What if the crypto craze never ends?

Sir Beregond said:
Yeah, some of the issues may resolve by then, but Fab capacity I expect will be a problem for years to come. Having only two in the space is a problem since Intel started struggling, and GloFo just gave up, that's definitely problematic. Any expansion of capacity in terms of new fabs, or new players, or Intel fixing their stuff, etc. doesn't happen over night and will be a multi year affair.
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Mostly agreed.

Developing new fabs and Intel fixing their process certainly takes a lot of time, but believe a lot of this work has already been ongoing for some time, so it's not like they are suddenly starting from scratch in 2021. If that were the case we'd be several years off.

TSMC has been looking to expand for some time, so some of the groundwork has already been done. They also already have the best working process in the industry up and running, so it's not like they are developing a new process from scratch. They already have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't.

Intel too has been working on backup plans ever since 10nm went south.


I have less enthusiasm that there will be any new entrants. In business we often talk about barriers to entry, things that make it difficult to enter a new industry, and it is tough to imagine any larger ones than in silicon fabs. The levels of expertise, and cost are immense, operating at the very edge of what technology makes possible. The costs are upfront, and you need to keep highly skilled engineers on staff for several years before you start seeing payoff.

I think this is why supply has trailed in recent years. If experienced fab owners like Global Foundries which are made up - among others - what used to be AMD's in house manufacturing are dropping out due to the extreme difficulty and cost, it seems highly unlikely we will see anyone new enter.

For latest gen process nodes I think we are stuck with TSMC Samsung and Intel for the foreseeable future, and I hope they expand capacity.
 
undertaker2k8 said:
Out of curiosity, do you own/adminster a mining farm?
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It's not huge but it's my own. I branched out into some ASICs and was looking into getting more into the importation side of things since ebay vs alibaba prices are wildly different. Prices on ASICs dropped severely after the Chinese crackdown despite profitability being way up due to the decrease in overall network hashrate so that backed up the rumors (usually it's the opposite, used ASICs sell for more depending on profitability). I know Chinese are GPU mining as well, but they were also developing ETH ASICs so maybe the Chinese presence in the GPU mining market was smaller than people thought. Ravencoin hashrates barely dropped at all and ETH has fallen but not as much as Bitcoin and some others and it might be explainable largely by their ETH ASICs going offline. From personal experience GPU mining is a lot less friendly to low-skill labor running it so maybe that pushed them more heavily into ASIC investment and could be why we're seeing less GPUs being sold by them since the crackdown than expected.
 
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Even if crypto crashed tomorrow I don’t think GPU supply and prices will come back anytime soon.
This has become a cycle really. There’s crypto years where it’s booming and there’s years where it’s down. But the chip shortage has caused lots of delays and production issues.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
[ .. ]

2.) Fab capacity. Demand is increasing from all corners of the market. Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Mobile, Desktop, Mining, you name it. At the same time there are really only two latest gen node manufacturers left. TSMC and Samsung, and Samsung seems to be struggling a little by comparison. GlobalFoundries just decided modern process nodes were too had and dropped out. Intel was starting to open up their fabs to third party manufacturing and then they just totally failed at their 10nm process. Intel will likely come back eventually, and TSMC is building more capacity, but these things will take time.

[ ..]
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Possibly a dumb question. Do the ASML machines used for wafer etching need significant upgrades to move to a smaller feature size? Also a dumb question. How come Nikon no longer seems to be a significant player in that market?
 
philb2 said:
Possibly a dumb question. Do the ASML machines used for wafer etching need significant upgrades to move to a smaller feature size? Also a dumb question. How come Nikon no longer seems to be a significant player in that market?
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I'm not quite qualified to answer that question. I'm an engineer and tech enthusiast, but not a silicon fab engineer.

Based on my knowledge with other equipment, fiven how these things are right at the edge of what is possible I'd imagine that the equipment needs to be completely replaced with newer equipment in most cases to have the added resolution necessary, but that is just an educated guess.
 
At this point. I don't believe they will ever go back down. The idea has become the institution. Companies now know that people are willing to pay absurd prices.

Affordability & PC gaming is ruined, forever.
 
Krenum said:
At this point. I don't believe they will ever go back down. The idea has become the institution. Companies now know that people are willing to pay absurd prices.

Affordability & PC gaming is ruined, forever.
Click to expand...

There is something seriously wrong when $450 buys you less GPU today than it did 4 years ago (actually it buys you the same exact GPU except with 4 years worth of wear and tear on it).
 
Krenum said:
At this point. I don't believe they will ever go back down. The idea has become the institution. Companies now know that people are willing to pay absurd prices.

Affordability & PC gaming is ruined, forever.
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This. I am convinced this market is now ruined for a very very long time. The days of "you can build a great gaming PC for the price of a console" are long gone.

I mean, once we go back to MSRP, are they even going to bother following up with new cards for the sub $300 market? Seems Nvidia is content to just keep making RTX cards while pushing the prices and AMD is content to compete with Nvidia price points (again, in an MSRP world). Has there been a replacement for the 16-series or the 580? Meh. This market is screwed.

Nvidia laughing all the way to the bank with their 3090, 3080 Ti sales after the backlash Turing got. Hell I feel bad for buying this 3070 for $650.
 
So this is post #171 in this thread. That's lot of comments on just one issue. Here and there there are various comments about the future of gaming. I certainly don't know, and I'm not smart enough to make predictions. I'll just say this. If the DIY PC gaming market goes down, it will take other component markets with it. Like monitors, maybe PSUs and cases. Is there much call for water-cooling outside of gaming? Me, I'm not that hardcore, nor skilled enough to do my own loop. I would get an AIO CPU cooler.
 
philb2 said:
So this is post #171 in this thread. That's lot of comments on just one issue. Here and there there are various comments about the future of gaming. I certainly don't know, and I'm not smart enough to make predictions. I'll just say this. If the DIY PC gaming market goes down, it will take other component markets with it. Like monitors, maybe PSUs and cases. Is there much call for water-cooling outside of gaming? Me, I'm not that hardcore, nor skilled enough to do my own loop. I would get an AIO CPU cooler.
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Absolutely! I build high end systems for video/audio nonlinear editing (NLE) and most of them gamers would drool over. Performance, stability, and as quiet operation as possible are paramount.
 
Interesting thread.. I am glad that some people understand that miners are causing the part shortage. But I don't think everyone really gets the mining craze. It is actually interesting.

I'd like to make a few points..

1 - It is SILLY to blame the miners personally. Individuals and Corporations always seek to make money. Whether it be a lawyer looking for a big fat case - or a Corporation selling something unnecessary or even dangerous. Select individuals might not do this - but when looked at collectively we have to accept that profit seeking is natural and unavoidable. Mining is the first real "work at home" scheme that can actually make you good money. (Of course it takes a pretty hefty investment) but this is remarkable..

2 - The root cause of this gaming crisis was the design choices by the makers of Ethereum. They CHOOSE to design the crypto currency in such a way that it used GPUs. This was a design choice. They could have allowed ASICS or used CPU (Monero). But they chose to destroy gaming. It's sad but you cannot expect people to avoid profit out of the goodness of their heart. Companies won't avoid profit even if what they are selling kills people.. like say Motorcycles! (And I like motorcycles BTW)..

3 - Crypto is not a "SCAM" and is not going away. Crypto solves a problem - maybe not an exciting one. But it provides a ledger of transactions that are secure, anon, and yet accessible to the public. This is perfect for finance and other tasks like say voting. Miners are not getting paid by printing money - they are getting paid to make those transactions cryptographically secure.

SIDENOTE
Compared to our banking system it seems quite honorable. For those who do not know - when you take out a loan the bank doesn't "lend" you that money. They CREATE it. This is why we have a "debt backed" currency. Most of our money in circulation is in fact DEBT. In return for "creating" this money - the banker then gets paid as they charge more to "return" what they didn't actually give you. And lest you think that only happens at the low levels - it is essentially what the Fed does - and it trickles down the entire chain. Our government doesn't just print money - they PAY the FED to CREATE money electronically and then PAY them for the privilege by buying BONDS from them. Only a little bit of it gets printed!

The monetary system is a fascinating thing. Its basically a scam hiding in plain sight..
 
philb2 said:
So this is post #171 in this thread. That's lot of comments on just one issue. Here and there there are various comments about the future of gaming. I certainly don't know, and I'm not smart enough to make predictions. I'll just say this. If the DIY PC gaming market goes down, it will take other component markets with it. Like monitors, maybe PSUs and cases. Is there much call for water-cooling outside of gaming? Me, I'm not that hardcore, nor skilled enough to do my own loop. I would get an AIO CPU cooler.
Click to expand...
I got into custom loop water-cooling from necessity in one house I lived at about 10 years ago. The air cooling couldn't keep up with the rising ambient temps in the summer. House had no AC. Water-cooling both CPU and GPU kept them from either thermal throttling or outright overheating in July.

Now I do it because I got addicted to silent computing. I hate fan noise.

But I agree...watercooling seems to be the trendy thing to do for gamers now and most of them never learned how to do it properly, like cleaning a new loop.
 
it'll end. GTX 970 on ebay right now, legit seller @ $140 + $18 Shipping. Unheard of price just a few months ago. Here's to hoping ...
 
TexasPete said:
Compared to our banking system it seems quite honorable. For those who do not know - when you take out a loan the bank doesn't "lend" you that money. They CREATE it. This is why we have a "debt backed" currency. Most of our money in circulation is in fact DEBT. In return for "creating" this money - the banker then gets paid as they charge more to "return" what they didn't actually give you.
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Fix Gold standard may seem honorable.

But the modern system is a genious one that seem (so far in is most modern incarnation) to have gave the world the best monetary system we ever saw imo.

Bank need to destroy the capital created at the end and only keep the surplus (interest charged) they achieved to make, making them a hole and loosing money if they do not get fully paid back.

That system linked the incentive of making and not loosing money to creating the right amount of money (if the person-company is able to pay back their loan, overall they will tend to have created at least has much value with it, say an house of equal or more value than the loan, mean of production and so on).

Like wanted and controlled inflation can seem dishonorable and boggle the mind, it is extrémale practical, so is the above.
 
the 970 is trailing off being profitable for mining, just like a 4gb rx470. You can still use them for some altcoins, but profitability is down some and the concern of poo coins is creeping back into the market. really the pricing of used IS falling a bit. rx 5700 xt can be found at 800$ instead of 1600$. even new is catching up where 6700xt is available in stock for 900$.

but xmas is just a few months out and the entire planet has been holding their breath for stock for over a year now. if you don't find what you are looking for soon, you will be a year out again.

Crypto, in some form, will be here from now on.
 
TexasPete said:
Interesting thread.. I am glad that some people understand that miners are causing the part shortage. But I don't think everyone really gets the mining craze. It is actually interesting.

I'd like to make a few points..

1 - It is SILLY to blame the miners personally. Individuals and Corporations always seek to make money. Whether it be a lawyer looking for a big fat case - or a Corporation selling something unnecessary or even dangerous. Select individuals might not do this - but when looked at collectively we have to accept that profit seeking is natural and unavoidable. Mining is the first real "work at home" scheme that can actually make you good money. (Of course it takes a pretty hefty investment) but this is remarkable..

2 - The root cause of this gaming crisis was the design choices by the makers of Ethereum. They CHOOSE to design the crypto currency in such a way that it used GPUs. This was a design choice. They could have allowed ASICS or used CPU (Monero). But they chose to destroy gaming. It's sad but you cannot expect people to avoid profit out of the goodness of their heart. Companies won't avoid profit even if what they are selling kills people.. like say Motorcycles! (And I like motorcycles BTW)..

3 - Crypto is not a "SCAM" and is not going away. Crypto solves a problem - maybe not an exciting one. But it provides a ledger of transactions that are secure, anon, and yet accessible to the public. This is perfect for finance and other tasks like say voting. Miners are not getting paid by printing money - they are getting paid to make those transactions cryptographically secure.

SIDENOTE
Compared to our banking system it seems quite honorable. For those who do not know - when you take out a loan the bank doesn't "lend" you that money. They CREATE it. This is why we have a "debt backed" currency. Most of our money in circulation is in fact DEBT. In return for "creating" this money - the banker then gets paid as they charge more to "return" what they didn't actually give you. And lest you think that only happens at the low levels - it is essentially what the Fed does - and it trickles down the entire chain. Our government doesn't just print money - they PAY the FED to CREATE money electronically and then PAY them for the privilege by buying BONDS from them. Only a little bit of it gets printed!

The monetary system is a fascinating thing. Its basically a scam hiding in plain sight..
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2. I would say the design choice for Ethereum to use GPUs was more based upon limiting big mining farms to help keep it decentralized. Well of course big mining farms with GPUs sprung up instead. Hence going to Proof of Stake. ASICS was never really was a choice to keep it decentralized.

3. Nicely said. Now I would also say there is a lot of SCAM in the Crypto space but the conception and purpose for the blockchain does exactly as you say.

As for the current monetary system which is not well understood, it had two goals, keep inflation in check while growing the money supply as well as keep jobs at a high number. Gold standard or a more fixed commodity based system would never work. Why? Because as the population grows, wealth as in newly created things like new houses, businesses etc. would all be competing for the same fixed number of units of let say Gold (except Gold actually continues to mine but at a slower rate than let say population and actual valuable items such as goods and property development). For example:
  • Your Bank using Federal reserves, US government basically out of thin air creates the money
  • The Bank loans you or let say a developer the newly created money
  • You build a number of homes on property that was basically dirt and weeds
  • The new homes now have actual value, worth that did not exist before which backs up the created money value -> thus the created money does not add to inflation, also it created jobs
  • The bank pays back the US government and keeps the interest earned from the loan they did
What I see as happening currently is a gross use of Federal reserves or creation of money to finance such things as:
  • Stimulus checks vie Federal Reserve and Treasury given out by IRS -> there is no guarantee and most likely no wealth creation activity with this -> causes a surplus of money leading to inflation
  • Unemployment benefits -> more money not only out of thin air but most likely to prevent wealth creation due to keeping workers or incentivizing them to stay at home out of productive work (not making things of value) -> inflationary
  • Federal Reserves prompting up stocks and Mortgage Back securities given the biggest Bubble in the equity market as well as inflating home prices by a huge increase in demand -> not very good outcome, collapse
Bitcoin and like monetary system would never work for a growing developing world or system, it would stagnant growth. With Bitcoin for example, why would I invest in building a home, take the risk when Bitcoin value would naturally keep getting higher as the population grows and more demand for each BTC increases? Everything, including homes would be worth less and less BTC, meaning it would make less sense to make, build things then just hold onto BTC for value. Gold was sort of workable due to increasing supply from mining which has been dwindling as time goes on which does not support rapid population and growth.

Do agree Federal Reserve actions do look pretty scammy but it also falls back on government oversight and policies.
 
Sir Beregond said:
I got into custom loop water-cooling from necessity in one house I lived at about 10 years ago. The air cooling couldn't keep up with the rising ambient temps in the summer. House had no AC. Water-cooling both CPU and GPU kept them from either thermal throttling or outright overheating in July.

Now I do it because I got addicted to silent computing. I hate fan noise.

But I agree...watercooling seems to be the trendy thing to do for gamers now and most of them never learned how to do it properly, like cleaning a new loop.
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I al.so don't like fan noise. For a long time, I thought that I would do a custom loop "sometime soon" and collected lots of notes, thread links, pics, etc. But along the way two things happened.

1. I realized that I am a "set it and forget it" kind of guy. Something you can do with mild overclocking or installing an over-spec'ed power supply. But good loop maintenance requires a yearly teardown and rebuild, and I honestly don't think I would have the time or the discipline for that.

2. My case is an old but very good Corsair 800D, with 3 3.5" HDDs, plus the usual. It's heavy, almost too heavy for a guy like me who is not so young anymore. Adding the weight of the loop, that might make it too hard to lift up from the floor without risking real injury. And I'm not going to risk that.
 
Just got back from Best Buy. The ~20 3080's were snatched up immediately by the guys who got there a day early.
Can you guess the 2nd card to go out of stock? Did you guess 3060 Ti? Wrong, it was the 3070! The girl offered me a 3060 Ti ticket instead and I was like yes please.

Laughed my ass off all the way to my car.

In hindsight though I should've taken the 3070 Ti. Much rarer.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
Just got back from Best Buy. The ~20 3080's were snatched up immediately by the guys who got there a day early.
Can you guess the 2nd card to go out of stock? Did you guess 3060 Ti? Wrong, it was the 3070! The girl offered me a 3060 Ti ticket instead and I was like yes please.

Laughed my ass off all the way to my car.

In hindsight though I should've taken the 3070 Ti. Much rarer.
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I'm waiting until (hoping ...) crypto demand falls off so much that BB and other stores will be running parking lot discount sales.
 
philb2 said:
I'm waiting until (hoping ...) crypto demand falls off so much that BB and other stores will be running parking lot discount sales.
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Well you'll be waiting quite a lot for that... mining is not the only reason of these prices. For instance, some resellers limited the purchases to one or two per individual. Mining has seen a decline, however if you already have a big farm going (or ASIC / ASICs thereof) it still works. With singular and alike GPU setups bought now, you just don't make enough to properly close your electricity bills, etc in the long run.

They figured out that people would pay any sort of cash for GPUs, and turned GPU pricing to an economical inflation of a 3rd world country. As if this wasn't enough, other things like the Steam Deck was being scalped at $5k. While the Intel 12th gen CPU was being black marketed for $1200. Did I mention about the TPM modules too? People will scalp anything as long as it's profitable to them. Let the actual shortage be artificial or non-artificial. It's been well over a year since this fandango started. People should by far know how these things revolve nowadays.
 
Hallyday said:
Well you'll be waiting quite a lot for that... mining is not the only reason of these prices. For instance, some resellers limited the purchases to one or two per individual. Mining has seen a decline, however if you already have a big farm going (or ASIC / ASICs thereof) it still works. With singular and alike GPU setups bought now, you just don't make enough to properly close your electricity bills, etc in the long run.

They figured out that people would pay any sort of cash for GPUs, and turned GPU pricing to an economical inflation of a 3rd world country. As if this wasn't enough, other things like the Steam Deck was being scalped at $5k. While the Intel 12th gen CPU was being black marketed for $1200. Did I mention about the TPM modules too? People will scalp anything as long as it's profitable to them. Let the actual shortage be artificial or non-artificial. It's been well over a year since this fandango started. People should by far know how these things revolve nowadays.
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IF GPUs were manufactured in the US, then mebbe the guvmint could fix the shortage by some sort of allocation controls. Sort of like the price controls in the '70s when inflation ran wild. (look it up).
 
philb2 said:
IF GPUs were manufactured in the US, then mebbe the guvmint could fix the shortage by some sort of allocation controls. Sort of like the price controls in the '70s when inflation ran wild. (look it up).
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Prices are crazy everywhere, not just in the U.S. Made in U.S already jacks up the price by a good amount on a lot of stuff. Only some MC / BB sales and some of the German resellers are selling at *somewhat* ok prices currently. Even those prices are not even remotely close to MSRP. The problem lays elsewhere.
 
TexasPete said:
Interesting thread.. I am glad that some people understand that miners are causing the part shortage. But I don't think everyone really gets the mining craze. It is actually interesting.

I'd like to make a few points..

1 - It is SILLY to blame the miners personally. Individuals and Corporations always seek to make money. Whether it be a lawyer looking for a big fat case - or a Corporation selling something unnecessary or even dangerous. Select individuals might not do this - but when looked at collectively we have to accept that profit seeking is natural and unavoidable. Mining is the first real "work at home" scheme that can actually make you good money. (Of course it takes a pretty hefty investment) but this is remarkable..

2 - The root cause of this gaming crisis was the design choices by the makers of Ethereum. They CHOOSE to design the crypto currency in such a way that it used GPUs. This was a design choice. They could have allowed ASICS or used CPU (Monero). But they chose to destroy gaming. It's sad but you cannot expect people to avoid profit out of the goodness of their heart. Companies won't avoid profit even if what they are selling kills people.. like say Motorcycles! (And I like motorcycles BTW)..

3 - Crypto is not a "SCAM" and is not going away. Crypto solves a problem - maybe not an exciting one. But it provides a ledger of transactions that are secure, anon, and yet accessible to the public. This is perfect for finance and other tasks like say voting. Miners are not getting paid by printing money - they are getting paid to make those transactions cryptographically secure.

SIDENOTE
Compared to our banking system it seems quite honorable. For those who do not know - when you take out a loan the bank doesn't "lend" you that money. They CREATE it. This is why we have a "debt backed" currency. Most of our money in circulation is in fact DEBT. In return for "creating" this money - the banker then gets paid as they charge more to "return" what they didn't actually give you. And lest you think that only happens at the low levels - it is essentially what the Fed does - and it trickles down the entire chain. Our government doesn't just print money - they PAY the FED to CREATE money electronically and then PAY them for the privilege by buying BONDS from them. Only a little bit of it gets printed!

The monetary system is a fascinating thing. Its basically a scam hiding in plain sight..
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Agree except with #2.

They increased demand for GPUs, which exposed a weakness in the supply chain. I blame Nvidia/AMD/Covid for the inability to ramp up production to match demand.
 
Hallyday said:
Well you'll be waiting quite a lot for that... mining is not the only reason of these prices.
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Multi-faceted situation. At this point GPUs are still hard to get though there have been some signs of decreasing price trends. Some of the older GPUs are dropping in price for example on ebay. 5600xt cards were $900+ a few months ago and they've dropped by over 20% at this point and are still going down. Smaller drops on higher end items like 6800 series.

There will be a massive sell-off around the time ethereum finally goes to proof of stake. Up until that happens however, unless the price craters completely, it will be up to manufacturers to meet demand.
 
I want a new GPU, one that won't make me sick
One that won't make me crash my car
Or make me feel three-feet thick
I want a new GPU, one that won't hurt my head
One that won't make my mouth too dry
Or make my eyes too red

and once you have that New GPU what games you gonna play, the remake of the remake of the remake of the Mass Effect Trilogy?
The games out there, released the last one or two years don't just suck, they royally suck. The problem is, feed people dog crap long enough and they will eventually think it's steak and then will become willing to pay you even more for it.
 
So where does all back-and-forth this lead us? What new pearls of wisdom? Me, all I know is that I won't pay 2-3X MSRP and I won't buy a used card 'cuz it may have been used for mining.
 
Certainly more stock of cards appearing online in the UK. Some 3060's and 6700XT's. Running a couple of hundred quid over retail but there if you need them.

I picked up a 6700XT last week and really happy with it.
 
daglesj said:
Certainly more stock of cards appearing online in the UK. Some 3060's and 6700XT's. Running a couple of hundred quid over retail but there if you need them.

I picked up a 6700XT last week and really happy with it.
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Can you recommend any online UK stores. Maybe they will ship to the USA.
 
philb2 said:
Prices down? Availability up?
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You're not going to see any large movement until the PoS conversion is complete.

The London fork is going to pay less to miners, but there will also be less supply out there due to burning a part of the transaction fees. ETH should go up in price slightly to offset the mining hit. I think it will be a wash honestly.
 
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