Image source @ Visual China
Wen | parity
What is the lowest priced day for graphics cards? The next day.
For the past two months, this passage has been fulfilled every day. After nearly a year of high graphics card prices, with the arrival of the spring of 2022, finally completely riding the downward roller coaster.
On April 20, NVIDIA's 30 series graphics card representative model RTX 3070 and AMD RX 6000 series graphics card representative model RX 6700XT brush brush fell to about 3900 yuan, which is the first time since the release of the two graphics cards that the price of the two graphics cards fell to the MSRP (Suggested Retail Price) level.
RTX 30 series graphics cards are fully available for sale Image source @Novatech
It seems that this round of price increase farce that runs through the life cycle of N and A graphics cards is finally coming to an official end. Players who have been waiting for a long time with coins seem to be about to usher in spring.
But the absurdity that has lasted for too long has already created a rift that is difficult to repair. In the past year and a half, the sky-high graphics card that once exceeded the initial price doubled, the mining boss who bought a card in a large way and was suppressed by the policy, the upstream manufacturer who hoarded goods... Even if the graphics card market, which can be called a group of demons, returns to normal, it is difficult to immediately regain people's trust.
Behind the huge player base, the personal assembly computer industry (hereinafter referred to as the PC DIY industry), which has deteriorated in recent years, is also in the center of the shock. In the past year and a half, they have also struggled in this sunset industry, not as the outside world imagines.
Therefore, we decided to use the perspectives of ordinary players and dealers to explore the ins and outs of this "graphics card crisis" and its far-reaching impact on the future:
1. How has the graphics card market lost patience with players over the past two years?
2. The assembled computer profiteer who is angrily criticized by the player really earned in this farce?
3. Price cuts are finally coming, can players and the PC DIY industry usher in the spring?
A graphics card at a conscience price cannot be bought in a year and a half
Around October 2020, under the expectation of gamers, the famous PC graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA released the latest RTX 30 series graphics cards, and announced that the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, RTX 3070 graphics cards will be the first to be listed.
"Conscience, this price!" "You can look forward to 3060!" "When I flipped through the chat records of that year's press conference, my friends Li Pei and Sun Yang, who were concerned about computer hardware, were obviously excited at the time.
In addition to the RTX 3090 model, which is positioned as the highest-end flagship, the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 graphics cards are priced at 5499 yuan and 3899 yuan, respectively. For comparison, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 models of the previous generation of graphics cards are also priced at 6499 yuan and 4799 yuan, respectively.
Whether it is RTX 3080 or RTX 3070, its performance exceeds the previous generation's strongest flagship card RTX 2080Ti, considering that before the new graphics card is listed, some computer sellers claim that the RTX 30 series will increase in price. This wave of increased volume and price reduction operations made Lao Huang (NVIDIA CEO Huang Jenxun) look really conscientious.
The performance and listing price of the 30 series are very "conscience" parity watchmaking
But it wasn't long before the "illusion" of conscience pricing was shattered. Li Pei, who originally planned to replace his own computer for many years in service with the GTX 970 graphics card, grabbed three different models of the 3070 on JD.com and failed.
At the same time, the graphics card bar, NGA hardware area, Chiphell and other hardware forums circulated because of the epidemic, the initial production capacity of graphics cards was insufficient, resulting in short supply, and some of the graphics cards that were robbed were increased by 300-400 yuan, appearing on Taobao and idle fish.
Fortunately, despite the fierce competition for the rush, many players were lucky enough to grab the original price card at that time. After another failed rush, Li Pei took advantage of the double 11 promotion of that year to purchase a Sotime RTX 3070 at a price increase of 200.
Little did he know at the time that the graphics card would hit a rocket in the following year and rise to an incredibly high price. Many players never had the opportunity to buy a graphics card they wanted at the original price for a long time afterwards.
In November 2020, bitcoin, Ethereum and other virtual currencies began another bull market, when the Ethereum of about $400 doubled in one month to nearly $800 per coin. After entering 2021, the price of the coin is out of control, and the price of Ethereum coin exceeded 2000 US dollars / coin in February, and the price of the coin reached a staggering 4300 US dollars / coin in May.
As an important tool for mining virtual currency, the RTX 30 series graphics card with 45-120MH/s computing power has become a revenue-generating weapon in the eyes of miners (people who use graphics cards to mine virtual coins), under the crazy procurement and promotion of miners and mine owners, the price of graphics cards has soared, RTX 3080 once rose to more than 16,000 yuan, and RTX 3070 also set a price record of 11,000 yuan.
Driven by the mining tide, AMD, another major graphics card brand listed in December of that year, also failed to maintain the suggested retail price, although the initial flagship card RX 6800XT has a hash rate of only 63MH/s, it was still speculated by miners from 4599 yuan all the way to 11000 yuan.
In March of this year, Sun Yang, who used GTX 960 4G, finally waited for the RTX 3060 he was looking forward to, but it had just been listed, and the "dessert card" with a suggested retail price of 2499 yuan was hyped to nearly 5,000 yuan, and in April it rushed to 8,000 yuan.
"Buy a XX ah buy, wait for the PS5", Sun Yang, annoyed by the high card price frequently pulled by mining, lost patience in the chat at that time, bought mainly for the game of him, decided to give up the graphics card, the target turned to the upcoming next-generation game console.
Sun Yang finally bought a PS5 host courtesy of the interviewee
More and more players who plan to replace their new graphics cards are choosing to retreat in the face of the high graphics card prices caused by the mining tide. "1060 will fight for three more years", "970 online games to kill", "buy what new graphics card, buy it is also brush paste" the argument is noisy. Faced with nearly quadrupling the price of the card, such a decision is not surprising.
At this time, there are still some players waiting for the "mining disaster" (the price crash led to a sharp drop in the price of graphics cards), they have experienced the virtual currency bull market at the end of 2017 caused by the soaring graphics card, after the collapse of the coin price in the second half of 2018, the GTX 10 series graphics card at that time fell to about 60% of the official pricing, they believe that this mining wave will soon have such a day.
The decline in the price of the coin came as desired in May 2021, and starting on May 12, in just 10 days, the price of Ethereum plummeted from a high of $4300 to $2300. The price of graphics cards in the month also fell in response, opening a downward trend.
In the same month, NVIDIA announced the launch of an LHR version of the graphics card that limits mining power, which will be gradually applied to all subsequent graphics card models. Graphics card prices finally began to go all the way down, this round of decline with September 2021, the central bank and other 10 ministries and commissions notice, completely cut off the virtual currency exchange in the domestic channels played the strongest sound.
Unexpectedly, despite the collapse of coin prices, policy blows and other impacts, the price of graphics cards has dropped significantly compared with the peak, but the price of key models of graphics cards has not reproduced the scene of the mining disaster in 2018, but is still 20% or more expensive than the official price.
In November 2021, the NVIDIA RTX 3070 stabilized at about 5500 yuan, the RTX 3060Ti still asked for 4500 yuan, the AMD RX 6800XT hovered around 7500 yuan, and the RX 6700 XT stood firm at the 5300 yuan price.
It has been a year since the release, and the production capacity should not be a problem; the evil miners and mine owners have also been hit to disappear, why can't the price of the graphics card come down?
Players who can't figure it out this time will target the dealer, "all blame the profiteer for hoarding the price of the card", "optimistic about the original price chart, do not wait for the profiteer to spit out the original price card and do not buy" has become the main theme of the forum "and so on" after October 2021.
But despite their dissatisfaction, graphics card prices remained stable for four months. In these four months, these players who have been insisting have waited for the news that Intel ARC series discrete graphics cards are about to be launched, and also waited for the news that NVIDIA's new generation of RTX 40 series graphics cards will appear this year.
But they still didn't buy the original "conscience price" graphics card.
3070 times less than the original price of 3899 Figure / Zhihu @ Oath Victory Sword
Another group of people decided to stop buying this generation of graphics cards. At this time, this round of sharp decline in graphics card prices is long overdue. But most people's patience is exhausted in three different phases of insufficient capacity - rising prices of mines - and continuous premiums of card prices.
In a year and a half, some people finally recognized the needs, some people bought game consoles, some people completely broke off their thoughts, and the last few people finally waited for a graphics card close to the "conscience price". It's just that the lack of cards for so long, it seems that it is okay to be missing for a while?
The 500 days of the "profiteer" are also not good
As a member of the "profiteer" in the player's mouth, Zhang Bei felt that he was not happy.
Before the RTX 30 series went public, Zhang Bei, who opened an online store, had just experienced the best performance in the past three years, and the demand for computers driven by online education and office caused by the epidemic had soared. According to IDC data, China's computer shipments increased to 49.1 million units in 2020, which is the first time in nine years that China's computer shipments have increased.
The last time there was such a good market, it had to be traced back to around 2016, the game "PUBG - Battle Royale" demand for high performance and its own optimization problems, the previous main graphics card model 750Ti, 760 encountered performance bottlenecks. This game, which has almost national popularity, once made Zhang Bei, as a small and medium-sized merchant, sell hundreds of GTX 10 series graphics cards in a month.
PUBG, the 2017 savior game for the PC DIY industry
After the release of the "conscience price" RTX 30 series, Zhang Bei was expected to usher in a wave of new machines, "so much improvement, the old graphics card is quite a lot of discontinuation." However, the lack of graphics cards trapped in production capacity in the early stage of listing caught him off guard, and most players tended to buy machines on large e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall, and he could only find a way to share the goods from upstream dealers.
The new graphics card that can be inhabited by strange goods has made the upstream dealers begin to require merchants such as ZhangBei to "bundle the goods", that is, every time they take an RTX 30 series high-end card, they must take away several low-end cards such as GT 1030 that are not widely sold.
In the PC DIY market, in addition to the use of a non-core display CPU, only require a single display to light up the machine users, gt 1030 such low-end cards are rarely popular. But in order to get a high-end card to make some money, Zhang Bei still took over some GT 1030.
After the dilemma of the initial listing, the mining tide brought about by the virtual currency bull market has made the graphics card market unprecedentedly unbalanced. In the months when the price of virtual currency is the highest, even if there are unreasonable rules such as "bundled pick-up", Zhang Bei, as an ordinary merchant, sometimes can only get a few cards a week.
Hardware boxes piled up in the store Parity filming
"The model does not have to be picked, give you a model is what model", Zhang Bei told me, in the past, merchants can choose different positioning of the graphics card, after all, the flagship card, the mid-range card, the cai version of the card have their own needs, but the virtual currency boom swallowed everything, there are cards to sell, at that time it was a fortunate thing.
But even if he got the card at a purchase price much higher than the official retail price, Zhang Bei still faced a severe test. He does not do physical stores, the cost is slightly better controlled, but if he does not sell dozens of machines a week, he will inevitably face losses, and the price of the graphics card seems to be high, but after deducting the premium price of the goods, he actually did not earn too much.
Like many online store sellers, Zhang Bei chose the way of graphics cards "only with the whole machine" for a period of time, and all the high-end graphics cards obtained are not only sold, only customers who install the whole machine can choose to buy the accessory of the graphics card. However, the high price also frightened many players, and sometimes he "couldn't open a single order for a day".
"When the card price came down a little, it was someone hoarding the card, I don't know what the situation is behind, I'm afraid that there is no card to sell at all", Zhang Bei does not deny that there were sellers with thick families hoarding cards during that time, but he believes that the hoarding cards are more out of the concern that there is no card to sell at all.
A day only single digits of the new single day is not easy to stay up, high-end graphics card soared, even with Zhang Bei before the bundled pick-up, originally sold only 400 yuan less GT 1030 have risen to 700 yuan, some just need users to brighten the machine, and even installed the GT 1030 and GT 730 that were difficult to sell before.
Until the "big earthquake" of the virtual currency exchange in September 2021, the price of graphics cards entered a downward cycle, and the premium rate dropped from 200% all the way to 20-30%, which made the business of the online store pick up. However, the price is still expensive, coupled with many needs that have been "dissuaded" by the market, his business is not to say catch up with 2020, even the trough period of 2018 is not as good.
Why does the graphics card that has separated from the virtual currency still remain at a high price level at a significant premium? Zhang Bei believes that this is mainly due to the upstream dealers and the two major manufacturers of NVIDIA and AMD.
After May last year, the price of graphics cards fell by a part, but after the "mining disaster" in October, the price of graphics cards taken by upstream dealers and brand factories has not declined significantly, such as the purchase price of RTX 3060Ti has fluctuated between 4000 yuan and 4500 yuan for a long time, and the purchase price of RTX 3070 has also stabilized at 5000 yuan.
Therefore, the high price of graphics cards maintained since October 2021 may not all be caused by dealers "hoarding card" price increases in pursuit of higher profits. The stable price control of upstream factories and NVIDIA and AMD makes the purchase price of downstream distributors still high, which is also one of the important reasons.
Many of the dealers who have been angrily denounced as "profiteers" by players who can't buy cards have also experienced bundled pick-ups in the past year and a half, almost no cards to sell, and few orders due to upstream price control. The so-called big money does not exist, and it is not easy to survive.
After the farce, there is no spring in the industry
Now, the "graphics card crisis" that has lasted for a year and a half has finally shown signs of ending, whether it is most hot pillow players or small and medium-sized dealers downstream, they have not been able to take advantage of this crisis.
When the crisis is finally over, will spring come?
Sun Yang, who still uses GTX 960 on the computer, does not plan to change to a new graphics card in the short term, and now he only occasionally uses the computer PS to point pictures and play online games such as LOL that do not eat configuration. As for the big AAA games, he's used to playing with PS5.
Chen Xiaohang finally decided at the beginning of the year to replace the computer that had served at home for nearly a decade. However, after visiting a circle of graphics cards, Tubandine bars, PCEVA and other forums, in the end, he did not purchase his own accessories and assemble as before, but directly ordered a blade series machine in Lenovo's Jingdong store.
In fact, most of Chen Xiaohang's current game time has been occupied by mobile phones. "Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite", "Original God", "Harry Potter" and other mobile games have developed rapidly in the past year and a half, and they also have outstanding playability. The reason he bought the computer was simply that he was used to having one at home.
In the statistics of Steam, the gaming platform where the AAA masterpieces converge, the top-ranked RTX 30 series desktop graphics card is the 8th mid-range dessert card RTX 3060, while the top ranking is still NVIDIA's GTX 1060 released six years ago.
Gamer Graphics Card Statistics screenshot from Steam
In the computer market located in Guangbu tun, Jioupai saw that the configuration list displayed by a merchant also said that the mainstream Intel 10th generation Core and AMD Zen2 series CPUs for 2019-2020 were also the previous generation of RTX 20 series and RX 5000 series products, which had obviously not been updated for a long time.
The installed configuration board of the computer market has not been updated for a long time
Even on the high floors where online store sales are the mainstay, there are a large number of merchants who close their doors. In fact, since around 2012, the PC DIY industry has long been deteriorating, and it is regarded as a "sunset industry" with difficult prospects.
In the past year, the industry has had a large number of merchants retreating. In the past ten years, the relatively brilliant 2017 and 2020 period, tmall alone has Yihua flagship store, Samur digital franchise store, Golden Baidu computer accessories store and many other well-known computer hardware stores that have been operating for more than ten years announced the closure or change of business.
At the same time, Lenovo, Asus, MSI and other well-known computer manufacturers have also begun to exert their own computer products, in the past PC DIY existed a major advantage, is more cost-effective than these brand machines, but with the computer market "rolled up", the big manufacturers not only cost-effective to catch up, but also the whole machine 3-5 years after-sales significant advantages.
For the PC DIY industry, which is surrounded by strong enemies and has been struggling, this "graphics card crisis" that lasted for one and a half years can be described as the heaviest blow.
The not-so-large group of gamers has been overdrawn patience, thereby accelerating the loss; medium and large enterprises prefer large factories with perfect after-sales services; there are also some small businesses hit by the epidemic and have limited budgets, which also tend to choose computer rental platforms under the uncertain prospects; the AAA game market under the epidemic is silent, and the only masterpiece that is expected to promote players to change cards , "Cyberpunk 2077" has plummeted because of the large number of Bugs, failing to reproduce the glorious history of "PUBG" driving the card exchange tide.
Even now that the price of graphics cards has finally come down, the audience of the PC DIY industry is still shrinking. In the hardware area of the NGA forum, which has arisen due to the classic game "Warcraft", in recent years, players have often discussed the prospects of the PC DIY industry.
There is a view that integration, like other electronic devices, will become the future trend of personal computers, and forms that are closer to modularity like PC DIY, although not completely dead, are destined to become a Hi-Fi-like belief.
NGA netizens look down on the prospects of PC DIY Figure/NGA hardware area
For most players, it is difficult for the demand for games that disappeared or moved to laptops/mobile phones to come back; for PC DIY industry practitioners like Zhang Bei, the decline of the industry has become a foregone conclusion. These are not the "graphics card crisis" lifted, the graphics card reduced back to the original price can change, after the farce, whether for players or the industry, spring will not come.
Perhaps the only ones that will always be in the spring are Intel, NVIDIA and AMD, which do not need to worry about the future of hardware. Whether it is a personal assembly or a large factory OEM machine, or a miner who uses a graphics card to mine coins, it does not affect their earnings.
NVIDIA disclosed in its annual report released in February this year that its full-year revenue in fiscal 2022 surged 61% to a record of $26.91 billion, boosted by full-year graphics card sales, while AMD announced that its full-year revenue for 2021 was $16.43 billion, up 68% year-on-year.
Write at the end
Looking back at the chaos of the graphics card market in the past year and a half, all this may not be a simple conflict between profiteers and consumers, but the story of NVIDIA, AMD, and many AIC graphics card manufacturers taking advantage of their advantages in the upstream of the industry to complete the wanton harvesting of dealers and consumers in the middle and lower reaches.
After exhausting the fish, what is left is the mess of the sunset industry of PC DIY. Players either passively or actively give up their own game needs, such as Zhang Bei's small and medium-sized dealers reluctantly, do not know how long to survive.
Even if the DIY computer industry will eventually be "cool", NVIDIA, AMD and AIC graphics card manufacturers will still have a place in the OEM and notebook markets in the future. Don't forget, NVIDIA has also been in the field of artificial intelligence and autonomous driving for a long time, without a single piece of hardware, Huang Jenxun still has the ability to make a lot of money.
The originator of the graphics card farce, in this chaotic year and a half, earned the most and suffered the least impact; people who could not buy cards, had no cards to sell, and had no one to pay attention to, but only witnessed the fate of the PC DIY industry being harvested and destroyed.
But what can they change? The commercial battlefield reveals a helpless coldness at this moment.
Resources:
"Daily Graphics Card Price Monitoring", Zhihu @ Sword of Victory;
"Graphics card big dive, belongs to the victory of the party and so on? Ethan Chuan Business Review;
"Graphics card price reduction, but players do not want to "be a leek"", game pizza;
"The graphics card bubble is broken, and the merchant cuts the meat to protect himself?" Mammoth Studios.
*Li Pei, Sun Yang, Zhang Bei, and Chen Xiaohang are pseudonyms