Rant!

[BroBQ]

Frustrated... Trying to build a new budget gaming PC and the hardware prices are ridiculous right now.

Is this driving anyone else crazy?

 

[R-T-B]

I feel like I sense a trend in new threads...

Yes. It's frustrating. I feel your pain.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Crazy? No. Going to upgrade?

I feel like I sense a trend in new threads...

I fear the game developers that are already struggling to stand out from a sea of mediocrity. If the PC market isn't growing because miners are buying all the hardware, their situation gets even more desperate.


I dread the thought of my R9 390 dying.

 

[yotano211]

I'm frustrated becuase I finally got a warehouse space and cant buy anymore cards to mine with.

 

[BroBQ]

I'm frustrated becuase I finally got a warehouse space and cant buy anymore cards to mine with.

It's YOUR fault!! Haha just teasing.

 

[R-T-B]

It's YOUR fault!! Haha just teasing.

Seriously though, we can only really blame the crypto miners for the GPU part. The rest? Just plain old ram monopolies and good ol' boy capitalism.

I got two GTX 1080's before the shortage at nearly MSRP... not saying what I'm doing with them yet, but you'll all know soon enough. It'll be cool, because I said so...

 

[dorsetknob]

Trying to build a new budget gaming PC and the hardware prices are ridiculous right now.

build a retro rig then
Old school high end like you always wanted back in the day but probably could not afford

 

[R-T-B]

I fear the game developers that are already struggling to stand out from a sea of mediocrity.

Maybe we play completely different gaming styles, but I see this as a chance to quit worrying about graphics and try to use the CPU for some really awesome AI or something... you know, that thing we call gameplay. Maybe adversity will force developers to think outside the box... crazy I know.

 

[qubit]

Yes, the high prices piss me off too, especially as I'm not made of money.

I remember days gone by when newer gen stuff was better and cheaper than the last one. Now the cheaper part is definitely no longer happening, with prices ratcheting up significantly, often for the same damned thing.

For example, I bought my smartphone for £350 which is over two years old now, but check it out on Amazon and it's now £360. That's an old model that's no longer properly supported by the manufacturer! WTF?! It's the Motorola X Style. Decent phone for the time, but I wouldn't pay that for it now. They finally upgraded it to Nougat (not even the latest version) over a year late and it will never get Oreo. Selling this old model and without proper support for more than full price is simply taking the piss.

I bought a Samsung 1TB EVO SSD in February last year for £250. The same thing now costs £270.

And so it goes on.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Seriously though, we can only really blame the crypto miners for the GPU part. The rest? Just plain old ram monopolies and good ol' boy capitalism.

It's gotten so bad, only communism could solve it now (one card per person and no more). Miners could only use cards other people forfeited.

Maybe we play completely different gaming styles, but I see this as a chance to quit worrying about graphics and try to use the CPU for some really awesome AI or something... you know, that thing we call gameplay. Maybe adversity will force developers to think outside the box... crazy I know.

More likely: force all gamers to walled garden consoles that are worthless to miners.

AI, physics and other CPU intensive features can't scale easily like GPU workloads. You either have enough to do it in realtime or you don't. Making them scale to hardware opens a world of damn near infinite bugs.

Yes, the high prices piss me off too, especially as I'm not made of money.

I remember days gone by when newer gen stuff was better and cheaper than the last one. Now the cheaper part is definitely no longer happening, with prices ratcheting up significantly, often for the same damned thing.

For example, I bought my smartphone for £350 which is over two years old now, but check it out on Amazon and it's now £360. That's an old model that's no longer properly supported by the manufacturer! WTF?! It's the Motorola X Style. Decent phone for the time, but I wouldn't pay that for it now. They finally upgraded it to Nougat (not even the latest version) over a year late and it will never get Oreo. Selling this old model and without proper support for more than full price is simply taking the piss.

I bought a Samsung 1TB EVO SSD in February last year for £250. The same thing now costs £270.

And so it goes on.

Think that's mostly the result of inflation, especially in UK as the result of Brexit.

 

[natr0n]

It's the greed of miners and fucking cell phones which is to blame.

@R-T-B don't even reply

 

[qubit]

Think that's mostly the result of inflation, especially in UK as the result of Brexit.

Yeah, I was trying not to mention the self-made labotomy that is brexit to keep my blood pressure down, but I noticed this trend even before the referendum.

That smartphone for example, never once dropped in price, unless it was on special offer once or twice and that's since November 2015.

 

[R-T-B]

AI, physics and other CPU intensive features can't scale easily like GPU workloads. You either have enough to do it in realtime or you don't. Making them scale to hardware opens a world of damn near infinite bugs.

You aren't thinking very outside the box, ford. Think city games, citizens, individual lives, mutlithreading. This is where it's at. I can think of a one thousand things I could do with even 32 threads.

Perhaps it's my background in old Netlogo code getting to me, (I really need to write a multithreaded netlogo) but there is TONS that could be done.

Stardock has already proven scaling to CPU cores is possible, anyways. There is sync overhead yes, but we are getting offtopic.

@R-T-B don't even reply

I do what I want. You're right greed is to blame. Have people forgotten my article on this already?

That smartphone for example, never once dropped in price, unless it was on special offer once or twice and that's since November 2015.

The cell phone thing isn't miners, it's DRAM and NAND monopolies, anyway. They could have competition force them to feed demand but they'd rather collude and raise prices jointly.

It's gotten so bad, only communism could solve it now (one card per person and no more). Miners could only use cards other people forfeited.

Newegg is already doing this and it does not work. You only need family and friends who don't game to get around it...

 

[EntropyZ]

It's not like we can do anything about it... It's going to get worse unless demand spikes down drastically. Then they can put their expensive hardware up their rear ends. Or sell it for less.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

You aren't thinking very outside the box, ford. Think city games, citizens, individual lives, mutlithreading. This is where it's at. I can think of a one thousand things I could do with even 32 threads.

Except the part where all 32 threads have to conclude their task in ~16.67ms and notify the renderer of that result or you'll lose frames. AIs are complicated on their own; wrapping a game around it makes it worse.

Stardock has already proven scaling to CPU cores is possible, anyways.

Not really, no. Like most games, if the AI starts bogging down, the game clock rate slows.

This really is a Pandora's Box of very technical problems. Suffice it to say there are reasons why AIs tend to only be "good enough."

 

[natr0n]

It's not like we can do anything about it... It's going to get worse unless demand spikes down drastically.

It's just like a gambling addiction. New crypto stuff coming out every so often and people jumping on the next thing coming out thinking that will get them rich. Never is it enough they need more unfathomable greed.

It's a sickness.

 

[Bow]

Once I can not play the games I enjoy with my currant set up I am all done PC gaming.

 

[R-T-B]

It's a sickness.

You are aware we have a significant amount of miners on this forum who don't really like being told they are mentally ill, especially when you have no justification for that?

If this is a gambling addiction, so is the stock market. After all, I can use your same justifications.

I'll leave it at that since I'm not the type to report posts unless they are really overboard. Someone else feel free.

Except the part where all 32 threads have to conclude their task in ~16.67ms and notify the renderer of that result or you'll lose frames. AIs are complicated on their own; wrapping a game around it makes it worse.

Not all results need rendering, ford.

Yes, AIs are complicated though, I will grant you that. That does not mean there is no benefit from pursuing them or other uses for the CPU.

And that's all I'll say on it.

 

[qubit]

The cell phone thing isn't miners, it's DRAM and NAND monopolies, anyway. They could have competition force them to feed demand but they'd rather collude and raise prices jointly.

I know it's not miners and +1 to collusion/cartel behaviour.

This price increase trend seems to be across all types of hardware, not just graphics cards which have been especially hard hit due to mining.

I'm now starting to wish that I'd bought one of the cheaper 1080 Ti cards out there when I had the chance, as I doubt I'll be able to afford the equivalent Volta 1080 or 1080 Ti now.

 

[R-T-B]

I know it's not miners and +1 to collusion/cartel behaviour.

This price increase trend seems to be across all types of hardware, not just graphics cards which have been especially hard hit due to mining.

I'm now starting to wish that I'd bought one of the cheaper 1080 Ti cards out there when I had the chance, as I doubt I'll be able to afford the equivalent Volta 1080 or 1080 Ti now.

The mining one is hard for me. We have no real answer except to diversify product lines and I'm fully in support of that, but see no easy way to software gimp mining. You basically have to kill compute in general, which is not an option... or maybe it has to be.

*sighs*

It's far from ideal, admittedly.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Not all results need rendering, ford.

If an AI does nothing in a frame, it presents as a bug. Sure, macro AI functions can span seconds or even minutes. The problem is that AIs have to branch: solve for most situations to find the best option. It's CPU, memory, and time intensive. The more possible outcomes, the worse it gets.

Remember that AI's just now have figured out how to reliably win Chess. Now imagine 3D games with thousands of pieces and an infinite number of moves for each. It might be possible if you had a core for each piece but now imagine trying to run the same software on a quad-core processor. A single frame on the quad-core will take 4-5 minutes to process AI for.

Hell, to make AIs truly how they need to be, x86 won't work because of the overhead that comes with every new thread started. There would have to be global, hardware register mutexs so that software only has to check that one variable to know if the AI is done for the frame.

Developers have to code for the lowest common denominator. Choking the CPU/RAM leads to far worse outcomes than choking the GPU.

...and yes, still only grazing the surface of the topic. TL;DR: everyone will go to console gaming before there's a monumental shift to CPU focus.

 

[R-T-B]

If an AI does nothing in a frame, it presents as a bug. Sure, macro AI functions can span seconds or even minutes. The problem is that AIs have to branch: solve for most situations to find the best option. It's CPU, memory, and time intensive. The more possible outcomes, the worse it gets.

Remember that AI's just now have figured out how to reliably win Chess. Now imagine 3D games with thousands of pieces and an infinite number of moves for each. It might be possible if you had a core for each piece but now imagine trying to run the same software on a quad-core processor. A single frame on the quad-core will take 4-5 minutes to process AI for.

Hell, to make AIs truly how they need to be, x86 won't work because of the overhead that comes with every new thread started. There would have to be global, hardware register mutexs so that software only has to check that one variable to know if the AI is done for the frame.

Developers have to code for the lowest common denominator. Choking the CPU/RAM leads to far worse outcomes than choking the GPU.

...and yes, still only grazing the surface of the topic. TL;DR: everyone will go to console gaming before there's a monumental shift to CPU focus.

*sighs*

Turn based gaming ford?

I mean I can think of instances. I'll leave it at that. But you may be right that my gameplay style is not to the tastes of the masses.

 

[erocker]

You are aware we have a significant amount of miners on this forum who don't really like being told they are mentally ill, especially when you have no justification for that?

Doesn't seem to me he's referring to all people who mine. More so towards those that go overboard with gambling and "get rich fast" schemes in general.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The mining one is hard for me. We have no real answer except to diversify product lines and I'm fully in support of that, but see no easy way to software gimp mining. You basically have to kill compute in general, which is not an option... or maybe it has to be.

Only give compute queue access to a handful of execution units. Try to mine on it, >80% of the card will be idle. Drivers could make exemptions to titles like BeamNG.drive. Forcing miners to Tesla/Vega FE would make miners pay prices that exceed what they've been getting away with buying GeForce/Radeon. It would put a huge damper on cryptocurrency growth as new cards come out with restrictions in place.

Turn based gaming ford?

How many gamers are willing to wait four minutes for their turn? Generally if you're waiting on a computer longer than 10 seconds, you'll get bored and find something else to do. Attention spans are getting shorter, not longer.

 

[R-T-B]

Doesn't seem to me he's referring to all people who mine. More so towards those that go overboard with gambling and "get rich fast" schemes in general.

I guess it can be read that way. I still don't see the problem if they are actually making decent money at it, but YMMV.

Drivers could make exemptions to title like BeamNG.drive

All the miner software needs to do is name itself BeamNG.drive then. Unless they are using a crypto hash, but then every patch would break it.

If the answer were that easy, it'd be done by now.

The compute resource limiting idea has some merit, though. I can hope.

Though, I really doubt it would have any impact on cryptos popularity. Just it's impact on gaming cards. Which is ideal, IMO.