Maingear and Sood Defending a Defenseless Position on Selling Crypto Boxes?

[Kdawg]

someone said it before.... how about some cryptogimped cards sold at msrp or less, for the gamers? "gaming editions"

Oh wait, the AIBs don't give a shit if they're selling for higher margins to retailers.

I thought mining was getting harder and harder. Why are people still buying more gfx cards?

 

[defaultluser]

I thought mining was getting harder and harder. Why are people still buying more gfx cards?

Because miners can introduce a new coin anytime they feel like it. With lower difficulty level.

If the rest of the community jumps in the pool (creating coins and using them for transactions), it will be successful. Those new coins tend to pump-up the older coin, because a lot of mining software auto-converts OTHER coins to popular things like Bitcoin.

Basically, all the community has to do is place bets on new coins, and one will eventually win. So each time an old coin hits a road-block, another set of doors opens.

Coin mining will not end anytime soon. Just think of each coin being like an unlikely bet on a sporting team: nothing of value is created with your new coin/bet, but if you're successful the payoff is immense.

 

[darrpara]

someone said it before.... how about some cryptogimped cards sold at msrp or less, for the gamers?

I thought mining was getting harder and harder. Why are people still buying more gfx cards?

This is what would be in the maingear box. There are purpose built mining cards but they are not bought because 1) They are also in short supply 2) They have laughable warranties (3 mo vs years of a gaming GPU) and finally 3) Have basically zero resale value which is what cryptominers rely on as a fallback.

Unless it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than it won't work. And even then.. the actual materials (memory, die, other parts) are going to be almost identical to a gaming card. So if you are Asus/EVGA/etc why not just make the gamer cards and let the market sort out allocation

 

[lcpiper]

More than likely there was some finance guy looking at demand for middle of the line models. Lets face it, if you're a gamer, you may just want to pay almost 1.5 to double to get the 1080/1080ti. If you're not and you're on a tight budget, 1060,1050 is probably more your style. Sitting in the middle is always an iffy proposition.
1070 sat at msrp as long as supplies outweighed the demand. Then you add miners who probably can't find affordable 1080/1080tis and the roi between 1070 and 1080/1080ti isn't all that much different. I've heard many times from miners to buy lower end cards because they don't really scale in performance as much as you would think. It actually might be more efficient to get a 1070 when you look at the initial cost + electric costs for a mining rig than a 1080/ti.

Before mining really made it big this past year, demand on the supplies wasn't even really considered. This was a gaming only market. In the future there will more than likely be greater supply to make even more profits because it's now in their figures how much they can actually sell.
Also to reinforce this point (again, all assumptions here), the ones who are actually making money because of the low supply should be the retailers. I don't think nvidia has increased the cost of the chip, but then again i'm not privy to that info. If nvidia is still selling at the same pricepoint, then they're not making any money off this shortage and in fact they're losing (theoretically) money.

But NVidia doesn't sell the chip, manufacturers order the chips from the Fab, in this case, TSMC I believe. NVidia gets a royalty because it's their IP, their design. Even NVidia has to project what they will sell and order the chips from TSMC.

BTW, if I am wrong about this, if NVidia orders all the chips and the manufacturers buy from NVidia and not on their own orders from TSMC then please enlighten.

 

[Gigus Fire]

But NVidia doesn't sell the chip, manufacturers order the chips from the Fab, in this case, TSMC I believe. NVidia gets a royalty because it's their IP, their design. Even NVidia has to project what they will sell and order the chips from TSMC.

does nvidia make more money because of the increased demand? That was the whole point. Does TSMC make more money because of the demand? Does their price change due to market demands?

 

[defaultluser]

does nvidia make more money because of the increased demand? That was the whole point. Does TSMC make more money because of the demand? Does their price change due to market demands?

No, Nvidia seess no increase in income from third-party resellers. Not unless Nvidia officially raises prices, and that hasn't happened yet. They see higher sales from miners, but at MSRP.

TSMC makes the same amount of money on orders they always have. They don't raise prices, or companies might reduce orders. You have to allow enough margin to keep your customers in business if you''re making parts for them. But to make this profitable, they always try to keep manufacturing at full-capacity.

TSMC prefers companies with large quantity orders to keep those lines full, like Apple. Nvidia used to be a big dog in the pool. but they're a small fish these days. So guaranteeing orders is hard enough, let-alone INCREASING capacity on short notice.

None of the news has pointed to a major supply stoppage at TSMC, so miners have exceeded the demand that TSMC can supply. FOR THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS!

 

[lcpiper]

does nvidia make more money because of the increased demand? That was the whole point. Does TSMC make more money because of the demand? Does their price change due to market demands?

Hmm, if NVidia is simply paying TSMC to make the chips and it's NVidia doing the selling to manufacturers then the demand would certainly be putting money into NVidia's pockets even if NVidia never raised their prices for the chips.

If TSMC is doing the chip selling and NVidia is being payed a royalty, then both are making more because more chips are being sold.

I can't answer whether the chip's are selling for more because of the demand.

 

[Gigus Fire]

No, Nvidia seess no increase in income from third-party resellers. Not unless Nvidia officially raises prices, and that hasn't happened yet. They see higher sales from miners, but at MSRP.

TSMC makes the same amount of money on orders they always have. They don't raise prices, or companies might reduce orders. You have to allow enough margin to keep your customers in business if you''re making parts for them. But to make this profitable, they always try to keep manufacturing at full-capacity.

TSMC prefers companies with large quantity orders to keep those lines full, like Apple. Nvidia used to be a big dog in the pool. but they're a small fish these days. So guaranteeing orders is hard enough, let-alone INCREASING capacity on short notice.

None of the news has pointed to a major supply stoppage at TSMC, so miners have exceeded the demand that TSMC can supply. FOR THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS!

Exactly.
The demand wasn't calculated beforehand. Now that there's metrics to suggest how much miners will need for the next batch, TSMC can plan to create enough to meet the supply. It's not going to happen overnight, but it is possible to do this.
There's always improvements down the line that increases the yields.

 

[EODetroit]

Headless GPUs are at least less of a threat to the GPU companies, because if the crypto bubble does burst, at least they won't rip the heart of their gaming market, because they can't be used by gamers, so won't ruin that market with a flood of devices on ebay.

 

[defaultluser]

Exactly.
The demand wasn't calculated beforehand. Now that there's metrics to suggest how much miners will need for the next batch, TSMC can plan to create enough to meet the supply. It's not going to happen overnight, but it is possible to do this.
There's always improvements down the line that increases the yields.

They already increased the yields. You haven't been listening to me.

TSMC 16nm chip shipments began in July 2015 (simple stuff).
Medium chips came online a year later in June 2016, with the GTX 1080.
A year after that (March 2017) big chips (1080 Ti) were ready for volume production, and could afford an official price drop on the1080/1070 ($500 and $350).

The process was mature and running at max speed, but couldn't keep up with a sudden surge in demand caused by Etherium in June of 2017. For eight months.

I don't know where you think they'll get better yields from. The new process tweaks are intended to improve performance, not yields.

That's the same time period between the first shipments on 28nm (Medium chips 2012, big chips 2013, Maxwell refresh on optimized process 2014).

 

[DF-1]

i enjoy kyles twitter fights, it amuses me.

 

[lcpiper]

So here is a listing of world wide Fabs, some of the names should sound familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

 

[FrgMstr]

i enjoy kyles twitter fights, it amuses me.

He made a good decision and shut his mouth after that last one. I am amazed he clicked the Tweet button on that one.

 

[[Spectre]]

Headless GPUs are at least less of a threat to the GPU companies, because if the crypto bubble does burst, at least they won't rip the heart of their gaming market, because they can't be used by gamers, so won't ruin that market with a flood of devices on ebay.

This. Pumping out more GPU's to meet crypto demand will gut future sales when crypto crashes.

 

[Grimlaking]

This. Pumping out more GPU's to meet crypto demand will gut future sales when crypto crashes.

Actually on reflection I disagree. We are approaching the end of a model run for at least Nvidia. As such they are in a prime position to glut the market for Miners. Give them cheaper (less ram but better bandwidth) but better for mining cards. (No display ports no drivers for display ports.) And let them be bought in 1-2-4 card bundles. Miners will eat them up ESPECIALLY if they are 2-300 dollars cheaper than the mainstream video cards.

THEN enthusiasts can continue to purchase cards here and there at MSRP and if they CHOOSE to mine with them sure ok why not while you're at work set your gaming pc to mine a bit for the fun of it. And the rest of the time enjoy a good gaming experience.

To that I don't see a "OMG THE MARKETS" problem. At least not for NVIDIA.

When the next generation of cards come out they can sell them and offer a market segment again for miners but only if the cards are actually better at mining.

Thoughts?

 

[SixFootDuo]

OK I guess I just don't understand what the point is? Seriously please explain... Are you saying "blame" needs to be placed on someone wanting a video card, because they want to use it differently then someone else? In this context, that has a negative connotation imo, which is not rightly deserved. Yes it is fact their demand certainly caused or is the reason for the situation but isn't a negative it just is. They have a right to cards just as much as anyone.

What solution are you proposing? From what I have read most of the free market/luxury/capitalists also don't like that gamers are affected or the prices but cannot see an acceptable alternative outside of ramping up production which could be a mistep if demands crash.

I certainly see and agree with the issue the OP/Article, that companies are trying to blow smoke and say their mining devices aren't affecting gamers.

AMD and nVidia clearly need to supply more of these cards while taming the ability for miners to use them until stocks are ample enough to support both parties/interests. It's pretty clear what needs to be done. A lot of people are acting ignorant and confused about the issue. Any 15 year old can formulate a common sense approach. Supply more cards to the market. A handful of major news outlets are suggesting that AMD and nVidia are slow to react to the issue because of massive short term profits they are racking in at the expense of their core customers. What do you guys think?

 

[defaultluser]

AMD and nVidia clearly need to supply more of these cards while taming the ability for miners to use them until stocks are ample enough to support both parties/interests. It's pretty clear what needs to be done. A lot of people are acting ignorant and confused about the issue. Any 15 year old can formulate a common sense approach. Supply more cards to the market. A handful of major news outlets are suggesting that AMD and nVidia are slow to react to the issue because of massive short term profits they are racking in at the expense of their core customers. What do you guys think?

Complete bullshit.

Nvidia has not raised prices. You can still find cards at MSRP on occasion.

The third-party resellers buy big batches of cards at MSRP (or direct from distributors), and then resell them on sites like Newegg and Amazon and Fleabay. Amazon's pricing engine goes up because all other prices are up.

Since there is more demand than supply, the idiots pay the idiot tax. The prices YOU SEE are all in the stratosphere, even though the prices Nvidia charges for chips has not gone up.

You could get everything except the GTX 1070 at MSRP for a two week lull back in November, before shit hit the fan again. Miners took a short break, and then came out in force again.

 

[SixFootDuo]

I think you are off the mark a bit here.
First and foremost, both elite PC builders and miners are "luxury customers". Neither are vastly enormous sized groups.
We are debating a subject that most people in general don't even know exists.
If someone knows about Cryptocurrency, it's generally because they are "wowed" by the %tage rise in value recently.
Not a single one of them could describe or explain the worth of the currency.

Yup, gaming PCs are being affected, but the elite end GPUs are definately a "luxury" fraction of the market.
Again the average person has never heard of a 1080 Ti or a Vega (other than the old chevy product) let alone Nvidia or AMD. I also think that the demand for GPU computation power is at an all time high.....this is all a perfect storm of sorts.

This stuff is niche of a niche, that in and of itself is the very essence of "luxury".

Again, too much talk about luxury this and luxury that. It doesn't play into the argument at hand. It's well outside the point/argument everyone is making. We are talking about miners buying these cards. Not gamers. If anything, we are talking about miners taking away the ability for gamers to build systems. What they put in their system is beside the point. People using Luxury as a description are the ones that are off the mark. Miners are buying everything they can. I personally know a guy that was/is using bitcoin and this was within the past few weeks to buy every single 1080 Ti, 1060, 1070 and AMD card he could. He used his bitcoin before his bitcoin lost all of it's value in the recent crash to add to his already impressive 4,000 MH/s. Him and many many others are doing this. Miners don't care what they buy. And no, $699 is not a luxury. Stop suggesting it is. Is the Xbox One X a Luxury at $699? With Tax, 1 game and 1 additional controller along with the Xbox One X Console you're at $699. And I can assure you Microsoft does not consider this price point a "luxury." Luxury is only being used to skirt the real issues at hand by ill informed people.

As someone else said, AMD and nVidia flooding the market with additional stock could destabilize the market. There is probably no easy fix here. Regardless, a lot people are horrible just horrible at defending Miners. There is zero defense in my book. No mad, I'm a huge miner but there needs to be something a lot different in place than there is today.

I pray to God Intel can get something designed very quickly and brought to market within a few years. We clearly need more companies with video card products.

May the "Bitboys" will get around to releasing their Glaze3D products

 

[elzeus]

I was going to vote with my wallet but it was stolen in the NEM hacking.

 

[THUMPer]

You can still get on Ingram Micro, search for video cards and find them for MSRP. You just can't buy them as a regular "Joey Jerkoff". So the inflated prices by Newegg (and I don't mean 3rd party sales) and Microcenter is BS and THAT's what annoys me. They are still getting them for "cheap".

 

[lcpiper]

So here is a listing of world wide Fabs, some of the names should sound familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

AMD and nVidia clearly need to supply more of these cards while taming the ability for miners to use them until stocks are ample enough to support both parties/interests. It's pretty clear what needs to be done. A lot of people are acting ignorant and confused about the issue. Any 15 year old can formulate a common sense approach. Supply more cards to the market. A handful of major news outlets are suggesting that AMD and nVidia are slow to react to the issue because of massive short term profits they are racking in at the expense of their core customers. What do you guys think?

I'll keep it simple, if it were as simple as "kicking out" a few more cards that would be fine, but it isn't.

If I am a company like ASUS, I bought X number of GPU chips and other components and I did so in a bulk order which is where my price point comes in.

Now demand has been great, my cards are all sold, I made my money for this run. Am I going to place another bulk order and do it all over again in the face of the next product cycle? Am I going to lay out all that cash hoping that sales will stay strong and that I'll be able to unload another 10,000 cards ..... and if I do and NVidia releases the next GeForce chip ........ Are my lines going to be filled with components building a three year old design while all my competition is busy building the next big thing?

 

[RINO in name only]

Another point to consider is that with a little effort, a 1080ti can generate between $5-7/day on nicehash. There is almost no knowledge required to make this work and it can help offset prices above MSRP. Personally, i will not pay over MSRP for a GPU but i understand why some people are willing to do it. If you are really having trouble finding a GPU at asking price, I would suggest that you sign up for instock notifications, decide in advance what you are willing to pay, and pull the trigger within 1 minute of receiving a notification.

Edit: Its also worth mentioning that putting in place restrictions that are designed to limit the ability of miners to purchase GPUs only has the affect of ensuring that the shortage lasts longer. The quickest path to a more normal market is to remove any governors and let the miner bubble grow exponentially. This should accelerate the blow-up and return us closer to the historical mean more quickly than the approach that the retailers have currently adopted. If we actually let the miners do their thing, the problem will solve itself in a little while.

 

[lcpiper]

You just repeated back to me what I said. . .thank you for validating my opinions.

On a side note of course we all want to see gpu prices come back down for gaming rigs. I have a lot of customers right now that are stepping down in tiers for their gpu since it's just not economically feasable to pay so much more for what they want. Others are just getting Titan xp's directly from nvidia since it's actually a manageable price right now due to market variations. These aren't miners but just gamers and content creators trying to enable themselves a good experience.

I do a fair bit of mining so I'm not innocent and understand how addicting it is to get just one more videocard (s) for your setup. It would be nice if there were mass produced crypto versions available but it's just not the case right now.

No I did not.

I bought a Titan for a daughter, she's in Nomon's right now, almost graduated. I wanted her to have a card that would speed up her render time. That card cost me better than a $1000 back then but I felt it was worth it for her school.

 

[Ocellaris]

This. Pumping out more GPU's to meet crypto demand will gut future sales when crypto crashes.

...Which will drive a massive swell in PC gaming interest when everyone can buy GTX 1070 cards for $125 and 1080Ti cards for $200. Game developers won’t have to worry so much about people gaming on terrible GPUs and will make better looking games. That will bring more people into PC gaming and bring more future sales. Everyone wins!

 

[lcpiper]

So here is a listing of world wide Fabs, some of the names should sound familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

AMD and nVidia clearly need to supply more of these cards while taming the ability for miners to use them until stocks are ample enough to support both parties/interests. It's pretty clear what needs to be done. A lot of people are acting ignorant and confused about the issue. Any 15 year old can formulate a common sense approach. Supply more cards to the market. A handful of major news outlets are suggesting that AMD and nVidia are slow to react to the issue because of massive short term profits they are racking in at the expense of their core customers. What do you guys think?

I'll keep it simple, if it were as simple as "kicking out" a few more cards that would be fine, but it isn't.

If I am a company like ASUS, I bought X number of GPU chips and other components and I did so in a bulk order which is where my price point comes in.

Now demand has been great, my cards are all sold, I made my money for this run. Am I going to place another bulk order and do it all over again in the face of the next product cycle? Am I going to lay out all that cash hoping that sales will stay strong and that I'll be able to unload another 10,000 cards ..... and if I do and NVidia releases a GeForce version of next card.

 

[RINO in name only]

I dont think it would make sense for NV or AMD to ramp up production at this point as that would require them to bear the risk of a market collapse. If they keep supply in line with their estimations of "normal" demand, they will make enough profit to keep shareholders happy and not jeopardize future profits if and when the crypto market crashes. People can claim that they are damaging their brand by doing this, but i dont think that "damage" will translate into reduced revenue because they have no competition that can take market share. It seems obvious that they should just pretend that its business as usual, which will help mitigate the risk of the market being flooded with so many used cards that Volta struggles.

 

[spaceman]

If you mess with the bull, you get the horns.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Amazes me too, as he was always full of BS. Met him at a trade show in Calgary years ago. He was making blanket statements to the crowd over and over about the Athlon XP being faster than P4 and also cheaper, while also plugging their insanely expensive boutique machines. I wanted to call BS on the blanket performance claims and point out the irony of using the underdog bang for the buck brand for $6~10K machines, but said f!ck it and walked out.

Eh, the Athlon XP was the faster CPU generally speaking, but I ran P4's for a while just to get away from the crappy AMD boards of the time...

 

[triwolf]

Complete bullshit.

Nvidia has not raised prices. You can still find cards at MSRP on occasion.

The third-party resellers buy big batches of cards at MSRP (or direct from distributors), and then resell them on sites like Newegg and Amazon and Fleabay. Amazon's pricing engine goes up because all other prices are up.

Since there is more demand than supply, the idiots pay the idiot tax. The prices YOU SEE are all in the stratosphere, even though the prices Nvidia charges for chips has not gone up.

You could get everything except the GTX 1070 at MSRP for a two week lull back in November, before shit hit the fan again. Miners took a short break, and then came out in force again.

I agree with most of your post. One thing is true, the world, including crypto mining, is all about perspective. You can call it an idiot tax, although if crypto continues to go up and be profitable, they won't seem so dumb. If down, you are right. Except if crypto bounces back and they are millionaires. See how that works?

 

[Kdawg]

Because miners can introduce a new coin anytime they feel like it. With lower difficulty level.

If the rest of the community jumps in the pool (creating coins and using them for transactions), it will be successful. Those new coins tend to pump-up the older coin, because a lot of mining software auto-converts OTHER coins to popular things like Bitcoin.

Basically, all the community has to do is place bets on new coins, and one will eventually win. So each time an old coin hits a road-block, another set of doors opens.

Coin mining will not end anytime soon. Just think of each coin being like an unlikely bet on a sporting team: nothing of value is created with your new coin/bet, but if you're successful the payoff is immense.

doesn't sound like a good bet.
There must be lots of losers...... allocating resources to worthless dogcoin and pussycoin.
I can't imagine what they're thinking. Most people jump late onto the bandwagon, and are left holding a bag of worthless ecoin.

 

[noko]

This. Pumping out more GPU's to meet crypto demand will gut future sales when crypto crashes.

Hence reason for the Crypto version of cards - they would have very little resell value for the gamer. For the gamer, watch out for what you wish for.

As for crypto crashing - it will be around in a much more refined state is the indications I get.

• 20% of American have no bank account - most of those probably have a phone
• World wide about 38% do not have access or do not have a bank account - many of those have phones. Reasons are many but some countries banking system are so corrupt or non-existent

Having a means to transfer wealth or trade, 2 billion or so people which many actually have a cell phone or access to one will be a huge improvement and even a larger driving force then the current speculative type environment. Crypto is most likely on the verge of exploding. More so then the internet, more so then social media. Just some thoughts.

 

[lilbabycat]

if you want a video card..buy it at the higher price and then mine with it for two months to cover the price difference! My 1070 does $3-5 a day (depending on my gaming time) with ~$1 loss due to electricity on the laziest of methods, nicehash. $3 x 30 = 90, $5 x 30 = 150. If you were mining a year ago you'd have paid your card many times over.

All I can think of you guys complaining as: "i'm too lazy to deal with a small inconvenience but I'll jump through the hoops of a god forsaken rebate form that may or may not honored".

 

[triwolf]

if you want a video card..buy it at the higher price and then mine with it for two months to cover the price difference! My 1070 does $3-5 a day (depending on my gaming time) with ~$1 loss due to electricity on the laziest of methods, nicehash. $3 x 30 = 90, $5 x 30 = 150. If you were mining a year ago you'd have paid your card many times over.

All I can think of you guys complaining as: "i'm too lazy to deal with a small inconvenience but I'll jump through the hoops of a god forsaken rebate form that may or may not honored".

It's true. Also anyone can rail against crypto as such a bad thing, the truth is it is both bad and good, like most things of this universe.

If that $150 per month is kept and grows exponentially, it's early retirement too. Why fight the trend?

 

[lopoetve]

Again, too much talk about luxury this and luxury that. It doesn't play into the argument at hand. It's well outside the point/argument everyone is making. We are talking about miners buying these cards. Not gamers. If anything, we are talking about miners taking away the ability for gamers to build systems. What they put in their s

ystem is beside the point. People using Luxury as a description are the ones that are off the mark. Miners are buying everything they can. I personally know a guy that was/is using bitcoin and this was within the past few weeks to buy every single 1080 Ti, 1060, 1070 and AMD card he could. He used his bitcoin before his bitcoin lost all of it's value in the recent crash to add to his already impressive 4,000 MH/s. Him and many many others are doing this. Miners don't care what they buy. And no, $699 is not a luxury. Stop suggesting it is. Is the Xbox One X a Luxury at $699? With Tax, 1 game and 1 additional controller along with the Xbox One X Console you're at $699. And I can assure you Microsoft does not consider this price point a "luxury." Luxury is only being used to skirt the real issues at hand by ill informed people.

As someone else said, AMD and nVidia flooding the market with additional stock could destabilize the market. There is probably no easy fix here. Regardless, a lot people are horrible just horrible at defending Miners. There is zero defense in my book. No mad, I'm a huge miner but there needs to be something a lot different in place than there is today.

I pray to God Intel can get something designed very quickly and brought to market within a few years. We clearly need more companies with video card products.

May the "Bitboys" will get around to releasing their Glaze3D products

It does. A nice GPU is not something you need to survive, live, or thrive; hence the term "luxury" - it's not part of Maslow's Hierarchy, nor any other similar physiological quanta that mankind "needs".

Is it stupid that the miners are buying everything? Yes. Is it annoying as hell? Absolutely. Is it preventing people from enjoying a hobby that they're invested in? Definitely. But it's not a requirement. Your other points (which are quite valid) are somewhat undermined by your focus on folks who admit that it sucks, but there's nothing inherently wrong with the free market determining the price/value of an item that is not a requirement.

And yes, the Xbox One X is a luxury. So is an Atari 2600. Or any other gaming device for that matter...

Now them, to the topic at hand:

I dont think it would make sense for NV or AMD to ramp up production at this point as that would require them to bear the risk of a market collapse. If they keep supply in line with their estimations of "normal" demand, they will make enough profit to keep shareholders happy and not jeopardize future profits if and when the crypto market crashes. People can claim that they are damaging their brand by doing this, but i dont think that "damage" will translate into reduced revenue because they have no competition that can take market share. It seems obvious that they should just pretend that its business as usual, which will help mitigate the risk of the market being flooded with so many used cards that Volta struggles.

They're producing (or were) as many as they could make based on the standing orders with the foundries. TSMC's Fab lines are generally planned for some time in advance; you can't just "make more" any time you want. I don't think anyone's seen public data on how many lines Nvidia/AMD rent for producing GPUs, but I suspect they don't have exclusive rights to them at all times, or even the ability to run them 24/7 for just one set of product lines either.

In addition, building to increase supply is not only time consuming (it takes a LONG time to build a foundry), but it's INCREDIBLY expensive. They've (TSMC) already stated that their next one will probably cost them close to $20B USD to bring online, after their most recent one cost 9.3B. Just because cryptocrap is going nuts now, doesn't mean that opening (or trying to) a new fab immediately is something they even want to do; will the increased sales pay for the long-term investment? Who knows.

Now, were I a betting man, I'd suspect that they're looking in to what it would take to add more lines and additional foundries, in case this DOES continue, but it'd have to go on for quite some time for them to take that step. Remember, neither Nvidia, nor AMD own a foundry; they both outsource to TSMC and possibly GlobalFoundries, which means convincing THEM that there's a need to expand for this particular use case. And then waiting for the build to happen...

 

[FrgMstr]

Fun stuff. Screenshot in case it gets deleted, link here.

 

[FrgMstr]

Looks like the deleting has begun....

 

[lilbabycat]

Dude, get some sleep. You're getting obsessive.

 

[FrgMstr]

Dude, get some sleep. You're getting obsessive.

I have always been obsessive about the hardware community. That is not a new thing.

 

[rudy]

Well, I guess the numerous posts on this website where people have literally said "I'm not building a new PC because of this" are all lies, then. Good of you to clear that up.

Not building a PC doesn't mean we have to stop gaming. I have a number of very capable older PCs. This sucks for someone completely new to gaming but other than that most PC builders should be savvy enough to be creative with what they are going to do. Maybe now is the time to just work on your case, or purchase displays. Afterall PC building for me and many is about being able to piece together a nice rig over time when the timing is right. One year it might be all about new faster display tech, another year about GPUs, or somethings like CPUs might go stagnant for years. This mining craze is just one such influence that says this year isn't the year to buy a GPU, maybe its good to skip this and see if future GPUs can really work on 4k.

Aren't they screwed either way? A flood of used cards on the market for any reason (new tech or bubble bursted) will kill their sales for a long time to come. Hell, I'm stuck on a pokey GTX 780 right now and I can still play the Witcher 3 just fine. A 1080TI would probably last me forever (I find coding more interesting then gaming these days).

I think a flood of used cards is mostly a problem for medium ranged builders, top end builders always want the latest whatever that is. Could this be a problem sure, but its up to AMD and NVidia to store up the money they make now to hold them through some low points. I think this is more of a reason that NVidia and AMD should just jack up the prices of their cards, and make as much as they can off this craze, later they can return the favor to gamers.

I am shocked that some of you guys are using "Free Market" .... "Luxury Items" ..... "Capitalism" as a defense for companies taking away what arguably is the heart and soul of any gaming computer, the GPU. Not only shocking and unreal but down right sad. This entire nightmare is not only unprecedented, it's splintering the PC enthusiast community as evident by some of the posts on this very thread.

I've been building gaming/workstation systems since the early 1990's. In fact it's how I make my living to this day. But I have never ever seen this type of disruption in the market. People CANNOT build a gaming PC ... this is in Kansas City, this is in Mountain View, California, Denver Co, NYC, Miami Florida ... the locations go on and on and on the world over. The GPU market no longer serves gamers primary, it serves the mining community. I've talked at length with the sales guys down at Microcenter and was told several times there is literally nothing they can do to stop miners from getting their cards as they come in. I was told they have 20 - 30 miners laying in wait to pounce on their cards for every 1 PC builder that comes in. How true is this? I'm pretty sure it's true. In fact the problem is so severe Microcenter had to price all of their video cards out of miners hands to protect gamer's. You cannot buy a 1080 Ti now at a Microcenter without spending $1,400 .... $1.500 hundred fucking dollars. Go look or call @ Microcenter.com right now if you have any doubts.

Miners caused this ... not PC gamers. I'm partly to blame, more on this below.

Not to kiss anyone's ass but when the founder of HardOCP made this post it reflected probably one of his core passions for the PC market/community as a whole. Which, was not only the right thing to do, it's his right. The over-all message was very clear. It's wrong and compounds the problem what Maingear and other companies are currently doing and or have planned in regards to mining.

I don't know about any of you but who do you want in your corner? What do you stand for?

This is not so much an attack on miners. I want Newegg and Microcenter and especially Miners themselves to make money. Full disclosure, I might be.... I might not be involved in 1,450 MH/s being mined 24/7 but even as an ( allegedly ) miner, more has to be done. It's easy for me to speak out because I'm in a great position but I still personally think any GPU whatsoever should be going back into the hands of gamers. This is a terrible time for any company to be involved in disrupting the market any further. I'm cool with miners but not when the market cannot support both parties.

I am going to say that people should not want NVidia or other companies to sell cards at regular price. This doesn't help, what it does is makes the speculation even worse. If people know that they can get up early or hammer the NVidia site and get a GPU for retail what is going to happen? Ya people are going to do that just to flip them on ebay. Just let the market bid the prices where they will go and self correct, it will take a little patience but it will happen.

No, Nvidia seess no increase in income from third-party resellers. Not unless Nvidia officially raises prices, and that hasn't happened yet. They see higher sales from miners, but at MSRP.

TSMC makes the same amount of money on orders they always have. They don't raise prices, or companies might reduce orders. You have to allow enough margin to keep your customers in business if you''re making parts for them. But to make this profitable, they always try to keep manufacturing at full-capacity.

TSMC prefers companies with large quantity orders to keep those lines full, like Apple. Nvidia used to be a big dog in the pool. but they're a small fish these days. So guaranteeing orders is hard enough, let-alone INCREASING capacity on short notice.

None of the news has pointed to a major supply stoppage at TSMC, so miners have exceeded the demand that TSMC can supply. FOR THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS!

Demand is there and it takes an effect. For instance when any company making microprocessors makes a full line, such as NVidia or Intel they sell different priced products. Such as 1080, 1070, 1060, typically they make more of the cheaper ones simply because the market demands more of them, not because they don't have enough high quality silicon to make them. In this case where demand is massive even if NVidia doesn't change prices they could start making sure a lot more of those chips become a 1080ti than a 1060, or this could be indirect as their partners order more of those chips. This is only one example but there are probably lots of them and as they say more than 1 way to skin a cat.
All we have to do is wait for the next quarterly report and we will almost certainly see NVidia have a very good year over year result from this.

I am going to reiterate I think the best thing for gamers now is to just buy into a midrange card if you have to and put the money toward other parts. For NVidia and AMD they should try to make as much money off the miners as they can to increase the health of their GPU business. This is just something that gamers have to deal with, PC gaming has always been a side product of the PC market. Computers were not designed for gaming they were designed for productivity and gaming was just a nice perk on the side, over the years that perk has grown into something great. So I think gamers should try to see the good in this, we stand to indirectly gain from the mining craze in the long run. Just like we indirectly gain from all the other advancements in the PC space that are not targeted at gamers such as SSDs, etc...

 

[Deleted member 126051]

I figure the most straightforward way to nip this kind of shit in the bud is ti simply NOT GIVE THESE FUCKERS YOUR MONEY.
Same as you would if they were engaging in fraud or any other behavior you find unacceptable.

If they can get by SOLELY on the profits from their mining boxes, c'est la vie.

But I'm willing to bet that, deprived of their enthusiast business, their free cash becomes a LOT tighter.
And sales cycles for mining rigs are somewhat longer and more involved than they are for selling gaming rigs.
Additionally, there are no add-on sales for peripherals either.