The Ethereum Effect: Graphics Card Price Watch (Updated)

[USAFRet]

That's why I said custom tune their hardware, as opposed to something you can BIOS flash. Most of the features that differentiate 3rd party cards deal with power delivery and cooling in an attempt to maximize performance or reduce noise.

Fine tune the use case right in the GPU software. No messing around in the BIOS needed.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3640764/amd-gpu-workload-settings.html

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

That's why I said custom tune their hardware, as opposed to something you can BIOS flash. Most of the features that differentiate 3rd party cards deal with power delivery and cooling in an attempt to maximize performance or reduce noise.

Fine tune the use case right in the GPU software. No messing around in the BIOS needed.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3640764/amd-gpu-workload-settings.html

Yes, I'm aware that you can change settings in software. But you can't change the number of power phases from a drop down menu. Or which capacitors or mosfets the card is using. Or the fan type, etc. The hardware. So if (and yes it's a big "if" which I don't have the answer to) manufacturers can design a card with higher efficiency components, as compared to higher performing components, I think it would have an impact. Unless it's only able to affect the initial price of a card, such as by using a cheap cooling system.

 

[valeman2012]

Miners are thieves

 

[InvalidError]

Yes, I'm aware that you can change settings in software. But you can't change the number of power phases from a drop down menu. Or which capacitors or mosfets the card is using.

What difference would that do? Miners will use whatever is most cost-efficient. If you attempt to charge $500 more for "mining" GPU than for "gaming" GPUs where the only differences actually make the gaming GPUs more expensive to manufacture and power-hungry by adding more power phase for higher OC, miners will simply downclock the GPU to bring them back down to a more power-efficient range and shun the $1200 mining GPUs in favor of the $700 gaming ones. If you make the mining GPUs less expensive at retail, that doesn't help GPU/DRAM shortage and miners may still prefer gaming GPUs anyway due to resale value.

Most vendors and manufacturers aren't going to take any truly serious steps to prevent miners from gobbling up all the GPUs they can get their hands on. The only semi-effective way to effectively run miners out of the GPU market would be to require identity checks and approval before purchase to prevent people from borrowing identities to make bulk purchases. It would be ridiculous to have tighter controls on GPU sales than many countries have on assault riffles.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Yes, I'm aware that you can change settings in software. But you can't change the number of power phases from a drop down menu. Or which capacitors or mosfets the card is using.

What difference would that do? Miners will use whatever is most cost-efficient. If you attempt to charge $500 more for "mining" GPU than for "gaming" GPUs where the only differences actually make the gaming GPUs more expensive to manufacture and power-hungry by adding more power phase for higher OC, miners will simply downclock the GPU to bring them back down to a more power-efficient range and shun the $1200 mining GPUs in favor of the $700 gaming ones. If you make the mining GPUs less expensive at retail, that doesn't help GPU/DRAM shortage and miners may still prefer gaming GPUs anyway due to resale value.

Most vendors and manufacturers aren't going to take any truly serious steps to prevent miners from gobbling up all the GPUs they can get their hands on. The only semi-effective way to effectively run miners out of the GPU market would be to require identity checks and approval before purchase to prevent people from borrowing identities to make bulk purchases. It would be ridiculous to have tighter controls on GPU sales than many countries have on assault riffles.

I feel like I'm being buried under strawmen here and I don't understand why. I never said mining GPU's should cost $500 more than a gaming GPU while using less expensive parts. In fact I explicitly stated that I did not believe the initial price would have much impact. I never said GPU's should require identity checks and approval to weed out miners. Or that it should be harder to buy a GPU than to buy an assault rifle. All I said was that if manufacturers could design a mining GPU that was more efficient than a gaming GPU through hardware selection, I thought it could affect the market. I made a poor choice by using the word "tune" which most people seem to associate with adjusting settings, rather than the choice of physical components and design of the card. If you disagree then that's fine and I freely admit I may be wrong, but I don't know how we got from there to 71% markups and identity checks and assault rifles.

 

[InvalidError]

I never said mining GPU's should cost $500 more than a gaming GPU while using less expensive parts. In fact I explicitly stated that I did not believe the initial price would have much impact. I never said GPU's should require identity checks and approval to weed out miners. Or that it should be harder to buy a GPU than to buy an assault rifle.

I never said that you said that either. What I said is that this is what it would require to force miners to specifically buy mining GPUs.

All I said was that if manufacturers could design a mining GPU that was more efficient than a gaming GPU through hardware selection, I thought it could affect the market.

What hardware differences? A bigger heatsink on a mining GPU to keep it cooler also enables higher OC when used for gaming. More phases to make the VRM more power-efficient and reliable under constant load for mining also tends to produce more stable OCs for gaming. I suspect every other thing I could come up with that would be good for mining would also be good for gaming.

Attempting to split the GPU market between gaming and mining achieves nothing more than artificially divide the market and reduce gamers' choices even further than they already are by GPU demand from miners. AMD and Nvidia both claim that GDDRx/HBM availability is the GPU production bottleneck at the moment. Fragmenting the GPU market wouldn't help with that in any way either.

 

[real810thug]

tomshardware is nothing more than referral/commission links to buy products. Great "article" you have here!

 

[IInuyasha74]

tomshardware is nothing more than referral/commission links to buy products. Great "article" you have here!

What do you call all the text above the referral links? Or the reviews linked in the chart?

 

[USAFRet]

tomshardware is nothing more than referral/commission links to buy products. Great "article" you have here!

I'm curious...what have you contributed to the collective knowledge here?

 

[valeman2012]

tomshardware is nothing more than referral/commission links to buy products. Great "article" you have here!

I'm curious...what have you contributed to the collective knowledge here?

this TOMHARDWARE article mostly focusing GPU Prices caused by Mining with links to each products, although that is not really news worthily.

What non miners need to know, the Miners are stealing from gamers and non miners....causing supply issues to consumers AMD and Geforce GPUs.

 

[bit_user]

I feel like I'm being buried under strawmen here and I don't understand why.

Because he's bored. He will pick apart your posts, always finding something to take issue with, until you finally stop replying. That's not to say he doesn't have good points, just that he often presses his case when he could just let it rest on what he's already said.

Somewhere on here, I read that mods weren't supposed to engage in debates due to conflict of interest. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

 

[USAFRet]

I feel like I'm being buried under strawmen here and I don't understand why.

Because he's bored. He will pick apart your posts, always finding something to take issue with, until you finally stop replying. That's not to say he doesn't have good points, just that he often presses his case when he could just let it rest on what he's already said.

Somewhere on here, I read that mods weren't supposed to engage in debates due to conflict of interest. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

No, we can engage in debates and discussions just like any other user. We have opinions as well.
We won't do any 'moderation' tasks in a thread we are actively involved in.

 

[bit_user]

No, we can engage in debates and discussions just like any other user. We have opinions as well.
We won't do any 'moderation' tasks in a thread we are actively involved in.

Thanks for the clarification.

If I were writing the rules, I'd add something about not smothering discussion. I know I'm sometimes guilty of getting sucked into the back-and-forth, but lately I'm trying harder not to repeat myself (or others) and even asking whether the point I'm going to make is really worth making or something someone else will likely make for me. I think it's not healthy for forums to be dominated by a handful of users - mods or not.

 

[Co BIY]

It would be nice if TH would allow an option to put more current comments at the top or a quick link to the end of the comments.

This article reports that 1060 3GB cards are no longer profitable for Ethereum because of Microsoft OS bloat and Ethereum overhead bloat.

https://wccftech.com/nvidias-geforce-gtx-1060-3gbs-rendered-useless-ethereum-mining-dag-file-update/

This may be the only help for gamers in the short term. If the requirements for mining far outstrip the requirements to game then cards will open up one at a time at the low end.

Eventually the ponzi scheme nature of the current crypto currencies will be cause them to crash and new efficient e-currencies that don't require constantly increasing compute power will take over.

 

[lbff777]

The answer is ..... Companies stop selling to the OEM, Retail or other markets and directly sale to the consumer. 1 per physical address aka household. This makes sure the cards get into the hands of the true end consumer looking to buy for Gaming.

 

[gggplaya]

I don't think the cryptocurrency market is unstable in regards to graphics cards production. Now that bitcoin and ethereum are so popular, people will always be looking to get in on the ground floor of the next big coin to exponentially shoot up in value. Mining is here to stay, unless governments are going to ban cryptocurrency as an acceptable form of payment. They really should ramp up production, the tooling would have payed for itself by now had they done it during the first surge.

 

[gggplaya]

but if you're like me and on a tight budget, you're forced to wait or go older generations. (and even those can be effected)

Previous generation GPUs have gone up in price on the used market over the past several months. Used GTX 970s and 980s are upwards of $100 or more on eBay than they were selling for a few months ago. Same with the RX 470s and 480s. I posted my experience previously here in this thread last month about that.

Even five year old GTX 680s are selling for a premium now for up to $150 or more. Months ago you would be lucky to find a buyer for one for $100, and 980 Ti prices are insane at $400+. Anyone looking on selling their previous generation GPU and upgrading to a 1080 or 1080 Ti can make a killing right now. The only potential positive outcome of cryptocurrency mining for we gamers.

The sources also pointed out that part of the issue may lie with TSMC, which typically takes orders months in advance and will likely be unable to rush new orders of Nvidia GPUs due to the need to create products for its other customers. One company also informed us that they do not plan to increase production due to the instability of the market. They are concerned that if they increase production, the market could shift again, leaving them with large stockpiles of GPUs that are no longer in high demand.

What instability are they referring to? The potential for a crash in the cryptocurrency market? I don't see that going away. When the Ethereum bubble pops (and it's a matter of when, not if), another will take its place. There are a lot of gamers out there stuck in no-man's land who either can't or won't spend the premium prices of the current mid-range GPUs like a 1070 or RX 56. Fortunately the GTX 1080/1080 Ti high end segment is not affected but the market is smaller for them.

It sounds to me like the leadership of these AIB partners need better marketing research teams like EVGA obviously has:

It should be noted, however, that one OEM -- EVGA -- is enduring the GPU shortage noticeably better than the others, with more graphics cards in-stock on retail sites. The company also offers the least expensive GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060 3GB, and GTX 1060 6GB on the market. We asked EVGA directly if it was having difficulties getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and a representative told us it wasn’t. However, the representative went on to say the company is experiencing tremendous demand

Off topic: thank you Tom's for putting the "Comment from forums" link back in the articles! Yaaaay!

The only instability would be if governments decided to ban cryptocurrency as a form of payment. So far only a few countries like India have taken this stance, but should other governments jump in on this mentality, crypocurrency will crash like the great depression.

 

[InvalidError]

The answer is ..... Companies stop selling to the OEM, Retail or other markets and directly sale to the consumer.

Why do most manufacturers sell through distributors and retailers at wholesale rates that are 30-50% below MSRP? Because they don't want to deal with all of the logistics and liabilities involved with cost-effectively taking orders, billing and shipping individual units from factory to end-users. They prefer taking orders, billing and shipping by the crate then let distributors/vendors sort the rest out. The few manufacturers who do ship low volume orders direct to consumers usually make you pay a 10-20% premium over the normal street price for the privilege.

In all likelihood, many GPU AiB partners are happily taking bulk orders directly from large crypto-mining operations and earning much bigger margins from doing so than selling those GPUs to distributors, vendors, OEMs or direct to gamers.

 

[Co BIY]

Mining is here to stay, unless governments are going to ban cryptocurrency as an acceptable form of payment.

I disagree slightly. E-currency is here to stay. So called "Mining" as a form of creating "value" is actually damaging to the stability and usefulness of the currencies but does create a good Ponzi pyramid for the originators. Although slightly useful in order to seed the computing power needed for the network it actually creates huge transaction costs many times that of traditional payment systems as they are currently structured.

High transaction costs and large rises (or falls) in value make the currency less useful as currency.

They really should ramp up production, the tooling would have payed for itself by now had they done it during the first surge.

If they had known what was going to happen they should have sold the original tooling / borrowed to the hilt and bought bitcoins. Prediction is tough, especially about the future.

 

[jsomiller44]

I would like to complain about your embedded videos they play just from viewing the page if you manually pause them the video still follows you down the page. Please remove these. they waste bandwidth and annoy your readers.

 

[srdjan.crnjanski]

They aren't going to invest in all knew architecture for just mining. When the existing product already works. Mining is volatile so they are reluctant to ramp up production and get stuck with 3 months worth of stock and next generation ruling out in a few months

It looks like Nvidia seriously considered solution (described here in earlier posts) about graphic card problem. The separation of current GPU to two different lines of products is not question of if anymore. Ampere and Turing, new code names for two different production lines of next GPU generations could hit market in this year.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-turing-ampere-graphics-cards-gtc-2018/

 

[InvalidError]

The separation of current GPU to two different lines of products is not question of if anymore.

Nvidia can try to split mining and gaming, that doesn't mean it'll be successful: if miners can still find ways to get better ROI using gaming GPUs instead of "mining" ones, they'll still gobble up all the gaming GPUs they can get their hands on. With Ethereum and other similar currencies being RAM-centric, Nvidia splitting product lines does nothing to mitigate the memory supply bottleneck either. If Nvidia or its AIBs can't produce enough mining cards to keep miners happy due to RAM supply constraints, miners will still fall back on GPUs until that is exhausted too.

I doubt solving the "mining problem" will be as easy as dedicating a GPU variant to it when GPU silicon availability isn't the bottleneck. The split likely has more to do with Nvidia achieving more profit per wafer by offering miners a smaller more power-efficient die for the same mining performance.

We'll see what happens after March 26. I don't expect the GPU shortage to be resolved in 2018 unless there is a crypto-mining collapse.

 

[USAFRet]

Nvidia can try to split mining and gaming, that doesn't mean it'll be successful: if miners can still find ways to get better ROI using gaming GPUs instead of "mining" ones, they'll still gobble up all the gaming GPUs they can get their hands on.

And that's just for the miners who have a bit of a clue.

The clueless amateurs will continue to scarf up anything and everything.

 

[srdjan.crnjanski]

The Turing line will use new crypto chip which should over-perform regular GPU mining power so gaming GPUs will not be profitable for mining when it hits the market.

https://www.techpowerup.com/241552/nvidia-turing-is-a-crypto-mining-chip-jen-hsun-huang-made-to-save-pc-gaming

 

[InvalidError]

The Turing line will use new crypto chip which should over-perform regular GPU mining power so gaming GPUs will not be profitable for mining when it hits the market.

Outperforming GPUs on a per-chip basis will be pointless if supply isn't up to par and for supply to meet mining demand, it will need to eat into GPU memory supply. If Turing availability isn't sufficient to keep up with mining demand, miners will still fall back on GPUs.

Also keep in mind that Turing GPUs have little to no residual value due to having limited use beyond mining while Maxwell and Ampere GPUs will still be worth at least half of their MSRP by the time miners are done with them, which means Turing needs to offer TCO per MH/s that much lower to be cost-effective. Since Nvidia is ultimately into this for increased profit margins, I doubt the Turing discount will be that appealing and do much to deter miners from buying GPUs.

You end up with limited supply of reasonably priced GPUs either because there isn't enough GDRR5/5X/6 (it is all going to Turing cards as fast as Nvidia can get the chips made due to Nvidia, AIB and retailers earning fatter margins on those) or miners are still buying out most GPUs because there aren't enough Turing available yet. Gamers are still f'd both ways for the foreseeable future.