What just happened to the R9 270/270x ? (price hike ?)

[mastershake575]

I just checked a couple sites (newegg, amazon, tigerdirect....ect) and the R9 270 is like minimum $230 with most models costing $250-300...... (wtf ?).

Its not a desired card for miners and AMD already kinda screwed up the original price to begin with (7870ghz was $140-160 for most of 2013 and they rebadged it for $200-230) and now the prices are even higher

Is AMD on crack ?

 

[suraswami]

next best cheap alternative is the R9 270 series for mining!

And oh, its probably not AMD hiking the prices, the greedy retailers are doing it.

 

[GreiverBlade]

well i am glad i brought mine for less than 190$ new(R9 270 MSI gaming OC)... on the other hand the price is still stable in switzerland ... (indeed still 190$ for the cheapest R9 270 on Toppreise.ch, a price comparison website)
i suspect the 750Ti to be responsible as Nvidia price it (and retailer) near the price of the R9 270 lowest price, since it perform under the 270 the retailer maybe thought about uping the 270 price to match the difference ... or ... not ...

edit : the R9 270 is a rebrand of a 7870ghz indeed ... but what a progress on it ... now it need only 1 6pin and the consumption+perf are still better than the 7870ghz, i just can't blame AMD nV do mostly the same game ... .... i had a 770 and it was only a renamed 680 but it never felt like it was a 680 they were not in the same league

 

[Blue-Knight]

And oh, its probably not AMD hiking the prices, the greedy retailers are doing it.

+1. They're always the first you should suspect...

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

The pricing reflects market forces, not the manufacturer's whims.

With the continuing focus on bitcoins, and mining in general, a lot of sellers are putting together "mining kits." These kits are just a boat load of AMD GPUs, and moderate CPU. As such, the availability of these cards is artificially decreased, so pricing hikes up. AMD isn't greedy, people are getting on the mining bus late and buying up any card that it "good enough" to mine. AMD beats out Nvidea in mining currently, so AMD is experiencing an unnatural price hike. Wait for 6 months, or until mining falls out of profitability, and those cards will be dirt cheap. I'm looking forward to then....

 

[Vario]

The pricing reflects market forces, not the manufacturer's whims.

With the continuing focus on bitcoins, and mining in general, a lot of sellers are putting together "mining kits." These kits are just a boat load of AMD GPUs, and moderate CPU. As such, the availability of these cards is artificially decreased, so pricing hikes up. AMD isn't greedy, people are getting on the mining bus late and buying up any card that it "good enough" to mine. AMD beats out Nvidea in mining currently, so AMD is experiencing an unnatural price hike. Wait for 6 months, or until mining falls out of profitability, and those cards will be dirt cheap. I'm looking forward to then....

I wouldn't recommend buying a mining card, I bought some miner's 7970 and it ended up being a 2 month RMA process. Just glad Gigabyte RMA's for whoever holds it, not the name on the invoice...

 

[R-T-B]

Some miners run their cards way too hot yeah. I swear I am the only one who keeps them under 60 degrees celsius at all times, in climate control... My cards are happier than if they were in a gaming rig, lol.

 

[JoeArchitect]

...Its not a desired card for miners...

It actually is the most desirable card on the market for mining currently (at least it was before demand shot up and brought with it a price increase).

I purchased 6 Gigabyte 270s at $213 a pop, each card provides 490 Kh/s - that's $1278 for 2.94 MH/s or 2.3 Kh per dollar. That's almost double the value of the next closest card on the market at time of purchase.

For comparison if you estimate the popular 7950 at 700 Kh/s at the cheapest I could find of $410 AR (which I assume is one per household anyway) you're getting 1.7 Kh per dollar.

 

[Vario]

Plus its more energy efficient!

 

[TheGoat Eater]

I got 9 PowerColor cards before the price hike - energy efficient is what I like about them / better purchase

 

[Tatty_Two]

Not really seeing much of a hike in UK to be honest.