can you count the letter s in:
market research firm trendforce shared a bit of seemingly good news for gamers on the hunt for graphics cards. the analysts note that a “sudden drop in cryptocurrency prices” has hurt the graphics dram market. and by extension, this means graphics card pricing is falling as well.
for several reasons, all of which boil down to the same thing—actually buying a graphics card at anywhere close to msrp remains the toughest achievement in gaming, and i don’t see that changing anytime soon. sorry to be that guy, but any optimism over the gpu market at the moment feels misplaced.
let’s look at trendforce’s actual report. in it, the market research firm says “active interventions from many governments” have caused cryptocurrency pricing to fall sharply over the past two months. in particular, the recent and “sudden drop in ethereum prices led to plummeting gddr5 and gddr6 spot prices.” these are the memory chips that are predominantly found in most modern graphics cards.
so that’s $770 for a card that should be priced somewhere in the neighborhood of $329. a couple of other rtx 3060 listings are priced around $1,000.
in normal times, a sudden drop in gpu memory pricing could have a positive effect for consumers looking to stretch their dollars. but these are not normal times. multiple industry giants like intel and tsmc have warned that the global shortage of silicon could last throughout next year. these are not old predictions, either—just this week, stmicro ceo jean-marc chery weighed in, saying things won’t return to normal “until the first half of 2023.” bummer.
but there are some sobering caveats to trendforce’s own report, too.
in addition, the firm says longer term contract prices for dram are expected to increase by nearly 15% this quarter. so it’s not as though gpu memory pricing is down for the count.
and, y’know, there may one day be winged creatures with porcine features, too.
related post hot news here’s why i’m not excited about the recent crash in gpu memory pricing

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In that passage, there are 102 occurrences of the letter "s."
assistant