UPDATE (Feb 14th, 11pm ET): As a commenter has pointed out below, suddenly, as if by magic, Newegg has lowered prices on the currently in stock R9 290X cards by $200. That means you can currently find them for $699 – only $150 over the expected MSRP. Does that change anything about what we said above or in the video? Not really. It only lowers the severity.
I am curious to know if this was done by Newegg voluntarily due to pressure from news stories such as these, lack of sales at $899 or with some nudging from AMD…
If you have been keeping up with our podcasts and reviews, you will know that AMD cards are great compute devices for their MSRP. This is something that cryptocurrency applies a value to. Run a sufficient amount of encryption tasks and you are rewarded with newly created tokens (or some fee from validated transactions). Some people seem to think that GPUs are more valuable for that purpose than their MSRP, so retailers raise prices and people still buy them.
Currently, the cheapest R9 290X is being sold for $900. This is a 64% increase over AMD's intended $549 MSRP. They are not even the ones receiving this money!
This shortage also affects other products such as Corsair's 1200W power supply. Thankfully, only certain components are necessary for mining (mostly GPUs and a lot of power) so at least we are not seeing the shortage spread to RAM, CPUs, APUs, and so forth. We noted a mining kit on Newegg which was powered by a Sempron processor. This line of cheap and low-performance CPUs has not been updated since 2009.
We have kept up with GPU shortages, historically. We did semi-regular availability checks during the GeForce GTX 680 and 690 launch windows. The former was out of stock for over two months after its launch. Those also sometimes strayed from their MSRP, slightly.
Be sure to check out the clip (above) for a nice, 15-minute discussion.
For that type of cash you can
For that type of cash you can get an ASIC miner that’s 60x+ the hashrate and uses less electricity. I simply don’t know why the demand is still so high when ASIC miners exist, the difficulty has jumped so significantly over the past couple of mouths, and just recently all cryptocurrency has drop at least 40% in value.
Bitcoin != Litecoin/Dogecoin
Bitcoin != Litecoin/Dogecoin
Newegg and Amazon overcharge
Newegg and Amazon overcharge for ALL of their processors too. Micro Center for instance currently has an i5-4670k for $180. Newegg and Amazon-$220. i7-4770k at Newegg and Amazon exactly the same at $310 while Micro Center has it for $250! On the AMD front we have the FX-8320 being sold for $155 at Amazon and $160 at Newegg. Micro Center otoh has it for $100! Even the lowly (BC mining favorite) Sempron 145 goes for $14 less at Micro Center than it does at Newegg.
I won’t even mention the extra $30 off you get by bundling a mobo with those cpu’s (except for the 8320 and cheap Sempron). Now how is it that Micro Center can charge so much less than the two 8,000 pound tech gorilla’s?
I agree with Bill on these
I agree with Bill on these points. I would also like to add that this certainly is not the first time Newegg’s auto price adjustments have caused inflated prices. There is no way in hell they are not aware of it. It is pretty easy to turn the other way when the dollar is rolling in.
There’s a guy on hardforums
There’s a guy on hardforums trying to sell 50 Battlefield 4 game coupons he got with the 50 = R9 290X’s he bought! And he is taking 2 ltc for one game coupon
I don’t care, I am not in the
I don’t care, I am not in the market for a videocard. Take a deep breath the prices will come down…..
Besides they are all out of
Besides they are all out of stock….
Besides they are all out of
Besides they are all out of stock….
Ryan you and the whole
Ryan you and the whole hardware review community really needs to put the pressure on amd to address this pricing problem for the 280x cards as well it seams most of the r9 series of cards are inflated well over msrp hell i cant get a used 7950 for under 350…