News OEMs Target Miners with RTX 2060 12GB, But Gamers Need It More

[Admin]

There's almost no GeForce RTX 2060 12GB reviews because it seems the cards aren't really going to be available to most people, with miners likely getting most of them.

OEMs Target Miners with RTX 2060 12GB, But Gamers Need It More : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

Thanks for writing about this.

They (nVidia and partners) trying to hide the bleeding dagger, but the floor is already splattered and red. I hope more people realizes that Companies are not your darlings nor your friends. Hold them accountable and don't forget their transgressions.

Regards.

 

[Augusstus]

If this is true and not just a made up clickbait triggering article, then at least name said company so we can decide who to boycott.

Mod Edit - Language

 

[Eximo]

I assumed these cards were mostly going to end up in OEM systems anyway. Not directly on the market.

 

[King_V]

That remains the $500 question.

If only...

 

[helper800]

If only...

500 per is probably the 1000 unit pallet price to a miner.

 

[cryoburner]

If this is true and not just a made up clickbait triggering article, then at least name said company so we can decide who to boycott.

Probably all of them, even if only one admitted it. I don't see why they would want to hurt relations with a company they are asking to send them review samples, just because they provided them with a bit of additional information.

Though really, it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't sample these to reviewers. The 2060 is a nearly 3 year old card at this point, so there isn't going to be a big marketing push for it. And it will most likely perform very similar to the existing 2060 in nearly all of today's games that don't need the extra VRAM at the resolutions a 2060 can handle. The extra VRAM was most likely just added so that they could justify slapping a higher MSRP on the card, more than anything.

 

[Endymio]

--"One OEM (who shall remain nameless) specifically told me, "This will be more of a mining focused card so HQ is not going to do a big media push on it." Wait, what? A mining-focused RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM? How in the hell is that a mining focused card? " --

I'll translate for you, Jarred. These cards are, like nearly all other products, going to be sold for what the market will bear, rather than the "suggested" MSRP. The OEM knows the reaction from the gamer market will be to whine, complain, screech, browbeat, and threaten them, whereas miners will simply silently fork over payment. If you doubt this, read the above posts ... or the depressingly similar entitlement-mentality posts of prior threads.

Any gamers who don't like the situation -- you have only yourselves to blame.

 

[escksu]

If this is true and not just a made up clickbait triggering article, then at least name said company so we can decide who to boycott.

Mod Edit - Language

Boycott? It doesn't work. There are just so few GPU manufacturers.... And then, all are the same. If gamers decide to boycott a particular brand, then miners will be more than happy to snap up the additional cards.

 

[escksu]

--"One OEM (who shall remain nameless) specifically told me, "This will be more of a mining focused card so HQ is not going to do a big media push on it." Wait, what? A mining-focused RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM? How in the hell is that a mining focused card? " --

I'll translate for you, Jarred. These cards are, like nearly all other products, going to be sold for what the market will bear, rather than the "suggested" MSRP. The OEM knows the reaction from the gamer market will be to whine, complain, screech, browbeat, and threaten them, whereas miners will simply silently fork over payment. If you doubt this, read the above posts ... or the depressingly similar entitlement-mentality posts of prior threads.

Any gamers who don't like the situation -- you have only yourselves to blame.

Yeah. I have to remind everyone that this is a free market and a gaming card is not considered an essential item. This means prices are determined by supply and demand. Be it a miner or gamer, they are just people who wants these card for their own purpose and you cannot say who should have it. So, yes, you have only yourselves to blame.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Video card manufacturers are never going to feel any hurt until crypto mining stops, but the video game industry for PCs is going to get hurt pretty bad soon if this keeps up.
I mean, good, since I’d rather Indies with low GPU requirements get all the money, but it’s going to be a huge impact, this is just not sustainable.

 

[LolaGT]

.....but why should they do that if they can make more money off of such customers?

Indeed.
They would be stupid to do anything else. A company is in business to make the most money in the shortest amount of time.
If they can load pallets of GPUs on a truck that go straight to an end user, it is a sweetheart deal on both ends of that transaction. That cuts out a huge amount of expensive logistics.

As mentioned, no one has any "right" to buy a GPU, just because they think their use is more legit than another, that is infantile thinking in the business world.
Emotional arguments have no place in that.

 

[Endymio]

the video game industry for PCs is going to get hurt pretty bad soon if this keeps up.
...it’s going to be a huge impact, this is just not sustainable.

How so? Nearly all cards -- that do go to gamers -- are gamers upgrading to faster graphics: individiuals who certainly aren't going to give up gaming for the lack. The number of cards being supplied to this market is still well above the floorline replacement rate. The market isn't shrinking for lack of hardware.

Rather than this temporary situation, gamers should be more concerned about the inevitable maturation of the GPU industry. The days of selling new games based simply on more triangles/sec are numbered.

 

[samopa]

If RTX2060 cost $300 or less then it's for gamer, else it's for miner, period.

 

[King_V]

--"One OEM (who shall remain nameless) specifically told me, "This will be more of a mining focused card so HQ is not going to do a big media push on it." Wait, what? A mining-focused RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM? How in the hell is that a mining focused card? " --

(manifesto snipped)

Any gamers who don't like the situation -- you have only yourselves to blame.

Explain.

Specifically, explain, EXACTLY, how gamers are to blame for this situation.

 

[Endymio]

Specifically, explain, EXACTLY, how gamers are to blame for this situation.

The "situation" in question is the article's hypothesis -- which for sake of argument, I accepted as genuine -- that these particular upcoming cards were neither being marketed nor offered directly for sale to the gaming community.

If you misread, and believed I was referring to the larger situation of a multi-year gpu shortage, then no; obviously gamers are not directly responsible for the Covid pandemic. However, gamers are indeed indirectly responsible for at least a portion of the resultant shortages. AMD and NVidia could solve the shortages overnight simply by boosting prices to a level that, although higher, would still be less than those currently charged by scalpers. Why do they not do so, and leave this additional money on the table? Because they'd immediately be inudated of accusations of "profiteering" from the pandemic, from thousands of well-meaning, but poorly-educated gamers.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Plain and simple, the only way this is going to end is when graphic card manufacturers are able to increase supply to the point where scalpers are no longer able to make a significant profit. As @Endymio correctly states, the graphic card manufacturers are not willing to increase MSRPs to avoid being seen as villainous. One does not stay in business if they alienate their customer base.

As @Sleepy_Hollowed states, it's the PC Gaming Industry that is going to take it in the teeth. IF (and I'm making that a BIG if) the PC gaming industry can survive this, they're going to have to put pressure on the card manufacturers. A game development company doesn't sink millions of dollars and years of man-power to create a AAA game that the primary user base cannot play for lack of the ability to purchase a graphics card.

For the record, I'm a member of the gaming community that refuses to pay more than $350 for a graphics card (current card GTX 1060 6GB). If that means I can no longer purchase a graphics card required for modest game play of the newest games, then the game developers just lost a customer.

-Wolf sends

 

[helper800]

The "situation" in question is the article's hypothesis -- which for sake of argument, I accepted as genuine -- that these particular upcoming cards were neither being marketed nor offered directly for sale to the gaming community.

If you misread, and believed I was referring to the larger situation of a multi-year gpu shortage, then no; obviously gamers are not directly responsible for the Covid pandemic. However, gamers are indeed indirectly responsible for at least a portion of the resultant shortages. AMD and NVidia could solve the shortages overnight simply by boosting prices to a level that, although higher, would still be less than those currently charged by scalpers. Why do they not do so, and leave this additional money on the table? Because they'd immediately be inudated of accusations of "profiteering" from the pandemic, from thousands of well-meaning, but poorly-educated gamers.

In my opinion, the reason why gamers and others feel betrayed by the industry is for the last 30+ years they propped each other up. Games came out and gamers / developers bought the cards. The developers would then make games that required more horsepower to run and that pushed manufactures to innovate. Thus leading to a positive feedback loop of; (1) devs release games > (2) gamers buy cards for new games > (3) manufacturers innovate to make better hardware > (1) > (2) > (3). The uses for consumer dGPUs in the early days were much more limited to games than they are now. Now you can do so much with a dGPU that manufactures cannot make enough of them to satiate all of the industries that use them. Feeling betrayed that these manufacturers now have a tiered priority of who gets them is frustrating to gamers.

 

[helper800]

Plain and simple, the only way this is going to end is when graphic card manufacturers are able to increase supply to the point where scalpers are no longer able to make a significant profit. As @Endymio correctly states, the graphic card manufacturers are not willing to increase MSRPs to avoid being seen as villainous. One does not stay in business if they alienate their customer base.

As @Sleepy_Hollowed states, it's the PC Gaming Industry that is going to take it in the teeth. IF (and I'm making that a BIG if) the PC gaming industry can survive this, they're going to have to put pressure on the card manufacturers. A game development company doesn't sink millions of dollars and years of man-power to create a AAA game that the primary user base cannot play for lack of the ability to purchase a graphics card.

For the record, I'm a member of the gaming community that refuses to pay more than $350 for a graphics card (current card GTX 1060 6GB). If that means I can no longer purchase a graphics card required for modest game play of the newest games, then the game developers just lost a customer.

-Wolf sends

The games industry as a whole is also massive, like bigger than all sports + the movie industry combined massive, if I remember correctly. So if the game developers start to feel it because people buy their games less as a direct result of not being able to play them, then they can definitely put pressure on the manufacturers. The games industry exists because they rely on 2 premises; Their games will be purchased by consumers that can use their product, and their games can be made progressively more advanced via the underlying technologies to sell well in a competitive environment.

 

[Endymio]

In my opinion, the reason why gamers and others feel betrayed by the industry is for the last 30+ years they propped each other up. Games came out and gamers / developers bought the cards.

Your analysis of the "positive feedback loop" effect is correct. However, when a new fab cost $500M, it was easy for the gaming community to support -- entirely by itself -- the resultant products. But current fabs cost $3B+, and the upcoming generation looks to be in the $100B+ range. And it's not simply the fabs themselves; the costs to develop and validate the designs used in those fabs have risen in equal measure. It can cost several tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to do no more than recertify an already-in-production chip for manufacture on a new process node. (Which, incidently, is why you see nodes like TSMC's "N7P", intended to balance performance gains against the IP costs of redeployment). The gaming market alone cannot pick up these costs in their entirely. AMD and NVidia must sell to a wider market.

And to head off a potential objection; yes, a fab can produce chips from more than one customer. However, purchasing capacity on a bleeding-edge fab requires one to commit to a certain minimum wafer count.

 

[helper800]

Your analysis of the "positive feedback loop" effect is correct. However, when a new fab cost $500M, it was easy for the gaming community to support -- entirely by itself -- the resultant products. But current fabs cost $3B+, and the upcoming generation looks to be in the $100B+ range. And it's not simply the fabs themselves; the costs to develop and validate the designs used in those fabs have risen in equal measure. It can cost several tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to do no more than recertify an already-in-production chip for manufacture on a new process node. (Which, incidently, is why you see nodes like TSMC's "N7P", intended to balance performance gains against the IP costs of redeployment). The gaming market alone cannot pick up these costs in their entirely. AMD and NVidia must sell to a wider market.

And to head off a potential objection; yes, a fab can produce chips from more than one customer. However, purchasing capacity on a bleeding-edge fab requires one to commit to a certain minimum wafer count.

So a quick google search put the games industry above 120b+ dollar industry a year. Now that is a huge industry but still pales at the 500b+ per year semiconductor industry (all SoCs, dGPUs, CPUs, FPGAs, etcetera), however, I do not feel like the games industry is so small as to fall into obscurity as I believe you suggested in a prior post. How big is the dGPU industry? I do not know. It is not something easy to find data on. It is almost certainly close to or above 100b+ a year though. So I guess the consensus is that the games industry is too small to support primarily, but too large to ignore completely. This leads to the situation we are currently in granted the COVID situation making it worse. This may be a pointer to the times of the future where gamers are less of a priority like they are right now.

 

[King_V]

The "situation" in question is the article's hypothesis -- which for sake of argument, I accepted as genuine -- that these particular upcoming cards were neither being marketed nor offered directly for sale to the gaming community.

If you misread, and believed I was referring to the larger situation of a multi-year gpu shortage, then no; obviously gamers are not directly responsible for the Covid pandemic.

No, I did not misread it as such.

However, gamers are indeed indirectly responsible for at least a portion of the resultant shortages. AMD and NVidia could solve the shortages overnight simply by boosting prices to a level that, although higher, would still be less than those currently charged by scalpers. Why do they not do so, and leave this additional money on the table? Because they'd immediately be inudated of accusations of "profiteering" from the pandemic, from thousands of well-meaning, but poorly-educated gamers.

This logic doesn't even have the grace to be merely specious; it's just flat out wrong. If AMD and Nvidia boosted prices, "knowing" that there would be no backlash from the gamer community, the situation would be completely unchanged. The gamers would not be able to purchase cards without having to pay exorbitant prices.

That is exactly as the situation is now, just with a different set of people making money off of the situation. You're looking to blame the wrong group.

 

[spongiemaster]

Plain and simple, the only way this is going to end is when graphic card manufacturers are able to increase supply to the point where scalpers are no longer able to make a significant profit. As @Endymio correctly states, the graphic card manufacturers are not willing to increase MSRPs to avoid being seen as villainous. One does not stay in business if they alienate their customer base.

Supply is not going to fix this problem. The only condition that can lower prices and increase retail availability this is a significant drop in crypto profitability. Supply and demand has nothing to do with where prices currently are. Miners are simply doing math to determine how much they are willing to pay for cards and the price they have calculated is what cards are currently being scalped for. Crypto miners are not emotional purchasers like gamers. If supply drops, miners aren't going try and outbid each other or drive up prices to absurd levels above what they calculated for their profitability target. It doesn't matter how much GPU production increases (understanding that in the real world infinite supply isn't possible), if crypto maintains current profitability levels, miners will keep GPU prices stable at their current levels. If gamers were willing to drop $1000 on 3060's and AIB's raised prices to that level, miners would tap out and gamers would have all the supply to themselves. As Endymio correctly pointed out, AIB's aren't going to do that because of the riot that would cause from gamers.

NVidia, AMD and AIB's are losing a huge amount of potential revenue by keeping their prices as low as they are to appease the gaming community and all it is getting them is blasted by the gaming community anyway because retailers and scalpers are jacking up the price and pulling in huge profits. It shouldn't be surprising at all that gamers have fallen so far on the depth chart of industry importance. AMD has sidestepped this issue by bailing on GPU production and moving to greener pastures of high end CPU production. If AMD could sell their GPU's at the prices the market has settled at, I bet they would willing to allocate more production to GPU's.

 

[spongiemaster]

So a quick google search put the games industry above 120b+ dollar industry a year. Now that is a huge industry but still pales at the 500b+ per year semiconductor industry (all SoCs, dGPUs, CPUs, FPGAs, etcetera), however, I do not feel like the games industry is so small as to fall into obscurity as I believe you suggested in a prior post. How big is the dGPU industry? I do not know. It is not something easy to find data on. It is almost certainly close to or above 100b+ a year though. So I guess the consensus is that the games industry is too small to support primarily, but too large to ignore completely. This leads to the situation we are currently in granted the COVID situation making it worse. This may be a pointer to the times of the future where gamers are less of a priority like they are right now.

The total revenue for the gaming industry is of no importance because of how broad the market is. The console market is currently booming. While the GPU shortage may be negatively impacting PC gaming, it is definitely boosting console gaming. So the gaming industry isn't seeing a drop in revenue, just a shift in where the money is being spent. As far as fab cost increases go, even without Covid and mining, the worthwhile $150 dGPU is pretty much dead. iGPU's have been eating away at the bottom end dGPU market for years. If the market ever returns to "normal," worthwhile entry level dGPU's are going to be creeping up to $200. If the price to produce GPU's doubles or triples, it isn't going to be possible to cover those costs with volume increases of sub $200 GPU's. Prices have to go up, and pretty significantly to cover those costs.

 

[Endymio]

If AMD and Nvidia boosted prices, "knowing" that there would be no backlash from the gamer community, the situation would be completely unchanged. The gamers would not be able to purchase cards without having to pay exorbitant prices. That is exactly as the situation is now, just with a different set of people making money off of the situation.

Incorrect. The point you fail to grasp is that the price manufacturers need to set to balance supply and demand is lower than that extractable via scalping, as manufacturers service both ends of a "bell curve" gaussian distribution, whereas scalpers service only one. Scalper transactions additionally have a certain amount of deadweight loss which is avoidable in a direct transaction. Thus, the price manufacturers would be required to charge to balance supply and demand would be significantly lower .