GPU Shortages Will Worsen Thanks to Coin Miners

erek

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
10,785
1609807996643.png


"Again, we're not saying you should put money into building a mining PC farm, far from it. But we are saying that some people are going to do exactly that. Others will put money into procuring mining ASICs, but those are potentially even more difficult to find than GPUs. For example, the Innosilicon A10 Pro can theoretically do 500MH/s of Ethereum mining and draws less than 1000W of power. That's about $55 per day in profits for hardware that supposedly costs $5500. Naturally, it's sold out.

Eventually, we expect cryptocurrency prices and difficulty to reach equilibrium again. When and at what price that will happen is anyone's guess. In the meantime, it's going to continue to be a terrible time to buy a graphics card. Sorry."


https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-shortages-worsen-cryptocurrency-coin-miners-ethereum
 
Article is misleading.
  • There is no real way to know or even be accurate with how long an investment to break even
  • The mining rewards vary day to day, hell even minutes it can change significantly, for current mining rewards/profits use WhatToMine, select the GPU you want to look at, self explanatory, it will tell you where as well as how much:
  • The kicker is buying one card or 100 of the same kind, if you can keep them all mining, they will all get paid off (if mining rewards stay high) about the same time period. For example 1 or 10 5700XT after pay off period, example: 100 days, all becomes 100% profit minus electrical costs
The mining craze is real now, get any GPU you can if you are looking for one ASAP

If I threw all my cards I have laying around plus what are in my machines it works out to be $42/day (only valid if price holds up, number of active miners, it will swing up and down and sometimes stays down). $1242/month, pay off that 3090 in less than a month and a half if prices remain at or above. What will happen is more miners will get into the game and that profit will noise dive due to the increase hashrate causing the difficulty level for the mining algorithm to increase. The dough will be spread out more with more miners.
 
Last edited:
well my rtx 2070 will have to keep up with my amd 5900x when and if i get it LOL
 
Article is misleading.
  • There is no real way to know or even be accurate with how long an investment to break even
  • The mining rewards vary day to day, hell even minutes it can change significantly, for current mining rewards/profits use WhatToMine, select the GPU you want to look at, self explanatory, it will tell you where as well as how much:
  • The kicker is buying one card or 100 of the same kind, if you can keep them all mining, they will all get paid off (if mining rewards stay high) about the same time period. For example 1 or 10 5700XT after pay off period let day 100 days all becomes 100% profit minus electrical costs
The mining craze is real now, get any GPU you can if you are looking for one ASAP

If I threw all my cards I have laying around plus what are in my machines it works out to be $42/day (only valid if price holds up, number of active miners, it will swing up and down and sometimes stays down). $1242/month, pay off that 3090 in less than a month and a half if prices remain at or above. What will happen is more miners will get into the game and that profit will noise dive due to the increase hashrate causing the difficulty level for the mining algorithm to increase. The dough will be spread out more with more miners.
Agreed. Borrowing this idea from another [H] user, but I think the article is a bit off the mark with their interpretation of the "break-even" point occurring where Net Profit = Hardware Cost. In reality, the miners only have to beat their hardware's depreciation to "break-even," once they cash out of their hardware, everything after depreciation is pure profit. Virtually no depreciation for RTX and Big Navi at the moment, which probably wont last very long, but they're winning regardless.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noko
like this
Agreed. Borrowing this idea from another [H] user, but I think the article is a bit off the mark with their interpretation of the "break-even" point occurring where Net Profit = Hardware Cost. In reality, the miners only have to beat their hardware's depreciation to "break-even," once they cash out of their hardware, everything after depreciation is pure profit. Virtually no depreciation for RTX and Big Navi at the moment, which probably wont last very long, but they're winning regardless.
Actually during the previous mining craze after the GPU was abused/used, it sold more than what one paid for it :ROFLMAO:. The true first wave of GPU scalpers.
 

"GPU Shortages Will Worsen Thanks to both Nvidia & AMD selling to Coin Miners" FTFY.​


The article says that 5700 & 5700XT are more profitable than the 6800, 6800XT & 6900XT

AMD genuinely has a shortage issue. I don't think they are selling the new cards to miners
 
The article says that 5700 & 5700XT are more profitable than the 6800, 6800XT & 6900XT

AMD genuinely has a shortage issue. I don't think they are selling the new cards to miners
Then it must be a big damn shortage issue. I can go to any electronics store and find multiple 5700 XT's on the shelves.
 
My 1070 is still handling Cyberpunk on high preset at respectable frame rates at 1080P. No RTX but game looks good anyway

I bought my 1070 for under the going rate when I got it, as it was under $200, bought from a miner who ran it 2 months. Now it's probably worth more than I paid after owning it for almost 2 years
 
Cost of GPUs is going up, and it's not because of the miners.

 
Meanwhile .... behind the facade of an innocent looking rural home ... my Voodoo card running period games remains unaffected.

I'm out for a while. Sick of all the games being played in the GPU sector last few years. Have big Navi cards with no outputs hit the market yet?
 
Then it must be a big damn shortage issue. I can go to any electronics store and find multiple 5700 XT's on the shelves.
Rumours be what rumours be, but I have read and heard multiple times now that AMD's manufacturing allotment for their cards is miniscule thanks to all the crowding on that node. AMD's cards are being manufactured at a fraction of the rate of nVidia's according to what I've seen.

I have no idea if it's true but it kind of makes sense to a layman like me. Sony and Microsoft are definitely bigger customers than I am, or any single AIB for that matter.
 
How is this still viable anymore? I mean the rate of return for these bitcoin miners must be so small now that between the costs of the mining rigs, the electricity, and everything else it couldn't possibly be worth it right? Like maybe only if you invest an insane amount into this? Idk how this all works but I imagine it's harder and harder to mine these bitcoins... I heard that the more that are found the harder it is to find as time goes on...
 
How is this still viable anymore? I mean the rate of return for these bitcoin miners must be so small now that between the costs of the mining rigs, the electricity, and everything else it couldn't possibly be worth it right? Like maybe only if you invest an insane amount into this? Idk how this all works but I imagine it's harder and harder to mine these bitcoins... I heard that the more that are found the harder it is to find as time goes on...

No offense, but you don't know anything about GPU mining if that's the best comment you can make (unless you are being extra sarcastic).
 
You're right I don't know anything about GPU mining which is why i'm asking a question... no reason to be a smart ass.

I did preface it by "no offense" and it was a pretty ignorant comment about GPU mining...so...

Anyway, you don't actually mine bitcoin with GPUs anymore (and you haven't since maybe 2013). You might get paid in bitcoin for your work, but you won't actually mine bitcoin. Generally you are "mining" some altcoin algorithm (in the most recent case the Ethereum algorithm). Your GPU doesn't need to run at 100% top speed and power to be effective. You can usually find a balance of efficiency and productivity (hash rate per watt). A 3080 can net $8-10 a day right now. If you paid $800 for it, you're looking at paying off your card in ~100 days assuming a steady return rate (not guaranteed by any stretch). A mining farm just takes this to an extreme. After 100 days of running, it's all profit with however many cards you have. In the winter this can also be beneficial because excess heat can heat your house.
 
Last edited:
TBH, if you can't find a GPU and have the money cash, it would be better to park it in their stock and at least make money on it until something is available.
Hey, you may just do without it after you see the gains.
 
lol, 5700 XT last night was making (By Awesome Miner Calculations) $5.73/day, today, even with Ethereum price slightly higher $4.15. As price goes up on a coin, people start directing more processing to that coin and now you have more miners spreading the rewards around and thus your take of the pie gets smaller. Basically a coins algorithm looks at hashrate (solving of mathematical puzzle rate) and adjust mining difficulty level to keep the number of coins rewarded at a fixed rate as in 6.25 coins per block every 2 min (solving of puzzle and recording all transactions in the block). So as difficulty level goes up for mining, your chances or the pool your in for winning the award goes down.

There is always risk in buying new hardware for mining, you just don't know even the short term return price, go back a couple of months and you would be lucky to get $1/day from a 5700 XT -> What to say 2 months from now it is the same or less?

The $/day only really counts if you immediately sell, meaning, one has zero idea or confidence the actual earnings until they are actually transferred or sold. So my $5.73/day was only an illusion, maybe just an indicator. Ethereum network now is bogged down and very costly to transfer ETH. So much for a dependable network when actually stressed it has issues and becomes expensive to use.
 
I did preface it by "no offense" and it was a pretty ignorant comment about GPU mining...so...

Anyway, you don't actually mine bitcoin with GPUs anymore (and you haven't since maybe 2013). You might get paid in bitcoin for your work, but you won't actually mine bitcoin. Generally you are "mining" some altcoin algorithm (in the most recent case the Ethereum algorithm). Your GPU doesn't need to run at 100% top speed and power to be effective. You can usually find a balance of efficiency and productivity (hash rate per watt). A 3080 can net $8-10 a day right now. If you paid $800 for it, you're looking at paying off your card in ~100 days assuming a steady return rate (not guaranteed by any stretch). A mining farm just takes this to an extreme. After 100 days of running, it's all profit with however many cards you have. In the winter this can also be beneficial because excess heat can heat your house.

Interesting. I have heard of mining farms but I guess I didn't understand how people profit from this. Isn't it true that as more time goes on the harder it is to "find" or "mine" bitcoins specifically? Like there are finite amount and sooner or later there will achieve a peak of what can be found?
 
Interesting. I have heard of mining farms but I guess I didn't understand how people profit from this. Isn't it true that as more time goes on the harder it is to "find" or "mine" bitcoins specifically? Like there are finite amount and sooner or later there will achieve a peak of what can be found?
It does not matter the amount of Bitcoin mined, only if profitable or not. Each Bitcoin can be divided up to 8 decimal places which folks came to call Satoshi. You can mine 100's of Satoshi's a day, even indirectly with a GPU if one exchanges another coin for BTC. There are hundreds of independent networks, that do not depend on any government, business, authority etc. to exist and function and can transfer assets around, some coins actually contain legal transactions representing real Gold, property even cars. So instead of mining BTC as in 1 coin per block, you could be mining 100,000,000 Satoshi per block -> same value -> 4 years later 50,000,000 Satoshi -> 4 years later 25,000,000 Satoshi and so on every 4 years when the award value is cut in half. In other words hundreds of years of potential mining. Will that be the case? I don't think so but it does have that potential.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the explanation, Noko!

I thought that BTC were basically ASIC only now in terms of watts/dollar - the whole alt coin to satoshi makes a lot of sense. But of course this realization makes me a sad panda in terms of getting another GPU for my 2nd rig.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noko
like this
Interesting. I have heard of mining farms but I guess I didn't understand how people profit from this. Isn't it true that as more time goes on the harder it is to "find" or "mine" bitcoins specifically? Like there are finite amount and sooner or later there will achieve a peak of what can be found?

The difficulty of "mining" is dependent upon the amount of "miners" that are "mining." It could go up or down depending on the total network hash rate. What you're referring to is the decreased rewards over time. Yes, there are a finite number of Bitcoins, but as Noko said they can be broken down into much smaller pieces.

Thanks for the explanation, Noko!

I thought that BTC were basically ASIC only now in terms of watts/dollar - the whole alt coin to satoshi makes a lot of sense. But of course this realization makes me a sad panda in terms of getting another GPU for my 2nd rig.

Mining BTC is essentially only ASICs. Mining alt-algorithms can vary depending on the algo. Some are designed to be ASIC-resistant. So if you mine at a place like Nicehash, someone is paying bitcoin for the hash power of thousands of Nicehash users. My GPU then participates and then the bitcoin is then divided up between those who participated (with a cut to the house of course) so you get paid in BTC even though you weren't "mining" for BTC.
 
AMD intentionally nerfed/left unoptimized RDNA2. The hash per KW is just not there compared to Nvidia. I have seen Elsmere GPUs going way up on price lately. Enough RAM and we're pretty cheap...
 
Back
Top