Fed Up with GPU Prices? Crypto-Rig Builder Says Gamers Must Suck It Up and Mine

With graphics card at the crazy prices they are there's no way in hell I'd spend that kind of money on them. I actually had it in my budget to upgrade to a better card, but no bueno on 2 year old tech for 2x MSRP. However I had some money burning a hole in my pocket so I said screw it, if they don't want to make imaginary guns affordable, I'll just go get a real one instead.


AMD: Pushing people towards REAL guns since September 2017!


Waiting on my stock to show up, then I'll adjust the scope relief and rings.

Should have picked up one of those lightweight Aero scope mounts. Individual scope rings look hideous on an AR-15. :D
 
Should have picked up one of those lightweight Aero scope mounts. Individual scope rings look hideous on an AR-15. :D
I'll likely end up replacing the rings with something nicer, I just had those kickin' around. It's on the heavier side with the quad rail and not MLoc.
 
I feel bad if I don't turn my computer off at night. Pretty sure I'm not going to just leave it cranked at full power.

It uses more power than if every light in my house is on. Heaps more than the fridge and only gets beaten by the cooker and the air conditioning.

But yeah sure. For a couple of bucks a day...

Or I could spend less than 60 seconds at work where at least I generate economic activity. I feel terrible for the teens, when I was at college I'd have had to have flipped burgers (I preferred buns) for a few months anyway to afford a card. The idea of someone saying I had to do it 50% longer would have gotten someone a smack in the mouth.

All this of course assuming that people have the money up front to defray the cost over a very long period of time (beyond the useful life of the card)

As it goes I like blockchain as a technology but crypto as it stands is a crock of shit.
 
Do you know what would be truly funny? If all the gamers with decent cards did start mining right now. This guy would get exactly what he's calling for and it would probably put him under as well as cost him quite a bit of money. The simple fact is that if everyone did it, it would effectively flood the crypto market killing prices and making it unaffordable for anyone to mine for a while. It would probably take a new GPU with a huge increase in mining efficiency to make it profitable again. People wouldn't even need to be mining for all that long. I'd be surprised if it took more than a couple months to basically tank the market with regards to the crypto which is currently profitable on GPUs.
 
Also stupid because he assumes electricity rates won't make a drastic jump. or that the grid can currentlly support it if suddenly everyone decided to mine in their non-gaming hours.smh

Honestly If every single GPU in the world went into a 24/7 mining scenario We would be facing worldwide electric shortages and prices would indeed become astronomical. Most people that have nice cards typically have a job to pay for them and don't game 24/7. This would also drastically reduce the profitability of mining if that much competition opened up overnight. He's clearly just speaking out of his ass and we're supporting him by discussing his shortsighted comments.
 
just another numbnuts wanting to make a sale, dressed in a fancy suite saying "suck it up and mine, it pays for itself in a year or so" sure, but it also takes a decent card on a properly made system by someone who knows what they are doing.

most "gamers" I know have absolutely no clue how to mine let alone know what "mining" is.

then there is the cost of wear and tear, extra power/cooling required, and also the fact the coins do not sell themselves to pay the gpu purchases off..last I checked pretty much around the world the last couple of years, the "powers that be" consider this an income source, so, YMMV if you are able to "cash out" none be the wiser or take the chance of paying nasty tax evasion fines (seeing as those in power are not sticking with the time sin understanding HOW that money was made and what it cost, they only care that X was made..bastards..)

Oh and sucks to be you if you run the mining program not properly and it burns things up, or the card that "should have" lasted 3-4 years is lucky to last a year or so (burns the fan out, or the Vreg cannot keep up with the voltage/heat demands because of shitty chincy design..ahem Nvidia..)
 
Do you know what would be truly funny? If all the gamers with decent cards did start mining right now. This guy would get exactly what he's calling for and it would probably put him under as well as cost him quite a bit of money. The simple fact is that if everyone did it, it would effectively flood the crypto market killing prices and making it unaffordable for anyone to mine for a while. It would probably take a new GPU with a huge increase in mining efficiency to make it profitable again. People wouldn't even need to be mining for all that long. I'd be surprised if it took more than a couple months to basically tank the market with regards to the crypto which is currently profitable on GPUs.

you mean like when ASIC first came out and basically 6-14 months later BTC for GPU mining purposes was basically fubar..yep, seeing as most if not all ASIC resistant coins are being GPU mined, the more that buy the GPU and mine with them, the higher the difficulty gets the lower the "reward" so therefore, if you want to keep "playing" the game sort of speak, you have to keep sinking more and more power/money into the rig to keep "paying itself off"

just like the way life is, if you gots the $ to make it happen, you are laughing, if not, you end up shit creek without a paddle really fast, because, you do not have the money, the time etc to "make it happen"

loved mining when I was, but, the "laws" and costs are very much interfering with allowing the "little guy" some breathing room.

cool for him to say "no big deal, spend 2x the amount on the product than you should be, keep with the times, or deal with it"

"don't hate the player, hate the game" can I not hate both equally at this point :woot:

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS ^.^
 
you mean like when ASIC first came out and basically 6-14 months later BTC for GPU mining purposes was basically fubar..yep, seeing as most if not all ASIC resistant coins are being GPU mined, the more that buy the GPU and mine with them, the higher the difficulty gets the lower the "reward" so therefore, if you want to keep "playing" the game sort of speak, you have to keep sinking more and more power/money into the rig to keep "paying itself off"

just like the way life is, if you gots the $ to make it happen, you are laughing, if not, you end up shit creek without a paddle really fast, because, you do not have the money, the time etc to "make it happen"

loved mining when I was, but, the "laws" and costs are very much interfering with allowing the "little guy" some breathing room.

cool for him to say "no big deal, spend 2x the amount on the product than you should be, keep with the times, or deal with it"

"don't hate the player, hate the game" can I not hate both equally at this point :woot:

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS ^.^


I dont this whole ASIC resistant thing seems like some one could make a lower power ASIC that basicly has the parts of a GPU that make it good for mining this stuff is FP16 so making a big FP16 ASIC doesnt seem that hard
 
just heard on the news that the creator of bitcoin is being sued for being a greedy thief. Small wonder, just take a few steps back and look at what he created. Get rich quick schemes very seldom end well for anyone
 
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just heard on the news that the creator of bitcoin is being sued for being a greedy thief. Small wonder, just take a few steps back and look at what he created. Get rich quick schemes very seldom end well for anyone
You mean "bitcoin" specifically, or "bitcoin CASH". I dunno about the supposed creator of the original bitcoin, so called "satoshi Nakamoto", I hear rumors people still don't know who he is, but the b-cash one , Roger Ver, is a true douchebag and a shill.
 
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of course he would say that, i looked into it a bit and its just not worth it. you need to mine for weeks before you even have enough to with draw, then there is fees to withdraw or move... just seems like fees on top of fees, add that in with hydro costs and heat output its just dumb. and even after all that i cant swipe or pay with crypto for gas or groceries or that new video card without going to an exchange and taking yet another loss on fees to get it converted to real money

i hope it dies and were all getting 1080ti cards and vega 64 cards for 250 bucks lol
 
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I hate to say this but GPU price are start to fall I just on ebay look at some GPU and RX Vega 56 holy cow there down at $400/450 even Vega 64 has taking a major drop in price even Nvidia card seeing dropping in price
 
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Even with all the GPU currently running, and ASIC, mining takes around .1% of global power. The idea that if suddenly gamers mine with their cards we'll be looking at some sort of massive grid and cost increases is rather suspect.

If a lot of additional hash did enter the picture there is potential for difficulty to increase and profitability to go down further. The crypto market is in a selloff right now and it may continue. It could take over a year for a GPU to pay for itself at this point however it most likely would unless the operator was risky with what they mined.

There are encouraging signs that stock levels may begin to come up soon. More are showing up on nowinstock available now (at still inflated prices) and used cards and rigs are beginning to come up for sale as more people bail.

Not sure who was paying twice retail price on these anyway I've been able to buy 1080ti for $100-150 over MSRP in the last couple months. Not even close to double MSRP.
 
This guy is a first rate douche. Not much more to be said that hasn't been covered by everyone so far.

Yeah the cracks are beginning to show. I have had alerts set up on EVGA and NewEgg as well as just checking FS forums and there are more and more cards showing up. EVGA had the 1060 6G in stock for almost 3 days which is way better than 3 minutes. Pricing is still up but as stock sells slower the prices will fall. Just stay strong, buy used on a good deal hopefully from another gamer and wait for pricing to be reasonable again.
 
Coins when mined have a fixed block rate, Bitcoin every 10 min, other coins can be seconds. When more miners come on line, the block time is maintained at the same rate by raising the difficulty of the puzzle to solve - this is automatically done by the block chain. So the rate of coins being release over time will stay the same. If all the gamers wanted to destroy the huge mining farms and not even care about making anything - at this time they could pretty much collapse Alt-coins that can use a GPU. Bitcoin, Litecoin and some others are Asic only coins now and not affected by GPUs. Anyways if the gamers did unite, mined the hell out of coins, the profitability with an already low margin now would collapse any profitbility, larger miner operations will most likely shutdown if their electrical costs exceeds their mining profits plus will have to sell hardware to pay any credit they had. Would be cool if Gamers Unit and did a trial run - not sure how the pools, networks, exchanges would hold up to the massive increase of mining.
 
Speculation. We don't know how many GPUs are currently mining and what they are mining. And we don't have an accurate count of total GPU that aren't being used and their hash. Nor how many of their owners would even cooperate.
 
Wondering whether anyone's tried to tie a crypto miner to the rear bumper of their truck yet and go for a spin through the backwoods. The rig, I mean :cool:
 
Speculation. We don't know how many GPUs are currently mining and what they are mining. And we don't have an accurate count of total GPU that aren't being used and their hash. Nor how many of their owners would even cooperate.
We have a rather accurate one based upon data from Hashrates, read this:
Crypto and gpu price going back

Gaming GPU's for gamers are in the hundreds of million of cards. If you did get enough gamers playing the game, yes they would and could triumphed, when you are talking a ten fold increase in mining rates - shit will happen and automatically the different alt coins difficulty would increase higher to maintain the coin release rate over time, mining would be utterly pointless for a profit operation. If I was getting $2/day for the number of coins released with the number of miners mining that coin and now next day there are 10x times more mining that coin, meaning the same number of coins will still be mined but will be split up with 10x times the miners, my $2/day automatically comes down to 20cents/day. We are not talking about 10x more like 30x or more gamers GPUs versus miner GPUs. Except many gamers will rather whine about it vice doing something about it :p.
 
I've been telling people this for months now. My Titan Xp is about to cost me only $600 net, after which I stop mining with it and let it enjoy the easy, gaming life. Titan Xp for the same cost as an AIB Vega 64 (retail)? Sign me up!
 
You actually think they want to lock out miners lol? If they did then they would of by now.

Sure they would. It's called 1st degree price descrimination. Why would Uber charge more during busy hours? Why would colleges ask for your financials before they tell you how much tuition will cost?

Why charge 1 price for a graphics card when you can charge bitcoin people what the card is actually worth to them? Make a mining card have it cost $2000, make a pro mining card have it cost $4000. Then make your normal line of gaming cards which range from $200 to $1100.
 
Hey, that is what I am here for!

There are quite a few people here that are just crying like the little kids about the guns. How about if you want a card, get with Kyle, make a list of gamers who need a card. People can sell to them for around MSRP.
[H]ow bout that!

On the one hand, I'm with you about the mining, they can buy all the cards they want, I'm not in the market for a new card myself. Console and older pc games FTW. Just play rocket league FFS. At the end of the day, your high end gaming PC is a toy.

On the other hand, you sound like a sociopath by making this comparison.

I'm not sure what to think.
 
Sure they would. It's called 1st degree price descrimination. Why would Uber charge more during busy hours? Why would colleges ask for your financials before they tell you how much tuition will cost?

Why charge 1 price for a graphics card when you can charge bitcoin people what the card is actually worth to them? Make a mining card have it cost $2000, make a pro mining card have it cost $4000. Then make your normal line of gaming cards which range from $200 to $1100.
If AMD and/or Nvidia made highly optimized miners for Crypto, which could not be readily copied and keyed to mining cards than you might get that product line. Gaming cards will still mine since GPU's are programmable, no magic button for the GPU to know if it is mining or calculating game math and any attempts would probably be bypassed quickly. Effective miners that are 20-30% faster though maybe the ticket. I am not one wanting to lock up a platform excluding/restricting others from using it. Creating a software/hardware relationship would command a higher price though.
 
Besides, AMD does have a mining card which they advertise - Radeon Vega FE. Since the MSRP is higher than Rx Vega's, AMD has been producing those it seems more so than the RXs and reaping the benefit of higher price sells.
 
and my own prediction is that we are going to see a flood of used cards on the market soon for dirt cheap. The mining has been steadily going south for over a month now.
It's already happening if you keep a regular eye out for FS/FT posts. The amount of 1060s, 1080s, 1070s etc for sale has steadily increased, it's not just the early sellers looking to offload before a new model range comes down the line. 1080Tis are still pretty uncommon though, which makes me think a few are gamer/miners with a range of cards selling the cheaper ones first and using the best.

We should make a FS/FT mining bingo card.
'lightly used'
'underclocked'
etc

If they could lock them into higher margin professional cards? Sure.
This is what I have said for months now. Mining is a commercial activity typically and cards of commercial use are typically professional variants, therefore mining must be excluded on new consumer models, in order to leave sufficient stock for PC gaming to continue without major disruption.
 
Im just glad I got a half way decent one before the prices skyrocketed. My 970 has played everything I have thrown at it no problem for over 2 years now. This is only an issue if you insist on latest and greatest. You can still get older models for a reasonable price, although they are still harder to find than they were as everybody else is doing the same thing for new builds.
 
Noko
If miners constitute such a paltry amount of the whole it calls into question their share of responsibility for the current shortage to begin with.
 
Even with all the GPU currently running, and ASIC, mining takes around .1% of global power. The idea that if suddenly gamers mine with their cards we'll be looking at some sort of massive grid and cost increases is rather suspect.

1) We're not talking about if it's technically feasible. We're talking about how PEOPLE who run utilities or PEOPLE who legislate policies will react. And from several articles [H] has already written on, it's clearly happening. And as we know, things are NEVER going to be "fairly" divided. Are you a miner? Are you not? There's no way for them to tell. And honestly they don't care. So I GUARANTEE it'll be a blanket rate increase with some cockamamie excuses tacked on. And sooner rather than later. Just look at water utility or gas.

2) Yes, there will be impacts to the grid. Is it going to be crippling? That depends on your definition. Every summer here in Bay Area we have rolling blackouts and it's just because people use their AC more. Unless miners somehow use common sense and stop mining when it's hot, it seems quite logical that more miners means more strain on the system means more rolling blackouts.

3) and we haven't even talked about the long term impact of this long term useless computing. Where's all the electricity coming from? Ain't no new nuclear power plants in US last time I checked. Pile on more miners to an aging infrastructure? More things break, maintenance cost increases, and guess who that'll be passed to....


https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/0...rency_farms_for_next_18_months_in_plattsburgh
" Apparently, the city has low electric costs because of hydro power in the area, but once they reach a certain level of use the power costs go up for all tax payers in the city. There are two farms in the city currently and tax payers have been complaining of rising electric rates and they blame it on the farms. It appears that the city agrees. "

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/03/16/ny_municipalities_to_charge_miners_more_for_electricity
"York regulators will allow municipal power providers to charge higher rates to cryptocurrency mining operations."

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/03/10/this_what_happens_when_bitcoin_miners_take_over_your_town
"The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes."
 
On the one hand, I'm with you about the mining, they can buy all the cards they want, I'm not in the market for a new card myself. Console and older pc games FTW. Just play rocket league FFS. At the end of the day, your high end gaming PC is a toy.

On the other hand, you sound like a sociopath by making this comparison.

I'm not sure what to think.
In regards to getting rid of something because they don't like it/agree with something.
 
1) We're not talking about if it's technically feasible. We're talking about how PEOPLE who run utilities or PEOPLE who legislate policies will react. And from several articles [H] has already written on, it's clearly happening. And as we know, things are NEVER going to be "fairly" divided. Are you a miner? Are you not? There's no way for them to tell. And honestly they don't care. So I GUARANTEE it'll be a blanket rate increase with some cockamamie excuses tacked on. And sooner rather than later. Just look at water utility or gas.

2) Yes, there will be impacts to the grid. Is it going to be crippling? That depends on your definition. Every summer here in Bay Area we have rolling blackouts and it's just because people use their AC more. Unless miners somehow use common sense and stop mining when it's hot, it seems quite logical that more miners means more strain on the system means more rolling blackouts.

3) and we haven't even talked about the long term impact of this long term useless computing. Where's all the electricity coming from? Ain't no new nuclear power plants in US last time I checked. Pile on more miners to an aging infrastructure? More things break, maintenance cost increases, and guess who that'll be passed to....


https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/0...rency_farms_for_next_18_months_in_plattsburgh
" Apparently, the city has low electric costs because of hydro power in the area, but once they reach a certain level of use the power costs go up for all tax payers in the city. There are two farms in the city currently and tax payers have been complaining of rising electric rates and they blame it on the farms. It appears that the city agrees. "

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/03/16/ny_municipalities_to_charge_miners_more_for_electricity
"York regulators will allow municipal power providers to charge higher rates to cryptocurrency mining operations."

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/03/10/this_what_happens_when_bitcoin_miners_take_over_your_town
"The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are building sites with tens of thousands of servers and electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes."
Yes the whole world will collapse and all gaming cards will forever be consumed for worthless endeavours and take away the very productive gaming that happens with most of the video cards bought for gaming, which are idle most of the time doing nothing (that is very efficient) :D. 12million GPU's mining world wide X 150w avg = 1800megawatts. The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the United states with three reactors and a total electricity generating capacity of about 3,937 MW. Looks like we need way more mining cards mining to even have an effect on the world. Most of the compute or mining are done with ASICs - some serious energy there. The market plus regulations should kill most coins off, 95%?, the ones surviving can reach the population where banking is poor or non-existent which could be a huge benefit as well having Crypto survive. WTF? Tens of thousand servers??? That seems very exaggerated.
 
If AMD and/or Nvidia made highly optimized miners for Crypto, which could not be readily copied and keyed to mining cards than you might get that product line. Gaming cards will still mine since GPU's are programmable, no magic button for the GPU to know if it is mining or calculating game math and any attempts would probably be bypassed quickly. Effective miners that are 20-30% faster though maybe the ticket. I am not one wanting to lock up a platform excluding/restricting others from using it. Creating a software/hardware relationship would command a higher price though.

My reply wasn't whether they could, my reply was on whether they would want to. 100% they would want to but I agree it's dubious to say they actually could.
 
Prospective: https://www.jonpeddie.com/store/gpu-developments-in-2017
2.1 billion (yes billion!) GPU's were produced/sold last year, 2017
79% mobile phones
3% Consoles
1% Vehicle and other (NOTE: do not expect cheap gaming cards if the automobile industry really takes off in using AI for cars, cheap $500 cards will be a distant memory)
17% for PCs and Workstations
  • 2.1 billion X .17 = 357 million PC/WS GPUs sold last year
  • ~35% of those were discrete as in in video cards, 357 million x .35 = 124.5 million Video cards made/sold last year. Then add in all the video cards still in use and produced prior to 2017 - as in 2016, 2015 and so on -> Each over 100million produced as well - A huge number of video cards not dedicated to mining.
  • 12 million video cards from last several generations make up the current mining population, with the much lower current payoff rates that is probably significantly less now - 12 million pales in comparison to all video cards totalling in the hundreds of millions.
What is the energy cost for all Video cards other than mining estimating an average of 20% usage in a day? Knock knock anyone there? I would surmise it would dwarf the power requirements of all the mining cards many times over. Just because one area with cheap power harbours the influx of miners does not mean that represents all areas of the planet. It just concentrates due to economic reasons. Taking it out of context and then saying we will need to build thousands of nuclear power plants is just exaggerating. We could make a much bigger claim with gamers or all other uses.

Also to consider, even with a phone requiring much less energy, having many more of them still consumes a hell a lot of energy
Of course it is just easy to blame the miner for all one's gaming GPU finding ills. It is more a memory shortage causing the real gaming GPU shortage, caused by memory manufacturers making memory for phones vice as much for video cards. Someone can critique and correct my math if in error. Of course GPU's bought for mining affects gamers, folks buying GPU's for gaming is affecting miners getting GPU's, then GPU's bought for other things - it really works all ways for affecting supply and demand.

Probably most of us on this site that mine also game and game [H]ard at that as well.
 
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Fuck this guy. How about you stop hoarding video cards and go get a real job.


Well that's part of it isn't it?

First, cryptomining isn't mining for money, it's treated as a security and not an actual currency by the US Fed. It's like a bond or stock, it's value rises and falls upon a market that is rooted in no durable goods or production, or anything at all. It's value isn't even related to the costs of energy to produce it.

Personally, I think it should be expunged from existence, keep block-chain by all means, it could be useful, but cryptomining itself needs to go away. It is a net loss for the planet and for our species.

Now I can't blame a guy for taking advantage of it to earn some extra cash, I really can't.
 
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