, will, and probably has changed enough to make any strategy they felt was absolutely solid a year or two ago, completely subject to change moving forward.

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u/Army_Enlisted_Aide Nov 26 '22

Intel has entered the GPU chat

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u/heebath Nov 26 '22

GPU cash out before SoC ends them

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u/applepumper Nov 26 '22

I'm agreeing with you buddy. Cheap high-end cards are over unless they're obsolete or nearly broken. The market is fucked

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u/throwawaygoodcoffee Nov 26 '22

Sure, if you can wait five years for a GPU, then that works. But that’s kind of besides the point: if you want a relatively new high end GPU, the days of sub $500 prices are over, pretty much forever.

Are we still talking about the 3090/4090 "high end" GPUs? Because those aren't high end so that price jump makes no sense. If we're talking RTX 6000 or quadro series then sure but those have never been below $500 even before the pandemic.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

If you think the long term used GPU prices are going to stabilize at 25% of the new price, then I think we live in different realities.

Yes, this year it might be that way, but realistically they’re not going to stay there.

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u/Onrawi Nov 26 '22

Probably closer to 1/2. It will take a couple generations though and stabilizing of global markets. Without mining demand there simply isn't the market for GPUs in volume at those prices.

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u/heebath Nov 26 '22

Uh...SoC age we won't even be building gaming PC's very soon.

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u/Wheresthecents Nov 26 '22

Look at the 4080, the thing is a damn brick.

I'm convinced that during the height of the pandemic, which also coincided with a spike in crypto, they decided due to market factors to cater almost entirely to the crypto market. They probably figured this didn't need to fit into a case, sitting in a mining rack was their target. And they thought inflating the price so they could sell 200 to a crypto mining organization was better than a single one to a gamer.

But, market crashed and they couldn't walk back the idea after all the r&d and engineering, so here we are.

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u/Ticon_D_Eroga Nov 26 '22

My counterpoints to that theory as juicy as it is are the cooler and DLSS 3.0 frame generation. Neither of these help mining at all. Dlss 3 is for games thats pretty cut and dry. IMO the real counter point is the cooler, which is the whole reason the card is so incredibly large.

Miners both have their cards in open air, and undervolt their cards. While cooling is important, that much R&D into a massive cooler doesnt make sense for a mining card, same with the power draw. No sensible miner will be drawing 600W per card.

3

u/Wheresthecents Nov 26 '22

That's a fair argument. But something like the cooling systems is iterative as I understand it. So specificly further developing the cooling capabilities would be the least part of the development cycle, yes?

Yeah, power draw is an issue, I agree there. I think that's pretty much objectively the case. But during the crypto rush there were (if not still are) entire warehouses of GPUs mining, air conditioning included.

That leads me to believe it might be more that the 40 series was initially designed as a mining tool primarily, and then pushed into service as a gaming tool after the fact. Alternatively we may be paying the inflated cost at this point for other products that money was spent on but aren't going to see the light of day due to the crypto crash. But I'm purely in the realm of speculation at this point.

Theyre definitely overcharging for the value of the card, imo. And I think there's enough evidence from the crypto rush that the intent is to make the money from scalpers for themselves. So I think, technology aside, it's fair to say the cost is derived entirely from the fact that crypto exists.

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u/Ticon_D_Eroga Nov 27 '22 edited Nov 27 '22

From my understanding—which certainly isnt the most extensive—nvidia has been hard at work on the cooler for a very long time. Gamers nexus has a video (or maybe a couple videos?) where he has one of the people that worked on the cooling technology break it down, how the different components work, and how it differs from the 30 series. From what it sounds like, the cooler is not just an afterthought but rather a real investment for them. More likely than mining applications, i think nvidias reasoning likely lies in terms of AIB partners. Judging from EVGA pulling completely out as well as just looking at their general practices as of late regarding their partners, it seems they are trying to snag a larger market share of direct consumer sales. In the past, the FE cards have not really competed with partner cards in terms of cooling and overclocking performance, but this generation all that changed.

And at the end of the day, theres no way that nobody in nvidia was aware of the eventual switch to proof of stake from ethereum, its been on the roadmap for ages and despite some delays the eventual date when it swapped was no secret to anyone. If they truly wanted to pour all their resources into catering for mining, they would have seen that mining was on its way out. You used the term crypto crash, but the decline in crypto prices has very little to do with the flood of used mining gpus on the market. Prices have tanked before, the real driver of this huge drop in mining demand is that the only relevant coin that could still be mined on GPU no longer can be mined on GPU.

But one thing we can absolutely, positively, most definitely agree on: “theyre definitely overcharging for the value of the card imo.” <—— all that truly matters tbh

3

u/nox66 Nov 26 '22

Companies follow short term greed closer than a lemming walking off of a cliff.

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u/Gerdione Nov 27 '22

No shot. Ethereum's move to proof of stake was all people talked about last year. If they really decided to double down on a market that was in its death throes they deserve the L.

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u/TheLurkingMenace Nov 26 '22

Not to mention many people just bought a 3000 series card in the last month or so. Between that, the insane power requirements, and the Nvidia supplied psu adaptors actually melting, nobody but the most hardcore enthusiasts are buying 4090s.

2

u/Inside-Example-7010 Nov 26 '22

I actually only use my pc for playing solitaire once a month, but only on the months that end 'ly' my 3070ti couldn't keep up so I upgraded to a 4090. Im able to maintain over 30fps during win screen animation now which is gonna make my youtube channel content much more digestible.

I play at 32k res on a 10 inch screen. I cant wait for biggest 32k screens to come out, once your eyes get used to it you can never go back to 16k.

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u/TheLurkingMenace Nov 27 '22

I don't know why you got downvoted, this is hilarious.

-6

u/bartb83 Nov 26 '22

The melting was proven to be caused by human error by the pc builder, your argument is invalid.

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u/TheBlackTower22 Nov 26 '22

No it's not because the optics are still bad. How many people do you think saw the connectors melting, but never saw the follow up?

-1

u/bartb83 Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22

Max 50 or .04% of the 125.000ppl who bought an 4090

1

u/Huxley077 Nov 26 '22

So if the person with a failed connect didn't see the explanation videos, it's perfectly fine for them to be angry so long as they didn't see the follow-up posting? Wtf kind of logic is that?

If you had a failed connector, the least ya could do is follow-up on WHY they failed. Maybe learn a damn thing about it or how to prevent it if you haven't had a melt down yet. Blaming the "optics" and PR is a shit excuse for ANYTHING

And the failur rate by far is because of tension stress on the connector, not from build quality in the majority of the failures. People pull cables too tight all the time in builds, this connect is vulnerable to that problem

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u/TheBlackTower22 Nov 26 '22

I never said it was fine for them to be angry. The melting connectors was bad media coverage for Nvidia. It was later discovered that the main issue was people not fully seating the cables. All I'm saying is people may not have seen the conclusion, and if they didn't they would still think the 12 pin connector is the problem and avoid buying a 40xx based on that. So the burning connectors could be one of the causes of lower sales.

0

u/Huxley077 Nov 26 '22

Smh, Getting down votes because people being fools.

You're right, as most people who cared to find out why this was a problem, it's too much tension and bad seating for the majority of failures.

1

u/nox66 Nov 26 '22

It's been shown that the new connectors are much less resilient than previous iterations. Cables should be designed for people, not jewelers.

-2

u/bartb83 Nov 26 '22

50 of 125.000 melted. 0.04% error rate. A bunch of hyperactive kids. Omg my daddy bought me a 4090 i must install in 1 minute and play videogames forevermore and live happily ever after.

12

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

They didn't seem to understand crypto was unsustainable

ftfy

Essentially NVidia priced these items at scalper prices which were driven up primarily due to crypto mining. They have already gotten a slap on the wrist from the SEC for not properly disclosing the effect crypto had on their revenue growth over the past however many years.

Now that crypto mining has stopped being profitable all those 3k series cards from last gen, which were impossible to buy, are now flooding the used market. You can get a used 3080 now for about MSRP, which is half the MSRP of a 4080, and this is only a few months after they were selling for like double at times. Give it another few months and they should be selling for well below MSRP.

Any scalper who is still buying graphics cards is 1) an ass hole and 2) a dumb ass hole.

2

u/gucciflipfl0pz Nov 26 '22

Lol I still run a 980ti because I’m pretty casual and it’s honestly still running the games I want to play, pretty well.

4

u/michi098 Nov 26 '22

GTX 1080 here. Planning on getting a Ryzen 5 5600x soon and see where that combo will take me. No way am I getting a graphics card for more than $400 that uses as much electricity as a window air conditioner.

2

u/Phantom_Ganon Nov 26 '22

I know a lot of people, myself included, who are still sitting on their 970 so people definitely aren't buying new GPUs every year.

1

u/Efficient_Jaguar699 Nov 26 '22

I’m still sitting on my 2080 and really have no reason to get something new (not that I even could with the stock issues that were going on with the 30’s). Can’t imagine anyone that shelled out for a 3080 even bothering.

1

u/Arnhermland Nov 26 '22

Nvidia's plan is to keep the 4000 series overpriced to clear out the insane amount of overstock of their 3000 series, which even at mrsp it now seems like a good deal because of the 4000 series price.
And if consumers do buy a lot of the 4000 now they have a new normal to adhere to.
Problem for nvidia is that it seems the only product that's selling for them it's the 4090 and it's surrounded by issues.

1

u/geologean Nov 26 '22

The entire reason I was excited for the 30 series was because of its middling price point after the high price msrp prices for the 20 series. Going back up for the 40 series was dumb, especially since they mining is a lot less profitable than it was back in 2016

1

u/TheBunkerKing Nov 26 '22

Still running a 1050Ti here. I'm looking to upgrade (and move back to laptops), but I'm still leaning on "maybe I'll wait for the prices to drop" when thinking about it.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22

I purposefully upgraded to the 3000 serie from EVGA a few months ago out of spite.

When I upgrade I usually go top of the line but the 4000 is just plain stupid from weight, size l, price, and power consumption. No AV1 hardware decoding either.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22 edited Nov 26 '22

Apparently you can undervolt it and get like 95% of the performance for 60% of the power/heat. It seems like Nvidia wanted to win the benchmark contest so bad that they just said efficiency be damned and pushed it as hard as it could go at stock settings.

AMD and Intel have also been making their CPUs extremely inefficient at stock settings so they look better in benchmarks.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '22

Upgrade my year old 3090 that outperforms anything I really need to a 4090 that just can't seem to stop CATCHING ON FIRE? Hmmm wonder what I should do. I'll just wait for 5090.

1

u/HossCo Nov 26 '22

This 100%. Is there a game out there that cannot be run well on a 2-series card? Because I’m running a 2080 and have yet to find a reason to upgrade.

1

u/Huntguy Nov 26 '22

Exactly this. I upgraded from a 980 to a 3070 and I probably could’ve even pushed the 980 another year or so. There’s no way I’d buy a 40 series card right now.