To Combat Shortage, Nvidia Asks Retailers To Limit Graphics Card Orders (pcmag.com)

Posted by msmash on Monday January 22, 2018 @02:41AM from the weird-problems dept.

An anonymous reader writes: If you're a PC builder -- or your aging desktop system is in dire need of some modern upgrades -- you've probably wondered why it's impossible to get a graphics card lately. You can thank the outrageous interest in cryptocurrency for all of this. Since graphics cards mine cryptocurrency much faster than CPUs, an eager community of get-rich-quick enthusiasts are scooping up graphics cards as fast as they can get them. While there isn't much major manufacturers AMD and Nvidia can do about the overwhelming demand for GPUs, Nvidia is at least trying to let retailers know that they should be holding their stock for the company's core audience: gamers, not miners. "For NVIDIA, gamers come first. All activities related to our GeForce product line are targeted at our main audience. To ensure that GeForce gamers continue to have good GeForce graphics card availability in the current situation, we recommend that our trading partners make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers' needs as usual," reads a translated statement Nvidia's Boris Bohles. Nvidia is suggesting that retailers limit graphics card orders to just two per person, but that's just an idea -- one Nvidia can't actually enforce beyond restricting sales on its website, which it's currently doing. Further reading: It's a terrible time to buy a graphics card.

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Re:hmmm... by Magneon · 2018-01-22 03:15 · Score: 5, Informative

Bitcoin is mined on ASICs these days but there are other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum that are designed to be "ASIC resistant" by involving a very large number in their mining algorithms that needs to be stored in RAM, and changes periodically. Currently for ETH I believe that number is ~3GB. The result is that it makes ASICs unlikely to be worthwhile since a GPU is already a massively parallel processor with access to high speed ram. So yeah, GPU mining is back and reasonably profitable. Even after electricity costs many cards would pay for themselves in 3-5 months at current rates.