What are you currently playing?

[sunrise089]

Not even Bitcoin, it’s stupid Ethereum.

I agree re: prebuilt PC as the best option, UNLESS you have a Microcenter nearby.

[Jowy]

All out of stock the day after, glad I checked yesterday. The upside of small vendors is that the items don't all go to scalpers.

If you want a new GPU at retail prices, the only option is basically buy a new pre-built PC.  I figure I will hold off until the next round of new cards and then upgrade everything with a new PC.

Well I didn't even try to get the new RTX, just a better GTX card. It should prolong the life of this PC for another 3-4 years (fingers crossed). Then it will be time for a full upgrade.

I hope the mining bubble has bursted by then. I saved so much money by building my own PC last time compared to a pre-built.

[antisocialmunky]

I offloaded 20 GPUs last summer when prices spiked 30%. I kinda wish I waited until now

Its not crypto, its the supply chain being overloaded. Wood and wholesale food prices are like 2-4x of last year but there's a supply glut on farms and wood mills. There just aren't enough trucks, trains, or ships right now to move both raw materials and finished goods. In the case of semiconductors there's a massive shortage of raw materials and refined materials due to an inability to charter shipping right now. East asia requires both raw materials shipped in and out so it makes it extremely hard right now

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

I'm currently playing Planescape Torment with the recommended Intelligence + Charisma + Wisdom Mage stats.  I like the narrative so far, but don't feel like writing long posts on Realms Beyond about it.  The writers must have been studying Buddhism when creating the Dustmen faction:  they believe in letting go of passions and desires, and seek the "True Death" that is freedom from reincarnations and illusions (i.e. nirvana).  The Nameless One himself has varying moral alignments throughout his reincarnations, suggesting the doctrine of anatta ("no-self") rather than a permanent soul.


When I'm away from home, I play Money Puzzle Exchanger on Switch.  It's like Magical Drop, except with money instead of tarot. The anime characters even have weird names like DEBTMISER.  Add up coins to combine them into larger denominations, or make them disappear from the board if they're at 500.  Since it's a Neo Geo arcade game, the story mode difficulty is designed to steal your quarters.  Most players will need to use continues to see the ending even on the lowest setting.  The "endless" solo mode is what prevents the game from being too frustrating to recommend.

[sunrise089]

Its not crypto, its the supply chain being overloaded.  

What supply chain? The same exact supply chain, from the same fabs to some of the same assembly firms, selling every other component of computers and their kin without any widespread issues?

I'm surprised to see this claim even made ASM - maybe I'm super out of the loop, but I don't see this as anything like the "there isn't a toilet paper shortage, people are just substituting using the bathroom at home versus work and we need time to re-allocate capacity to home consumption" - this is instead "pallets of GPUs are being shipped directly to mining firms." The rise in GPU scarcity has followed the rise in Ethereum pricing; NVIDIA outright announced they were nerfing mining in their next GPU models and offering specialized mining cards; and the only people able to get cards in bulk at MSRP are big OEMs where card manufacturers need to protect a longstanding relationship. 

I don't see any evidence of a systematically overloaded supply chain in general either - 99% of shelves are stocked in any store I go in, the same trucks and ships are still moving about, and it's not like global demand for products in aggregate has seen any large change. There is undoubtedly a tight silicon supply, but that's because silicon fabrication has become the most difficult industrial enterprise in human history, with startup capital costs exceeding those of nuclear power plants, and hence the market has consolidated to all of three firms worldwide. That means capacity can't just be scaled up by 20% in a given year since the ROI isn't there if demand isn't expected to stay at those levels. But that problem is of a different (lesser) magnitude entirely than the GPU shortages.

[Bobchillingworth]

Aren't car manufacturers also suffering from a lack of certain computer components? Not sure how many are in common with graphics cards though.

[scooter]

Its not crypto, its the supply chain being overloaded.  

What supply chain? The same exact supply chain, from the same fabs to some of the same assembly firms, selling every other component of computers and their kin without any widespread issues?

I'm surprised to see this claim even made ASM - maybe I'm super out of the loop, but I don't see this as anything like the "there isn't a toilet paper shortage, people are just substituting using the bathroom at home versus work and we need time to re-allocate capacity to home consumption" - this is instead "pallets of GPUs are being shipped directly to mining firms." The rise in GPU scarcity has followed the rise in Ethereum pricing; NVIDIA outright announced they were nerfing mining in their next GPU models and offering specialized mining cards; and the only people able to get cards in bulk at MSRP are big OEMs where card manufacturers need to protect a longstanding relationship. 

I don't see any evidence of a systematically overloaded supply chain in general either - 99% of shelves are stocked in any store I go in, the same trucks and ships are still moving about, and it's not like global demand for products in aggregate has seen any large change. There is undoubtedly a tight silicon supply, but that's because silicon fabrication has become the most difficult industrial enterprise in human history, with startup capital costs exceeding those of nuclear power plants, and hence the market has consolidated to all of three firms worldwide. That means capacity can't just be scaled up by 20% in a given year since the ROI isn't there if demand isn't expected to stay at those levels. But that problem is of a different (lesser) magnitude entirely than the GPU shortages.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Se...-critical2


The supply chain issues are pretty real. Car manufacturers are feeling it too right now as Bob said. Demand for certain electronic components have shot up in the last year without the supply to match it. That said, the crypto angle is real too, and I don't know enough to know how to allocate blame. There's also just a lot of organic GPU consumer demand right now, especially as so many skipped the 2000 series GPUs and video game interest is at an all-time high thanks to the pandemic.

[darrelljs]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanpon...te-change/

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Guys, you are equivocating demand bring ‘high’ for, say, cars, and ‘high’ for GPUs as equal because they’re both higher than baseline.

No doubt there is stress on some auto components and there are associated media reports, but you can walk into a dealer and order or purchase a car at MSRP or below right now. Find me another product without reasonable substitutes which has seen a near-doubling of prices and a near total exhaustion of supply and I’ll stop blaming Crypto.

[scooter]

Find me another product without reasonable substitutes which has seen a near-doubling of prices and a near total exhaustion of supply and I’ll stop blaming Crypto.

Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X right now? Nintendo Switch for almost all of 2020? I had serious trouble finding a physical copy for my wife of Animal Crossing this past year despite the fact that physical video games virtually never have supply issues. Gaming-related hardware has been bonkers for a year now. The car mention is just pointing out a side effect - that supply/demand is so jacked right now that it's spilling over into normally unrelated industries.