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GPU Prices Soar as Bitcoin Miners Buy Up Hardware To Build Rigs (computerworld.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hoarding-hardware dept.

"Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency miners have created a dearth of mid-range and high-end GPU cards that are selling for twice as much as suggested retail," reports Computerworld. "The reason: miners are setting up server farms with the cards." Lucas123 writes: GPU prices have more than doubled in some cases... Some of the most popular GPUs can't even be found anymore as they've sold out due to demand. Meanwhile, some retailers are pushing back against bitcoin miners by showing favoritism to their traditional gamer customers, allowing them to purchase GPUs at manufacturer's suggested retail price. Earlier this year, NVIDIA asked retailers of its hardware to prioritize sales to gamers over cryptocurrency miners.

7 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. What a shitty post, even for slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    1) Bitcoin is NOT mined on GPU, since like 5 years. Only on special ASIC devices. You ment to write that crypto-currencies, ALTcoins, are GPU mined

    2) This is going on for like 1-2 years now, including the GPU shortage as result of ALT-coin mining

    1. Re:What a shitty post, even for slashdot... by Entrope · · Score: 4, Informative

      Indeed. In the last few months, GPU process have actually dropped a fair bit. In January, it was common to see Radeon Vega 64 cards offered for almost 4x MSRP.

  2. Re:so fucking stupid by darkain · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check the nVidia roadmap, this is exactly what they're working on this year.

  3. Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has been known for a while. Post some stuff that isn't stale bread.

  4. Prices are actually falling by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hothardware reports that pricing is now on a downward trend, with GPU prices approaching MSRP. They suggest that this is at least in part due to a new Ethereum ASIC miner. And they provide citations to show that the prices are actually falling, while computerworld simply makes a claim with no evidence...

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Prices are actually falling by Tailhook · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Bitmain Launches Ethereum ASIC Miner With Hash Rate Performance Of 8 GTX 1080 GPUs For Just $800"

      Wow. I'd expect to see a flood of used GPU's piling up on Ebay with this news. Let's see...

      Search GTX 1070, click "used", results: 971 listings with the first ~275 under $400.

      Yep. "Crisis" over. Expect prices to fall precipitously.

      I believe Ethereum is/was the real source of GPU demand given that bitcoin miners long since moved to ASICs. Ethereum was designed to be ASIC resistant. So what has changed? Has there been some breakthrough in ASIC design, driven by cryptocurrency?

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  5. Re:Also prices are down 25% by Entrope · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ethereum's hash function is designed to use a lot of memory bandwidth, whereas the Bitcoin hash function is primarily just arithmetic. That means that an ASIC can pop down tons of dedicated hardware for the Bitcoin hash function and be much, much more power-efficient than a CPU or GPU. An Ethereum ASIC does not have the same relative efficiency gain -- but it does have some.

    For any proof-of-work scheme, there will be some point where an ASIC will be more profitable than a CPU or GPU, but most (that use novel hash functions) don't reach that point because the one-time costs of designing the ASIC are so high. Antminer apparently thinks Ethereum has reached that point -- which may push it towards adopting proof-of-stake sooner.