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GPU Prices Soar as Bitcoin Miners Buy Up Hardware To Build Rigs (computerworld.com)
"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.
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
Check the nVidia roadmap, this is exactly what they're working on this year.
This has been known for a while. Post some stuff that isn't stale bread.
cards are back in stock and the major source of demand for GPU mining, Ethereum & it's offshoots, are about to get ASICs that are about 5x faster than a GPU for less power (still 200 days to the break even point). Prices'll go back down to normal as more ASICs hit the market.
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They won't buy them cuz then they'd have zero resale value after the card is no longer powerful enough to mine. Selling used cards to gamers gets at least a few bucks back.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
literally anyone who would care about this phenomenon already knows about it. In fact, aren't prices coming back down now that the hype has subsided?
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.'"
Welcome to 2016. What moron posted this article. GPU prices are dropping not soaring, Bitcoin hasn't been mined on GPU's for years now, alt coin mining since the price crashes has led to nice drops in GPU prices
I don't believe you've thought this through. There is a finite supply of GPUs that can be made by these multi-billion dollar foundries in any given period. Reducing the cost of cards used by miners (no video ports, etc.) will just enable miners to buy more cards and grab a bigger chunk of the GPU supply. Reducing the cost of cards that miners want isn't going to increase the supply of cards that gamers want; ultimately they're all coming from the same source of integrated circuits. If the supply of miner cards is insufficient the miners will just buy gamer cards instead; you've achieved nothing. Gamers and miners are also competing for the same supply of GDDR5(?), VRMs and every other component on these boards.
The solution is to badger and shame these concurrency inventors into using different "proof" algorithms so that they aren't pulling a large fraction of the planet's power supply and buying up all the hardware.
If there were a smaller market for GPUs, the economy of scale aspect wouldn't be working in anyone's favor. No chipmaker gives a shit whether your framerates are 30FPS or 60FPS or that you can bump your resolution to 4K versus ... unless you can do so on their competitor's cards at a price point that threatens viability of their own offerings (If nobody buys it because someone else has something way better, they don't make back the sunk costs of R&D, tooling, manufacturing, marketing, etc).
There are still coins you can mine from GPUs. I'm actually intrigued by what the Dogethereum project might do to the market since that's shifting back to GPU.
100,000 gamers: "I want a new GPU for cheap because I want higher framerates, but I'm poor!"
10,000,000 cryptocurrency miners: "I want several better GPUs because I can make more money from them and I'm willing to pay for that privilege if you'll deliver a respectable ROI."
GPU maker: "Okay, miners, you'll get your new card. Gamers, since yields are never perfect, we'll offer the cards to you for cheap if you're okay with the cores that don't work being disabled in hardware. It's still over four times as fast as anything else the other guys can offer for the price."
All: "Great!!"
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Nvidia needs to accept that it's a free market and just accept that the goods will get sold to the highest bidder. ...just like our political offices...
There'd probably be some benefit to a mining only card. The lack of ports for connecting to displays would make the cards less expensive and companies could bin chips that have defects only in the parts of the chip that would make them useless for gaming but don't affect their ability to mine. Also, I don't believe that the used market is that valuable as it's likely to get flooded as miners try to upgrade at the same time and many consumers are leery about buying cards used for mining to begin with.
They won't buy them cuz then they'd have zero resale value after the card is no longer powerful enough to mine. Selling used cards to gamers gets at least a few bucks back.
I wouldn't say zero, so long as they support SLI and will pair up with some card gamers use.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They won't buy them cuz then they'd have zero resale value after the card is no longer powerful enough to mine. Selling used cards to gamers gets at least a few bucks back.
I seriously don't want a graphics card that has been abused in a mining rig. They aren't meant to run full power 24/7, and I doubt there's more than a couple of use in them.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Yeah, well gamers figured out real quick that cards run in overdrive for 18months don't last long..
The solution is to badger and shame these concurrency inventors into using different "proof" algorithms so that they aren't pulling a large fraction of the planet's power supply and buying up all the hardware.
No, the solution is to be a GPU manufacturer.
The one who gets rich in a gold rush is the one who sells shovels.
The hard part is to make them keep buying new cards long after the coins have become too expensive to mine.
It costs you energy to keep your computer on and your card at 100% And it costs you much more energy then a specialized asic.
Seriously, dumbest thing ever, and worse, they hurt the environment. I wonder just how much energy has been wasted because of cryptocurrencies? I wonder how many people have had to pay larger electricity bills because of unscrupulous websites and games using their computers to mine, not to mention victims of malware? Stuff needs to be made illegal in its current form. If you're worried about climate change and carbon and all that then getting rid of cryptocurrencies is about the easiest and most effective change that could be made right now. They are all going to zero eventually since they are backed by literally nothing; just hope it happens sooner rather than later... damn tulips.
Unless they are getting free power they're a lot more likely to slightly undervolt the cards, as running at 70-80% uses 50% less power than trying to max things out.