The GeForce RTX 3080 is the sub-flagship game card developed by NVIDIA. In less than a year, the price of the RTX 3080 has been like a roller coaster, from 20,000 yuan in the hottest period to the trough of 7,000 yuan today. The "mining" behind the rise and fall of graphics card prices has surfaced.
Previously, in order to be able to earn income through virtual currency, it was necessary to purchase a large number of graphics cards to increase computing power. However, in September 2021, after the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the "Notice on Rectifying virtual currency "mining" activities", the state began to rectify the chaos of "mining" speculation that did not increase actual economic benefits but increased financial risks. With the withdrawal of the main consumer groups of graphics cards, "mine owners" and "miners", the sales volume and price of graphics cards in the domestic market have plummeted in the short term.
Although the price reduction of the current graphics card hot brands has reached 50%, the price of high-end graphics cards in the market is still higher than the official guidance price. At the same time, due to the mixed eyes of second-hand "mining cards", consumers are more wait-and-see about the current "price reduction tide". Coupled with the increase in graphics card production capacity and the reduction in cost, the industry expects that there is still room for price reduction of graphics cards in the later period, but as for whether the price of graphics cards is rising or falling, it also depends on the future national policies and market trends.
The hottest 20,000 yuan has dropped to 7,000 yuan today
The GeForce RTX 3080 is the sub-flagship game card developed by NVIDIA. Featuring the 2nd Generation NVIDIA RTX architecture, new RT Core and Tensor Core, streaming multiprocessors, and high-speed GDDR6X video memory, paired with 10GB of GDDR6X memory, equivalent to 19GHz, you can get a stable frame rate of 60FPS at 4K resolution, delivering the powerful performance gamers dream of for a stunning gaming experience.
According to previous reports, in e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Newegg, RTX 3080 was either listed as out of stock or could only choose to receive notifications when they were in stock. In other words, the RTX 3080 was snapped up as soon as it went on sale.
In 2021, the offer of RTX 3080 in Jingdong reached nearly 20,000 yuan, "A RTX 3080 graphics card before the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger can be sold to more than 10,000 yuan, and the highest RTX 3080 quotation without locking power can reach about 14,000 yuan." Seller Zhang Hai (pseudonym) introduced.
The booming tide of price cuts for the RTX 3080 first began quietly from overseas. "The RTX3080 plummeted 35% in Australia in mid-March, which should be the biggest drop for graphics cards." Zhang Hai introduced.
Overseas hardware media HardwareUnboxed counted the prices of various graphics cards of e-commerce companies such as eBay in the United States from January to March, and found that the prices were significantly lower. According to the statistics of the eBay platform, the price of Nvidia series graphics cards fell by an average of 10% from February to March, and among the graphics cards with the most obvious price reduction, there was the RTX 3080.
In Jinan Huaqiang Electronic World, although various merchants place various types of graphics cards, consumers who come to buy are particularly rare. "NVIDIA RTX 3080 graphics cards are mostly quoted at around 7,000 yuan, which is currently at a low level in the past two years. Not only this one, the previous hot-selling 3060, 3050 series graphics cards, the price compared to last year also fell by half. ”
After the price of graphics cards began to decline generally, Zhang Hai also lost a lot. "At present, the overall price of graphics cards has dropped by more than 10% compared with the beginning of the year, and some graphics cards in Shenzhen have dropped thousands of yuan in 20 days." The shrinkage of graphics card prices has also changed the way graphics card manufacturers sell goods. "At present, some popular models of graphics card manufacturers do not have much stockpiled. Buyers who want to get the goods must pay a deposit first, and then the card merchant will find the factory to ship directly. ”
The "mining" behind the rise and fall of graphics card prices
What is the reason why graphics card prices have fluctuated like a roller coaster in just one year? The new Yellow River reporter's investigation found that starting in the second half of 2020, the price of virtual currency Bitcoin began to soar, and the price of virtual currency Ether continued to soar. The "mining" industry came into being.
Taking the virtual currency Bitcoin as an example, the bitcoin created through the energy-intensive "mining" process, at every other point in time, the system will generate a random code on the system node, all computers in the Internet can look for and parse this code, find the code and produce a block, and then get a bitcoin, this process is the so-called "mining". Finding and parsing Bitcoin requires a lot of GPU operations, and if you want to get Bitcoin faster, you can only purchase a large number of graphics cards by increasing the computing power.
Different virtual currency systems have different requirements for the computing power of the "mining machine", but they have triggered the enthusiasm of players for "mining", attracting many players to buy graphics cards in order to improve the computing power, and then the price of the graphics card has risen, and the phenomenon of a card being difficult to find occurs frequently.
However, in September 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the Notice on Rectifying virtual currency "mining" activities. The People's Bank of China and 10 other departments issued documents to prevent and deal with the risk of speculation in virtual currency transactions, clearly stating that virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities.
At the same time, the New Yellow River reporter learned that the Ethereum blockchain system 2.0 upgrade will be completed in the second quarter of 2022. The consensus mechanism of the upgraded Ethereum 2.0 will be changed from proof of work to proof of stake, which means that there is no longer a need to use graphics card mining machines for "mining". The price increase of graphics cards has always been closely related to the demand for "mining", and now the attractiveness of graphics cards is reduced, the demand is reduced, and the price begins to fall.
"At present, the 'miners' basically do not buy new graphics cards, and have begun to sell graphics cards on a small scale. At the same time, under the condition that the demand for non-mining computing power such as games and modeling remains relatively stable, the price of graphics cards has also become inevitable. Graphics card enthusiast Lu Jie (pseudonym) told reporters that NVIDIA RTX40 series and AMD2x7000 series are about to usher in release, and Intel's ARC graphics card may also be launched this year, which means that the next generation of graphics cards for games will also be not far away. Many consumers' expectations for new graphics cards may also be wait-and-see for existing graphics cards.
Graphics card production capacity rises and costs fall, and the market expects that there is still room for price reduction
The New Yellow River reporter found that even if the price of graphics cards has dropped sharply, the price of popular graphics cards on the market is still higher than the official guidance price, and the premium of graphics cards is still serious. Taking the RTX3060 graphics card as an example, the suggested retail price of NVIDIA is about 2499 yuan, while the price sold in the market is about 3800 yuan, even if the relatively "cheap" RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, the retail price is still 33% above the price.
At the same time, the New Yellow River reporter learned that although the bursting of the "mining" dividend bubble led to a price reduction trend of graphics cards, the large number of second-hand "mining cards" poured into the market, making it difficult for consumers to ensure the quality of their graphics cards. "Now there are many refurbished mining cards on the market, and they will be black screened after half a month of use, and then directly scrapped in half a month." Many merchants directly renovate as a brand new sale. I just want to buy a graphics card, and now I don't dare to do it. Game enthusiast Chen Fang (pseudonym) said that according to his prediction, the price of graphics cards may further decline in the future.
It has been reported that TSMC expects to increase the wafer production of N5 process nodes from the current 120,000 units per month to 150,000 units per month in the third quarter of 2022 to meet the future graphics card order needs of AMD, NVIDIA and MediaTek. With the rise in graphics card production capacity, the supply has gradually kept up, and the current market has rarely seen a situation where there is no spot at all.
And in March 2021, Nvidia said that the production cost of GPUs will drop by about 10%. Relevant people in the industry predict that "the cost of graphics cards will decline as the production cost of GPUs decreases, and with it, the price of graphics cards bought by consumers will also decrease accordingly." ”
In the well-known game site Steam, 3 of the top 5 graphics cards most used by players are the series from 5 years ago. Perhaps it means that the demand for non-mining computing power such as gaming, graphic modeling, and video and audio processing remains relatively stable, and the market demand for high-end graphics cards has become less urgent.
New Yellow River reporter: Chen Yuanhao
Editor: Liu Yuhong