Prepare for the AMD GPU flood.

[Vitalius]

"Soon there is going to be a market flooded with cheap, used, Radeon graphic cards, especially 7970's.

Here's why...

For the longest time, people who mine Bitcoin (Not explaining this) have used GPU's to do it. Many... MANY people have machines that have multiple cards in them. We're talking 4 or maybe more per motherboard, and multiple motherboards in stacks. Hundreds of cards adding up to tens of thousands.

Recently, the technology for Bitcoin has changed and there have been great increases in the difficulty to mine, making graphic cards obsolete. This hasn't quite happened yet, but will in the coming weeks.

Basically, it's a math issue. Let's say your power cost is 16 cents per kwh. Based on the value of Bitcoin at about $125. The cards are only profitable if the mining difficulty is below 30 million. It is currently at 15 million and has been jumping 30% every two weeks.

In areas where power costs more than 16 cents per kwh, people will shut down their GPU miners sooner, and people who pay no money for power may keep them running for God knows how long.

In the meantime, if you're a gamer, you're about to see a lot of miners unloading their GPU rigs on Ebay and Amazon to reclaim any profits they can get from reselling the hardware. Since the market will soon be flooded with these cards, you'll be able to get them for a steal. So keep a watch out for deals on used sale sites.

Note, that miners typically only use Radeon cards and not Nvidia. Radeon's have a shorter pipeline so that bitshift operations happen three times faster than in Nvidia cards. (This is not an advantage for gaming, but it is an advantage for mining.) So you'll generally only see Radeon cards for sale.

Also, Amazon just opened their Indie game store. If you buy an Indie game this week ($5 sale also going on) you get three free games as well. Go to Amazon and do a search on Indie Game Store and you'll find it. Good deal!"

My thoughts:

I can see this easily happening. I'm going to be keeping an eye out for such things on Ebay and just wanted to raise awareness so that others can benefit too. If you can't see this happening, I don't think you realize just how many and how much some people got into BTC mining.

Source for the quote: http://videogamenews.com/forum/topics/cheap-radeon-cards

[MrJakePrince]

Thank you for this, would love to get a cheap 7970!

[Andi]

i don't think that will impact that much. maybe 10% of all gamers go for a GPU over 300$ and they sell their old stuff too. how many used highend GPUs are on ebay? maybe 50 at all times. There are way more gamers who sell their old cards than bitcoin miners

 

 

there is even one auction right now, 17 7970 for 3000$ seems cheap...if you can resell the 16 cards you don't want :D

[911^NEmeSis]

Good find and interesting read.

 

I can see why most miners would opt for an AMD card due to their low power usage and value for money so I no doubt think that this is going towards the right lines. Besides this, with the usage of AMD based cards in the next gen consoles, this is more than likely.

[MJOLNITR VIPER]

I could use another 7950 and this is like perfect timing. .  

[Vitalius]

i don't think that will impact that much. maybe 10% of all gamers go for a GPU over 300$ and they sell their old stuff too. how many used highend GPUs are on ebay? maybe 50 at all times. There are way more gamers who sell their old cards than bitcoin miners

 

 

there is even one auction right now, 17 7970 for 3000$ seems cheap...if you can resell the 16 cards you don't want :D

That's sort of the point that he's trying to make. Right now, there aren't many used high end GPU's on Ebay. There will be when high end GPU's stop being popular for mining and are being sold. 

I disagree with your statement that there are more gamers who sell their old cards than bitcoin miners. You obviously haven't seen the numbers on BTC mining. There are lots. Like loooots. 

As for that auction, that's silly. He should be selling them on an individual basis as no one will want them for mining soon. 

[ANIMAL_ORIGIN]

Timing couldn't be better! Thanks for this post!

[Lukiose]

Wow, great find, didn't really think of it!

If it's cheap enough i might get another 7950 to xFire after the microstutter errors are sorted out

[codytappen]

Seems about right, but, like @Legion said, the cards have been under the constant stress of 100% load since they've been owned; so they probably aren't going to be the most reliable.

[Ghost]

:o

 

If this is true I'll be looking out for a 7970. I don't expect for them to drop lower than £200 though. :/

[brownninja97]

Yes because everyone knows how cheap a 7970 is. You sir are crazy.

[Maverik5124]

Well these cards are run at full load all the time. They may also be in a case or have a reference cooler which will result in high temps and a significantly reduced lifetime. Somtimes they also have ridiculously high overclocks set on these cards running 24/7. That can't be good for the card...