If you’ve been in the market to buy a graphics card recently then you must be aware of the insane prices that retailers have listed in the wake of cryptocurrency boom, be it Nvidia or AMD graphics cards. PC enthusiasts have been suffering at the hands of cryptocurrency miners since last year, there was a moment of relax when graphics card prices stabilized late last year, but the beginning 2018 has brought back the bad news for gamers.
While PC gamers try and wait out for the cryptocurrency craze to slow down, Nvidia is stepping up to ensure that you get what you want. In a statement provided to Computerbase.de, Nvidia is asking retailers to make “appropriate arrangements” to prioritize graphics card stock to gamers.
“For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs as usual”.
To give you an idea of how bad the situation is right now, here are some of the GTX 1070 variants available on Newegg right now:
GTX 1070, which has an official MSRP of $349 and usually costs between $400-$460 for custom variants, is currently selling for over $1000.
There is no telling when the prices will stabilize, miners buy these graphics cards by the dozens, emptying entire Microcenter shelves in one go. On the other hand, buying a prebuilt system might be your only option if you want a gaming PC right now.
AMD has not commented on how they are tackling the challenge of providing to gamers first, but considering AMD’s Radeon software features a miner profile, it doesn’t look like the red team is looking to stop miners from eating the whole cake.
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