GPU prices more than double as cryptocurrency craze accelerates

[Pemalite]

RJ_Sizzle said:

Uh oh. Does this mean that game streaming will come faster than we wanted because of component shortages? Maybe this has been in the cards for a while because they say the writing on the wall. Excuse the double idiom there, but these components are poised to start affecting each other soon.

Game Streaming still requires servers to be built with a ton of DRAM and GPU's.

For now though, localized rendering is here to stay, games might just stagnate for awhile as mid-range GPU's like the Radeon RX 580 and Geforce 1060 6GB stop being affordable for mid-range/mainstream gamers... Which means more gamers pick up low-end GPU's like the Geforce 1030/1050, Radeon RX 560/550.

I don't see a massive dumping of GPU's though... We never really saw that the last time this happened where Radeon 7970's were flying off shelves, they pretty much were kept being used until they failed in the hopes that the price will rise making their mined efforts profitable.

haxxiy said:

there could be, and probably will be, at some point , laws to progressively limit the power consumption of any given GPU/CPU to something like 30 - 45 W. It's not that unfeasible, considering it has been done already with goods like lamps and cars almost worldwide and even TVs in some places, and the lower voltage ensures the benefits would remain even if someone were to stack multiple processors to compensate the loss of computing power.

There are already power consumption standards.

The PCI-E slot for instance can supply a maximum of 75w of power.
The 6 PCI-E power cable can supply an extra 75w of power.
The 8-pin PCI-E power cable can supply an extra 150w of power.

That's the maximum draw for each interface.

There is some energy lost during power conversion and delivery to the various components of the GPU that are taken into account, plus extra overhead for things like capacitor aging, overclocking and so on.

With that, the market has applied a ton of pressure on Intel, AMD and nVidia to be more energy conscious, which is how we ended up with the extremely efficient Pascal GPU and Ryzen lineups.
Plus PSU's keep getting more efficient as well.