[HN Gopher] Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 an...
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Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards
Author : wglb
Score : 589 points
Date : 2021-05-18 19:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| superbaconman wrote:
| I'm on the fence about switching from console to pc, but I've
| still been trying to get a 3000 series card anyway. The ability
| to use the cards for ml and crypo in addition to gaming is
| appealing, but moves like this just make me think sticking to
| xbox and my gtx560 is best.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| > I've still been trying to get a 3000 series card anyway
|
| ...I think I know why you can't get one. In all seriousness
| though, using GPUs for mining has trashed the gaming market and
| made entire realms of PC gaming inaccessible to lower income
| people, it's an incredible shame.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Thanks Nvidia. Not even 6 hours and already all the RTX 3070
| computers (of which I was planning to buy one this week) are
| already sold out just about everywhere, as people are panic
| buying computers with these cards. Probably going to have to wait
| months before I have a chance at one of these as a gaming PC
| again.
| Tepix wrote:
| This was announced several weeks ago already.
| cableshaft wrote:
| ...ended up spending as much on a computer as I would have
| yesterday with an RTX2070 Super instead, still really good but
| not quite as good.
|
| Don't really want to risk the situation getting even worse yet
| again, and even these computers going out of stock.
| icoder wrote:
| Is there some merit in comparing this to regulating concert
| prices? There too one might argue to let the market determine the
| price, but there too that might lead to a very unequal situation
| for many, that may eventually backfire.
| hosh wrote:
| In other news, Nvida has cards specifically designed for
| professional miners: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/
|
| https://hothardware.com/news/msi-cmp-30hx-card-debuts-for-et...
| cdnsteve wrote:
| This is like buying a 400hp engine in a sports car but it's only
| available to use 400hp to those that are retired, and anyone else
| it's just too bad. The problem is not miners, it has been said
| many times before. The problem is the silicon shortage, and now
| scalpers and even worse yet, bots.
|
| Nvidia needs to work in fixing the JIT manufacturing process,
| spending resources on any other issue is not helping. Inventing
| new nerfed chips in your products to a specific use case is not
| solving this. They are at risk at also angering a prominent
| portion of customers since their "alternative" CMP HX line is
| laughable.
| wpdev_63 wrote:
| I said it before and I'll say it again - the vendors are the
| criminals here. There are vital industries that need GPUs for
| their viability - video games, medical research, engineering etc.
| and they should filter out the robo buyers to allow these people
| to purchase the graphic cards at reasonable rates. Right not
| RX570s are going for $200 on ebay right now... A 4 year old mid-
| tier graphics card....
|
| Just allocating some GPUs to a wait list would be enough.
|
| For people like me who cannot wait for GPU to become available
| you can get a very cheap usb-hdmi dongle off of amazon for dual
| monitor support. It works well enough for what I need it to do.
| daguava wrote:
| I know this is just one usage of this, but hampering the workload
| of the hardware you're selling people is absolutely backwards.
| o_p wrote:
| How hard can it be to reverse engineer the drivers and remove the
| protections? Theres economic incentive now after all
| MauranKilom wrote:
| "remove" how? The card BIOS is not going to let you just flash
| any random driver you cooked up.
| imiric wrote:
| I don't get it. Are GPUs still profitable for mining anything?
| Hasn't the industry shifted to ASICs for many years now?
|
| I doubt any serious miners are buying up all the GPU stock. The
| shortage looks more like an effect of rampant scalping which we
| see with other electronics as well (PS5), and the general chip
| shortage impacting the supply chain.
|
| A cynic might think they're selling off low quality components
| with a marketing spin that they're actually helping consumers.
| With the current insane market prices, any attempt to meet the
| demand sounds like a great profit opportunity. A cynic might
| think that, but not me. :) Just take my money, Nvidia.
| 1ark wrote:
| $10-15 per day, per card mining Ethereum. There are other
| chains ofc.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| GPUs will cost less only when cryptocurrencies are outlawed or
| otherwise crash.
| nyjah wrote:
| I have a dumb theoretical question, but I genuinely don't
| understand the answer.
|
| Why wouldn't nvidia and amd or any other card maker just keep the
| cards and mine all the cryptocurrency for themselves?
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| The best way to get rich during a gold rush is to sell the
| shovels.
|
| They're right where they want to be.
| rocqua wrote:
| Because in the long term, they probably can't rely on mining
| for income. And if they stop selling gpus for a while, they are
| going to destroy their customer base. Gamers will get angry,
| people who use CUDA will look for alternatives, enterprise
| supply chain managers will look for more reliable manufacturers
| (AMD).
|
| Essentially, this move would wreck their basic business. And
| dropping that business for crypto is very risky. It is also
| probably not what investors would expect.
| warent wrote:
| Probably because it's just not their business. They don't need
| to confuse their objectives with bitcoin to get rich, they're
| doing exceptionally well without it
| amelius wrote:
| Then why is Elon Musk trading Bitcoins? Tesla makes more
| money trading Bitcoin than selling cars.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-makes-more-money-
| trading-...
| rvanlaar wrote:
| Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin.
| https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/tesla-stop-
| accep...
| amelius wrote:
| This was about trading Bitcoin, not accepting it as a
| payment method. Plus, it doesn't really change the
| question.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Because Tesla's most valuable product aside from the cars
| is the memes.
|
| I am not kidding. It seems a substantial proportion of TSLA
| buyers aren't really interested in its fundamentals but
| like what Elon tweets out.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| I suspect this is because he's successfully generated a
| cult-of-personality among fans, and crypto-communities
| can get pretty rabid (positively and negatively) when
| their chosen celebrity does _anything_.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| In addition to the revenue from selling cars. The GP was
| asking why Nvidia doesn't stop selling their cards and use
| them to generate bitcoin as a mining company.
|
| Tesla simply took some of their cash and invested in
| Bitcoin, they didn't shift production or pivot their
| business.
|
| The fact that they made money off of the investment and
| whether or not it was more than their revenue is
| irrelevant, the move didn't affect their core business, it
| was just lucrative.
| contravariant wrote:
| This is just an uneducated guess but is it possible that
| Tesla is just a company investing heavily in R&D of cars,
| and hasn't really begun to run a profit yet alongside some
| somewhat profitable speculative Bitcoin venture that Elon
| Musk's somehow put under the same roof?
|
| According to that article if you split out the emission
| credits as well then they've made around -200% more profit
| selling Bitcoin and -600% more profit with emission credits
| than selling cars.
|
| The fact that both are negative should tell you something's
| gone awry.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Tesla and Nvidia are entirely different from each other.
| Tesla's business model has been built on government
| subsidies, while Nvidia's business model is to sell
| product. One needs to create profit somehow, and the other
| is able to alienate one segment of purchasers in preference
| of another.
| lottin wrote:
| Just because Elon Musk does something it doesn't mean it
| has to make sense. Tesla's shareholders can trade bitcoins
| themselves. They don't need Tesla to do that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Tesla's Q1 operating profit of $594M was slightly less than
| the sum of their $101M Bitcoin profit and the $518M
| regulatory credits they received[1].
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/n0jxy
| t/tes...
| 8note wrote:
| Its not particularly unlikely that Elon Musk gets
| imprisoned for running pump and dump schemes
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I would suspect the reason is marginal electricity cost. Nvidia
| likely has to pay full marginal price on electricity whereas
| miners maybe geo located with cheaper electricity, or
| marginally free electricity (such as so called stranded energy
| or used in places where heat is already being created by
| electric heaters, but one could get marginally free computation
| done)
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| It would destroy their business?
|
| They'd have short term massive gains but it wouldn't be
| sustainable.
| CPAhem wrote:
| Nvidia want to charge more for cards that can mine crypto
| currencies. Just like they want to charge more for the same
| product if it is used in data centers.
|
| It's a way of artificially segmenting the market.
| est31 wrote:
| Actually that's what some companies in the ASIC supply chain
| have done when the first bitcoin ASICs came out (2014ish I
| think?). That's probably because of the kinds of people in
| those companies, and the kinds of markets those companies
| operate in, i.e. solely in the bitcoin mining market. Nvidia
| and AMD mainly sell their GPUs for various other use cases
| other than mining, and the mining uses are quite recent. Nvidia
| is also known for building different products for different
| market segments, and they do have dedicated GPUs made for
| mining. I.e. in 2018 they forbode machine learning uses in
| datacenters of their consumer hardware in their EULAs, to push
| people to their professional hardware instead.
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-ge...
| gspr wrote:
| For the same reason that many companies that happen by chance
| to have real estate as their most valuable asset don't wanna
| pivot to being real estate companies.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Can you imagine? They could do anything, they could create a
| corporate utopia.
|
| I wonder if the corporate psychology is similar to human
| psychology. In which, far from being run by a green field
| thinker like you, they are short-term oriented, and mainly
| backwards-looking for the sake of emotional security--we
| already know best what works for us.
| patrickk wrote:
| Because they're in the business of manufacturing and selling
| GPUs, not speculating on volatile crypto markets which could
| nosedive 90%+ in short order and drastically cut the
| profitability of mining.
|
| If they suddenly changed strategy like this, their stock price
| would be hammered instantly and there would be a clamour to
| replace their CEOs and boards.
| smaddox wrote:
| Because the value would tank when they tried to sell off all
| the Bitcoin, etc., that they mined.
| valuearb wrote:
| Because BTC is down 30% in the last month?
| 988747 wrote:
| No one mines BTC on GPU, and Etherum is up 100% from two
| weeks ago.
|
| Ok, I understand that NVidia does not want to mine
| themselves, but why on Earth won't they just raise the prices
| to the level miners are willing to pay?
|
| "We want to sell to gamers, not miners" is the stupidest
| excuse ever. Isn't capitalism all about selling to the
| highest bidder? Why do they even care about who buys their
| product?
|
| EDIT: Also, think about this: gamers that are considering
| upgrading their hardware get additional incentive - Etherum
| mining makes buying this new, shiny GPU basically free.
| Typically, after 9-12 months the initial investment is paid
| off. Without the possibility of mining many gamers will delay
| the decision about buying a new GPU, hurting NVidia sales
| further.
| rurp wrote:
| >Isn't capitalism all about selling to the highest bidder?
|
| Capitalism _can_ be about that, but there 's a lot more to
| it than simply charging the highest price possible on every
| transaction. For example, loss leader products and free
| trials are common across industries. I don't have any
| insight into Nvidia's thinking specifically, but they might
| believe that cultivating the gaming market by not pricing
| gamers out of their product in the short term has much more
| longterm value than going all in on of the most volatile
| industires in the world.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Gamers are the reason why Nvidia exists, it's a hard thing
| to let go of.
|
| It would be like FB shutting down the blue app and pivoting
| to Tinder.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Hah, this comparison very much feels right.
| Androider wrote:
| They do, the mining specific cards are more expensive /
| hash rate. It's just market segmentation.
| ec109685 wrote:
| What would be the advantage of that? With this segmentation
| between GPU families, they now can charge for GPU's at the rate
| where it's profitable to mine ETH (what the market will bear),
| and thus participate in almost all of the ETH upside, without
| the risk.
| slver wrote:
| > Why wouldn't nvidia and amd or any other card maker just keep
| the cards and mine all the cryptocurrency for themselves?
|
| Bitcoin costs more to mine than the power bill you'll receive.
| This is why increasingly most malware happens by stealing power
| one way or another. And I don't think NVidia and AMD are in the
| stealing power business.
| edave64 wrote:
| People are buying these cards for other coins that are still
| profitable to mine on the GPU.
| gruez wrote:
| >Bitcoin costs more to mine than the power bill you'll
| receive
|
| he's talking about cryptocurrencies in general, not bitcoin
| specifically. Mining ETH with recent-ish is currently
| profitable unless your electricity is very expensive (50+
| cents). Besides, bitcoin mining is dominated by ASICs and
| there really isn't really any point in using hacked computers
| to mine it because there are more profitable coins (ones
| using ASIC resistant algorithms).
| saurik wrote:
| While having the cards is tablestakes, and newer cards can do
| more for less, in the end--even for Ethereum--you really still
| are spending more on electricity than hardware, and so you can
| have all the cards in the world and still not be able to mine
| crypto effectively. Most mining is thereby done in other places
| in the world where the externalities on power generation and
| use (clean or dirty, both) are less well tracked, with the
| occasional place in the US--such as the plants in NY that are
| being booted back up just to mine crypto--where people are
| actively trying to make it illegal. I would imagine a lot of
| the mining done in the US ends up being either to "launder"
| (not quite the right term) money (buying lots of power and
| converting it to untraceable crypto for illegal activity...
| kind of a reverse laundry ;P) or with "stolen" power (as is the
| case of a college student mining in their dorm room).
| zeckalpha wrote:
| What do you mean untraceable crypto? Isn't there a
| distributed ledger of transactions?
| saurik wrote:
| I mean vs. traceable crypto. When you mine crypto, it
| essentially poofs out of nothing into your hand: there is
| nothing to trace it "from", as it were, on the blockchain,
| as the electricity you paid for it isn't recorded in that
| ledger; so, if you want to do something illegal with money,
| and you need to figure out a way to control some funds that
| no one can work out "is you", mining crypto is a great way
| to do it: you pay for electricity in fiat and obtain a
| fundamentally unrelated pile of crypto.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Ethash is actually more profitable when underclocking and
| power limiting the card for max efficiency. With cheap
| electricity around $0.10/kWh this can mean $0.30 a day on $7
| in profit.
|
| a 3070 with an average 60 Mh/s:
| https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-
| ethash?hr=60&p=120&fee=...
| saurik wrote:
| Ok, so now I am dying to understand how this could possibly
| be the case, as this isn't how the economics are supposed
| to work... like, according to this calculator, I could make
| $5 with the old graphics cards in my PC, and I live in
| California (where I would expect expensive power).
|
| Like, the premise is supposed to be that if there is that
| much profit to be made mining, people will mine, the hash
| rate will skyrocket, the block production time will get too
| low, and the hash difficulty will rise until the profit you
| can make is low enough that you aren't sure if you want to
| do it anymore. Does the difficultly just not rise fast
| enough?
|
| Or like, is this largely just because the price of Ethereum
| has gone up "too quickly" in the past month? If so, does
| this calculator take into account the incentive factor that
| if people actually do this the difficulty will go up, and
| so this $7 of profit today might be $0.50 of profit in a
| month, and maybe you will fail to pay off your hardware
| investment fast enough?
|
| Or is there just something really weird going on in this
| market that I don't understand (and would love love love to
| learn about)... maybe it literally is just as simple as
| "there aren't enough graphics cards to go around, and
| Nvidia's disinterest in making profit in this way--even
| temporarily--is the strongest current limit on hashrate"?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| ETH price is +500% YTD and it's not really worth it to
| buy hardware to mine now because in less than a year it
| is expected to move to proof of stake (no more mining)
| willhinsa wrote:
| With today's ETH prices, electricity costs are a fraction of
| the revenue from mining. Like, on the order of less than 10%.
| saurik wrote:
| That's brutal... isn't the hash difficulty supposed to
| automatically increase to compensate? Is it _actually the
| case_ that the limiting factor on hash rate right now is
| how quickly Nvidia is willing to sell GPUs?!
| willhinsa wrote:
| Yes, your relative hash power does give you a smaller and
| smaller piece of the pie all things equal as more
| hardware mines the blockchain. However, the increase in
| the USD price of ETH and also the demand for transactions
| on the ETH blockchain have both gone way up (i.e. the
| cost for a transaction of a given size, a.k.a. "gas",
| measured in "gwei"), and the balance of those three
| factors means mining on the same card is currently much
| more profitable than it was in the past. Uniswaps and
| NFT's are large transactions and bid up the price of gas,
| and have been very popular as of late.
| root_axis wrote:
| Cryptocurrency value is extremely volatile, businesses need
| stable income streams to plan for development and growth.
| Further, just owning cryptocurrency isn't enough, it has to be
| converted into spendable money so that the business can pay
| employees and fund other business expenses, at Nvidia's scale
| this creates a lot of financial friction and undesirable
| complications.
| chongli wrote:
| Why mine gold when you could make a fortune selling shovels?
| xwdv wrote:
| Why sell shovels when you can just buy shares in the company
| selling shovels?
| [deleted]
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Risk. When crypto inevitably crashes again they will be left
| holding the bag on a huge set of cards that may not have great
| resale value. Selling the cards is safer and also aligned with
| their core business competence.
| fay59 wrote:
| I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be
| accurate, but my understanding is that they're only reliable if
| many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and
| mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more
| than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to
| double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably
| crash confidence in the asset.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| GPUs are no longer used to mine Bitcoin. They would lose lots
| of money trying.
| lukifer wrote:
| > they're only reliable if many independent people mine
|
| Sort of. It's a matter of establishing trust with buyers,
| holders, and the ecosystem. If a hypothetical 51% owner
| behaved as a good citizen (which is to say, their incentives
| were publicly aligned towards preserving value rather than
| exploiting double-spends), the confidence wouldn't
| necessarily erode. (Contrast with a nation-state or other
| hostile actor who performs a 51% attack with the express
| intent of theft or undermining trust, which has happened with
| smaller cryptos.)
|
| The three largest BTC miners combined have been well over 51%
| of the hashpower for years now, and they could collude to
| crash or exploit BTC if they wanted; it's simply not
| currently in their interest. Yet more evidence that while
| Proof of Work was a clever hack in the original BTC
| whitepaper, it doesn't inherently lead to decentralization,
| and is functionally indistinguishable from Proof of Stake
| with extra steps.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Are you saying that GPUs are now competitive with ASICs when
| mining bitcoin?
| fay59 wrote:
| I have no idea what people use to mine cryptocurrency these
| days and quite frankly I would rather it all stop, so no,
| I'm not saying that.
| amelius wrote:
| They could start a bunch of subsidiary companies.
| lottin wrote:
| They would always be suspicious of collusion.
| LASR wrote:
| Same reason why they are not an investment bank investing in
| stocks, or building skyscrapers in Dubai.
|
| It's not their business. They've built over the many years, a
| very defensible business out of expertise (and IP). That
| expertise is unique and resilient to the whims of a speculative
| investor hive-mind.
|
| More practically, they just wouldn't be able to compete.
| Against companies that build ASICs specifically for mining, the
| tech they have, while is viable for the small-time gamer-miner
| demographic, does not have good returns on a larger economies
| of scale.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| "In a gold rush - sell shovels."
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, but don't sell crippled shovels.
| yoz-y wrote:
| There are more than enough people out there that want to
| just play games or do research. Miners are only making
| nvidia look worse. Their core demographic is getting
| disenchanted because what good is a great cheap graphic
| card, if you can never buy one.
| IncRnd wrote:
| There are more purchasers than cards available, so they are
| intentionally limiting purchases by miners with this method
| in preference to gamers. They don't want to sell their
| shovels to miners right now.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| All the gold rushers buy all your shovels, and now
| gardeners can't get shovels to tend to their gardens.
| diplodocusaur wrote:
| How do you know they didn't?
| bumbada wrote:
| Because cryptocurrencies are basically a pyramid scheme, the
| money for early investors is made by huge amounts of new people
| entering the pyramid.
|
| Lots of people enter the pyramid because they have seen early
| investors benefit greatly and they want to benefit too. It
| works very well until people start getting out of the
| pyramid(selling) and the same thing happens in inverse, people
| want to recover the money they invested and price plummets.
|
| There are two main reasons a big company like Nvidia can not
| mine for themselves:
|
| 1. Nobody will enter the pyramid in the first place just for
| enriching Nvidia. People enter a pyramid because they have seen
| their neighbor making money "out of nothing" and they get the
| Gold Rush themselves. Like a virus the Rush is contagious by
| people between them.
|
| 2. When prices go up everything is happiness and good feelings.
| When prices go down the people that have lost their savings
| will get mad at the company that benefited from their own
| ignorance or greed.
| social_quotient wrote:
| "Because cryptocurrencies are basically a pyramid scheme, the
| money for early investors is made by huge amounts of new
| people entering the pyramid."
|
| I think your viewpoint could use some revision. You've either
| described any typical investment but I Uber it as a pyramid
| or you misunderstand the goals of crypto.
| [deleted]
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| jokes on them. Next crypto currency will be mined as a roblox
| mod.
| rsuttongee wrote:
| I mean, the cards are selling at 3-4x MSRP right now. Won't
| halving the hash rate just cause the price of the cards to drop
| to 1.5-2x MSRP and miners just buy twice as many?
|
| Possibly good for NVDIA I guess (selling twice the units assuming
| the can make enough), but I don't see this helping gamers get
| cards in hands.
| Zandikar wrote:
| Nope. These are new SKUs (LHR variants), not a patch that
| retroactively applies to existing stock/sales. If anything, so
| long as crypto demand persists, this will result in a upward
| influence on the scalping price of the currently existing non-
| crippled 3070's and 3080's. Technically Nvidia has existing
| mining SKU's (their HX skus) so new supply is still entering
| the market, but its unclear exactly how things will balance
| out. In the short term (assuming demand remands high for crypto
| cards), I'd expect scalped pricing to go up, not down. And
| that's assuming these LHR's arent compromised like the original
| mining-crippled 3060's have been.
| sp332 wrote:
| I think it's less about the upfront cost and more about hashes
| per kilowatt-hour.
| rsuttongee wrote:
| Ah that makes sense, I forgot about power usage.
| throwaway879 wrote:
| Using a made up but probably good enough analogy, if scientist
| created a blackhole in the lab that could end up sucking in the
| entire planet and the solar system, would it be OK for someone to
| jam the mechanism that sustains it? I think of PoW gambling
| casinos slash Ponzi schemes (Bitcoin) in the same way. If the
| governments don't have any motivation to stop the mayhem, then
| the company whose products are being used to create that
| blackhole should step in. I never liked Nvidia, but this is a
| necessary decision.
| bobviolier wrote:
| Note that unfortunately they actually have a set of cards that
| are better suited for crypto.. they just don't want you to use
| these.
| webinvest wrote:
| I can't blame you for using a throwaway account for a comment
| like that. Many cryptocurrencies provide value while video
| games suck time and value.
| dahart wrote:
| > Many cryptocurrencies provide value while video games suck
| time and value.
|
| You don't really expect anyone to take your defense of
| cryptocurrency seriously with a statement that hyperbolic and
| dismissive, do you?
|
| Since the games industry is making up almost a quarter of the
| M&E economy, which is the single largest industry segment in
| the US, it's evident that games provide a transfer and store
| of value to the economy. People who create games are
| effectively mining, so there is an apparent creation of value
| too, one that also involves creativity and skilled labor,
| unlike crypto. You can even read about the "value chain" of
| the games industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_i
| ndustry#Value_chai...
|
| Just last year's video game revenue in the US alone is equal
| to two thirds of the entire market cap of ETH as I post this,
| and of course the industry's revenue is growing every year,
| and the global games industry is much larger than the US
| alone. Crypto will become bigger eventually, but it's not
| today. (And which is larger is actually irrelevant, you
| compared apples to orangutans, my point is simply that it's a
| pretty bad idea to try to falsely claim the financial value
| of games is negative.)
|
| I don't even play games that much, because you're right they
| do suck my time, so it's an awkward position to be defending
| them, but the least you could do if you're going to spout
| about the "value" of games and crypto is start from the truth
| and financial reality of the markets.
| koluna wrote:
| I'm sorry, spit my coffee over the keyboard. What value does
| cryptocurrency provide other than sucking the world's
| electric energy for meaningless calculations?
| webinvest wrote:
| I am glad you asked. The value that cryptocurrencies
| provide boils down to 3 main things:
|
| 1) A store of value.
|
| 2) A transfer of value.
|
| 3) A creation of value.
|
| Bitcoin provides a store of value by still letting you buy
| a pizza with your Bitcoin both now and in the future. It's
| price has always been highly volatile but after every 4
| year cycle, it has been worth more in every major world
| currency.
|
| Stellar Lumens, Algorand, Dogecoin, and to a lesser extent
| Bitcoin, & Ethereum provide a transfer of value by letting
| you send money across the globe.
|
| Ethereum is the poster child for a creation of value by
| allowing people to permanently deploy smart contracts to
| the Ethereum mining network. These contracts include ERC20
| stablecoins like MakerDao's Dai, USDC, lending platforms
| like AAVE and Compound, DeFi exchanges like Uniswap, Yield
| aggregators like Yearn.finance and Curve.fi, and DeFi coin
| converters like 1inch. Back in 2017, the only compelling
| Ethereum platform (or DAPP) was CryptoKitties which were
| the precursor to today's NFTs. I think NFTs are in a bubble
| but nowadays there is a much more compelling and diverse
| lineup.
| koluna wrote:
| Value that basically doesn't exist without real money
| behind it? That can be used as... well, money without the
| energy waste?
| webinvest wrote:
| Yes, some of them can be used without the energy waste.
| As far as value goes, Dogecoin likes to say on it's
| website, 1 Dogecoin = 1 Dogecoin. It's done a pretty good
| job at holding that value, lol
| koluna wrote:
| Despite what any website might say, all of the hype and
| "value" of crypto always comes back to dollars. If you
| take that away, I don't see how anyone will want to stick
| around short of super hardcore techies.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Like I said for electricity, aren't you free to do with your GPU
| whatever you want?!
|
| This is anti-consumer they should be sued.
|
| Just like ISPs wanted to slow your traffic for services they
| don't like and didn't succeed hardware producers can not limit
| what you do with your purchased hardware.
| kaldorf wrote:
| Other people doing research etc. _need GPUs_. If rich people
| started to hoard all food or ffp masks, shops would intervene
| first (they did during the hoarding last year) and the
| government would follow if that wouldn 't help.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I guess you are referring to the Tragedy of the Commons[0]
| but in the market efficient economy there should be enough
| producers(supply) to serve high aggregate demand. This action
| by NVIDIA only shows that GPU industry is highly concentrated
| and that more competition is needed. It seems like NVIDIA is
| a victim of its own success since it can not produce enough
| GPUs.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| 988747 wrote:
| And if they simply raised prices and made huge profits,
| they could afford building their own fab, or at least
| outbidding other companies for TSMC/Samsung/whoever fab
| capacity...
| Tepix wrote:
| It's not like nVidia is keeping it a secret. They are telling
| you ahead of the time that they are limiting the hashrate. If
| you don't like it, buy something else.
| mrkramer wrote:
| It's still anti-consumer, imagine situation in which self
| driving car manufacturer hardcodes rules according to which
| car not drive to certain places because reasons.
|
| Products even if specialized can always be used for general
| purpose that's the beauty of computers and "hacking" after
| all.
| kingofclams wrote:
| Will this have an effect on compute outside of cryptocurrency?
| lvl100 wrote:
| Too little too late? I think mining has peaked with ETH POS shift
| weeks away. We will soon find out how much of Nvidia's business
| was truly driven by crypto versus what they conveyed to investors
| in the past.
| agilob wrote:
| >Too little too late
|
| Just on time for ETH to move away from PoW! It's almost like
| NVidia waited for ETH
| Tepix wrote:
| Where can i find the ETH 2.0 timeline? I was under the
| impression that the major steps are still one year away.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Does this mean my pre-crippled 3080 is now going to be worth even
| more on the secondary market?
| pvarangot wrote:
| I would say yes.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Read Adam Smith.
| [deleted]
| quanto wrote:
| How does Nvidia limit the Etherium hashrate while keeping other
| functions (gaming, general computing) intact? Is the limitation
| implemented purely on the driver level? If so, how would the
| driver know which function it is computing?
| Havoc wrote:
| > company's dedicated GPU for professional mining
|
| What a world. What do you do for a living? Professional miner. oh
| no not that kind of miner.
|
| Anyway...I'm guessing it's again only the eth hashing algo that's
| crippled.
| badkitty99 wrote:
| Nvidia contributing directly to the energy waste
| brettermeier wrote:
| Kill all miners, save the planet!
| jacquesm wrote:
| NVidia has a supply problem. Imagine making something that is so
| popular that you continuously run out of stock for the people
| that you originally intended your product for. The normal
| solution would be to crank up production to the point where you
| can supply all of your customers. Might even get some better
| economies of scale out of it too.
|
| This is the dumb way to deal with the problem. Besides the fact
| that it will get hacked it alienates a good chunk of their
| customers who would be happy to drop more $ if there were more
| product.
| cush wrote:
| Good. Waste of energy.
| mjlee wrote:
| I'm not sure this really is all that good for gamers. It'll solve
| the short term problem of lack of supply, sure, but in a years
| time we'll instead have a whole bunch of e-waste mining cards and
| a very thin second-hand market for gaming cards. All upside for
| Nvidia though!
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Can't drive people to the mining cards they've released if you
| have everyone using the consumer hardware.
|
| As someone who really likes the performance and ecosystem around
| NVIDIA cards this makes me happy, because I'll probably be able
| to own one sometime before the heat death of the universe if
| trends like this continue. But,
|
| "To help get GeForce GPUs in the hands of gamers,"
|
| Is a load of crock. They have a new mining focused product line
| they want miners purchasing and they get the convenience of the
| nice gamer PR from this to run it behind.
|
| Company gonna company. I'm not saying it's a bad thing by the
| way, just don't think they're all pro gamer or doing it for
| reasons besides money.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Their stated purpose is still true. They want to get these GPUs
| to gamers and their mining GPUs to miners.
| dheera wrote:
| I think there are better ways than intentionally crippling a
| general purpose compute platform.
|
| On the surface, the easiest, cheapest way to alleviate the
| situation would be to require government ID for purchases and
| limit it to 1 GPU per person, and relax the limitations for
| educational institutions doing ML research.
|
| A more serious way to do it would be to administer a test
| that you take in person (similar to the DMV); you pick either
| a gaming skill test or a machine learning test, and if you
| pass, you get to buy 1 GPU. This takes a bit more resources
| though, logistically, and although it sounds silly I think it
| would work.
| neither_color wrote:
| This is what my local microcenter does. They have a sign
| when you walk in saying ONE gpu per customer per 30 days,
| and they write down your license number to make sure. I
| still was never able to get one(because people camp outside
| the store the night before deliveries) but I appreciate
| their effort.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It really isn't a load of crock. For whatever reason NVIDIA has
| a real interest in making gamers happy. You hear this as being
| a serious motivation for them even from employees not on the
| record. The most cynical take on it would be that they want to
| do this for long term growth. Which if so, is fine. An example
| of capitalism working.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Either proof-of-stake or ASICs are gonna make GPU Ether
| mining rather short lived.
|
| Nvidia fears that all those customers will vanish over night.
| dahart wrote:
| > Nvidia fears that all those customers will vanish over
| night.
|
| Exactly - and the fear seems justified since it already
| happened once before in 2018.
| SXX wrote:
| They only fears that those consumers gonna sell their used
| hardware which gonna cause drop demand for GPU for a long
| time.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Well if the invisible hand off the market works in favour
| of me for once, I'm not gonna complain
| ericmay wrote:
| Can't it be both? Seems like a win-win for Nvidia and gamers.
|
| I can genuinely see a company like Nvidia getting a lot of
| customer feedback and maybe employees actually caring that
| gamers can get their hands on Nvidia's cards.
| erjiang wrote:
| It makes sense to me that gamers as a market are more likely
| to be brand-loyal and gaming is also more moat-able than
| hashing.
|
| For miners, they just want whatever does more hashes per
| second. There's no loyalty there and the hardware is
| competing solely on hash/power/cost. For gaming, you have
| proprietary software and APIs like "RTX"-branded stuff, game-
| specific driver optimizations, etc. where you can better
| defend yourself against AMD.
|
| So for Nvidia, if they're going to sell X GPUs either way,
| they'd rather sell to gamers than miners to help preserve
| their gaming market share which plausibly has more long-term
| value. Just my guess, at least.
| gruez wrote:
| I think the cynicism is akin to apple removing the
| charger/headphones from new iPhones. They claim it's for
| environmental purposes, and maybe they really do care, but
| many think it's just a cash grab.
| rundevilrun wrote:
| companies are people too!
| cerved wrote:
| Globo Chem "We own everything so you don't have to"
| munk-a wrote:
| It is legitimately difficult to get a 3080 right now and I
| suspect that Nvidia is actually eating a lot of bad PR for it
| now. That said, if society turns around and starts viewing
| mining as a significant climate change issue then building
| hardware to specifically support that market is likely going to
| be another PR disaster.
|
| I suspect Nvidia's marketing team has grown too comfortable on
| consistently edging out AMD for ray tracing and isn't the
| sharpest bunch of tools in the shed.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It doesn't seem like a load of crock to me. I don't know why
| they would even bother creating a separate line for miners
| unless they were worried about essentially telling the whole
| gaming market "too bad" indefinitely. That might be more
| lucrative in the short term because miners are willing to pay
| more than gamers for the same card, but nvidia probably don't
| want to just burn their bridge to the gaming community.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| A major bad point with this is when the mining cards become
| obsolete, they won't be able to be used as a graphics card in a
| computer due to it not being able to output to a display. So
| realistically it will decrease avaliable graphic card supply to
| gamers in the future who are maybe looking for a cheap used
| graphics card (therefore pushing people to buy a new card
| instead). Short term fix, long term problem.
|
| I was thinking they could maybe get a second use in industry
| however they mostly buy new cards (from my limited knowledge on
| it).
|
| Nvidia knows the strats to make $$$ in the long term under the
| guise of the good guy.
| bentcorner wrote:
| How big is the used market for graphics cards though? Common
| advice is to avoid buying used unless you also price in the
| risk that the card was used as a miner and hasn't been taken
| care of.
|
| Aside from the recent drought of GPUs and pricing madness, you
| could buy low-end current-gen cards that could outperform
| higher-end previous-gen parts.
| ollien wrote:
| I don't have a citation for how massive the used market is,
| but I can tell you without a doubt that people in my circles
| buy used cards, and that I commonly heard it as advice to
| save a buck.
| cerved wrote:
| big, computer parts in general have a good second hand market
| loeg wrote:
| My most recent card purchase was used. I bought a used GTX
| 1070 for $230 in 2019, when the 2000-series was new. I've
| been happy with the price and performance; it hasn't died or
| anything.
|
| > Aside from the recent drought of GPUs and pricing madness,
| you could buy low-end current-gen cards that could outperform
| higher-end previous-gen parts.
|
| This wasn't true at the time. The high-end parts just have
| many multiples of the compute units of the low end cards.
| Nvidia 3xxx isn't 100% faster than 2xxx or 1xxx on a per-unit
| basis, and the x080 cards have several times the compute of
| the x030 or 50 parts.
|
| Another relevant concern is GPU RAM; the lower end parts just
| have less RAM. Game performance completely falls over if more
| RAM is needed than the card has. Very large displays need a
| ton of GPU RAM.
| zucker42 wrote:
| The used market is huge. Even before the shortage, newer used
| GPUs were selling for 75% or more of their new price, from my
| memory.
| paxys wrote:
| There are tons of use cases for GPUs outside of output to a
| display: audio/video encoding, render farms, scientific
| computing.
| rubito wrote:
| This is incorrect since the onboard HDMI output can be used for
| that as well (or a secondary GPU).
| justaguy88 wrote:
| Graphics cards without display outputs are still useful, you
| can use them for VFIO and gpgpu workloads
| gruez wrote:
| What's the market for second hand GPUs for scientific
| computing, compared to second hand GPUs for gaming?
| paulmd wrote:
| like anything else, worth quite a bit to the right
| customer, until they become functionally obsolete (f.ex:
| nobody really cares about Kepler hardware anymore and it's
| gotten quite cheap)
|
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.
| m...
|
| now, being that mining cards didn't start at $10k per card
| to begin with, they won't sell at $10k per card on the
| secondhand market, but they'll do OK.
|
| at a hundred bucks, why wouldn't you pick one up for your
| folding@home rig, vs paying full freight for a card with a
| graphics output you'll never use?
| kevingadd wrote:
| NV sells tons of cards used for things other than mining and
| video output already. The mining cards can be repurposed for
| those use cases (compute, machine learning, etc)
| wbraun wrote:
| Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that
| its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an
| attack on general purpose computing.
|
| Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer
| and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of,
| such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can
| run is a whole new level.
|
| I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to be AMD due to this
| behavior by Nvidia.
| hosh wrote:
| I remember reading about this earlier in the year. What may not
| be apparent from this article is that Nvida is also selling GPU
| cards specifically designed for miners.
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/
| creato wrote:
| It is unfortunate, but it is less unfortunate than the behavior
| of crypto miners. Freedom is great when people aren't using
| their freedom to infringe on other people's freedom.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| How is someone mining on GPUs they bought themselves
| infringing on your freedom, pray tell?
| munk-a wrote:
| I suspect this definition issue is partially due to
| cultural issues - freedom means different things in
| different parts of the world. Outside of the US societal
| freedom and the freedom from pain are valued over the
| individualistic freedom valued in the US.
|
| I don't think either view is absolutely correct after
| having lived in a few different' societies - but there are
| valid points to support a view where individual freedom to
| act isn't the primary freedom to protect (i.e. protecting
| the freedom for everyone to live a healthy life better
| enables all individuals to achieve a greater degree of
| freedom as a society than being individually focused).
|
| I really think there's a philosophical disagreement on what
| freedom is at the core of a lot of the libertarian vs.
| socialist arguments.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| I'm no longer free to live on a planet that has been
| destroyed by climate change. Crptocurrency mining uses more
| energy than Argentina.
| MaPi_ wrote:
| According to this[1] website, bitcoin mining is only
| around 0.6% of the worlds power consumption. It is
| certainly not anywhere near to being the main cause of
| global warming.
|
| [1]https://cbeci.org/cbeci/comparisons
| belltaco wrote:
| The extra power usage is destroying our planet all for
| someone to try and make a quick buck, and causing shortages
| of GPUs during a pandemic where mental health from
| entertainment like gaming is valuable and stops people from
| going outside and getting/spreading the virus. The
| incentives for crypto all are f'ed up right now. The ETH
| PoS switch can't come soon enough.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| So earning income is less important than letting people
| play video games? Let's just say I'm unconvinced by this
| argument.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it's quite fair to say earning income is less
| important than allowing people to achieve happiness and
| video games are a pretty well known way to accomplish
| that.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I unequivocally disagree with this statement -
| "happiness" achieved by video games is superficial,
| without real meaning. They are thrilling endeavors and
| fill time effectively, but they are absolutely secondary
| to the absolute positive of actually deriving income. I
| seriously can't believe that anyone would seriously argue
| a distraction is worth more than actual income.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| What does mining crytprocurrency have to do with earning
| income? The two are completely mutually exclusive, in
| fact mining is a great example of making money without
| doing any useful work
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Securing the network is useful work.
| knorker wrote:
| Would you say the same if you could mine bitcoin by
| buying up as much medicine as you could, and burning it?
|
| Because if you think the above behavior isn't "earning
| income" clearly better than "play video games", then your
| argument falls completely flat.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| this is a total false equivalence. you're really
| comparing computing hashes to buying medicine and
| destroying it?
| belltaco wrote:
| >Air pollution accounts for 1 in 8 deaths worldwide -
| approximately 7 million deaths in 2012, according to new
| data from the World Health Organization (WHO). The
| findings, released in late March, doubled previous
| estimates from just a few years ago in 2008. WHO now
| characterizes air pollution as "the world's largest
| single environmental health risk."
|
| https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/geh/geh_newsl
| ett...
| arthurcolle wrote:
| This is beyond a stretch. Fascinating that this is how
| people are rationalizing being dismissive of cryptos.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| It's actually worse, climate change is going to kill all
| of us, medicine unavailability will only kill some of us.
| knorker wrote:
| I'm comparing taking a useful resource and deliberately
| destroying it in order to "prove work".
|
| It's a very accurate comparison.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I don't know any gamers who can game 24/7, 7 days a week
| with multiple GPUs.
|
| Mining and gaming aren't even close to comparable in
| power usage.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Mining crytprocurrency isn't "earning" income. Doing work
| is warning income. Crypto miners are about as useful as
| landlords - they shouldn't exist and don't deserve any
| money
| ReptileMan wrote:
| The moment Trump and Covid just don't deliver the current
| ROI of clicks for the media, suddenly we started hearing
| about how terrible crypto electricity usage is.
|
| The same way plastics are suffocating the fishes got
| forgotten the moment everyone started to litter the world
| with masks and packaging from food delivery.
|
| It is manufactured news story the same way that next one
| will be.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > The ETH PoS switch can't come soon enough.
|
| Profitability doesn't go down considerably with other
| cryptos that are efficient on 30 series cards: https://wh
| attomine.com/coins?aq_380=0&aq_fury=0&aq_470=0&aq_...
| (see the 'Rev. $ Profit' column)
| fastball wrote:
| What if you're only mining with renewables?
|
| And I'd actually like to see a study on the positive
| mental health benefit of gaming, because I'm skeptical.
|
| Also the idea that you need a primo GPU in order to game
| is a bit silly. And if you're the kind of person that
| absolutely _needs_ the best graphics in order to enjoy
| gaming, please see my point no. 2 about mental health.
| shagie wrote:
| > What if you're only mining with renewables?
|
| The issue isn't the "we're using renewable energy - see,
| this doesn't make things worse." It also doesn't make
| things better. Whats more, its increasing the consumption
| of energy which is at the core of the problem.
|
| It would have been even better to push that renewable
| energy out onto the grid (and also not increase the
| consumption of power for crypto mining).
|
| Switching all new power consumption to renewable doesn't
| improve things because the baseline of non-renewable is
| still there. We need to reduce existing and switch
| existing to renewable.
|
| I suspect a bit of Parkinson's law is in place with
| energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
| -- The key is to stop making it worse (by mining crypto
| and trying to justify it with "but its from renewable").
| onethought wrote:
| I mine on renewables and with 3000 series gpus. I didn't
| want to do any of this, I ended up here because my energy
| retailer decided to tax me for exporting too much energy
| to the grid. So short of earthing the electricity, my
| solution was to burn it up in mining, and improve my
| solar roi.
|
| The 3000 series gpus are the most efficient hashes/watt.
| So actually by disabling this, you are driving people
| towards less efficient/worse for the environment ASICS
| machines.
|
| Yes I batteried my home, and use my solar on everything I
| can first... there is still excess... especially at peak.
|
| Pretty sure this dismantled most of your argument.
| icoder wrote:
| This is a bit of a two wrongs don't make a right: the
| fact that your energy retailer is taxing you doesn't (by
| itself) make it 'right' to use that energy for mining.
|
| Ofcourse I totally understand you do as you do, on an
| individual basis, but that just stresses the point that
| this can only be regulated at the group/population level.
| onethought wrote:
| Not really. I'm not sure I even believe the "grids
| weren't designed for feed in" bs. Wires don't care where
| the electrons come from, and they have no problem with me
| drawing the same load I feed in... so something doesn't
| add up. But I'm no electrician... just cry a little at
| 7-10kw excess that i either have to pay to feed in or
| earth.
|
| I don't see anything I'm doing as a wrong. Literally just
| wasted energy... why not convert it to $?
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.landisgyr.com/ezine-article/making-way-two-
| way-p...
|
| > In the old days, when power companies were the only
| generators in town, control devices like regulators,
| capacitors or relays were designed to assume that power
| flowed in only one direction. "If they saw power flowing
| in the other direction, they typically tripped or
| misbehaved, causing customer outages or power quality
| issues," Kuloor says. This tendency has prompted many
| utilities to update such equipment with reverse-power-
| flow logic or, in the case of mechanical devices that
| have no software, replace devices altogether.
|
| Not all local grids are prepared for that.
|
| Additionally, there's the signaling of power supply that
| generators do between each other.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Frequency
| _an...
|
| https://solarbuildermag.com/policy/grid-saturation-
| lessons-f...
|
| The different parts of the grid will use fluctuations in
| the frequency of the grid to indicate if they've got too
| much power, or can't supply enough.
|
| This can get more complicated with single house putting
| power back in that they're matching the frequency, but
| not controlling it as such. If there is too much supply
| from single house sources, it can cause the frequency of
| the grid to vary too much and potentially damage the
| power plant generators.
|
| When this becomes exaggerated - all the houses start
| producing more power because the sun came out (or the
| opposite that it clouds over), this can increase the
| costs for power.
|
| You've also got the Hawaii problem. The Hawaii grid
| doesn't have the luxury of shipping its power to the next
| state over.
|
| https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/02/05/how-to-solve-
| hawaiis-...
|
| https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/the-hot-mess-of-
| hawai...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Hawaii
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-
| in/3-reasons-ha...
|
| There are times when the rooftop solar in Hawaii exceeded
| the total demand for power. This meant there was too much
| power in the wires and that generators needed to shut
| down (or get into problems with pollution and inefficient
| combustion).
|
| > The grid can only accept as much power as the island is
| consuming. Juario must mix and match different sized
| generators to balance what solar rooftops are producing
| while ensuring that the generators have enough "spinning
| reserve"--room to throttle up and down to handle those
| grid surprises. The Maui Electric chief operator must
| also keep the generators running hot to prevent
| inefficient combustion from sending dirtier exhaust up
| the stacks and violating the air quality rules that
| protect residents' health.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/can-smarter-
| sola... has a neat map. There were sections of Hawaii
| where solar was supplying 250% of the demand in that
| area.
|
| https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
| environment/2018/11/30/178686... is another useful bit to
| read. "electrical grid oversupply" is the term to search.
| onethought wrote:
| This all feels like a buffering problem. Can power
| companies not just buy big batteries... you wouldn't even
| need that many, just enough to signal generators to do
| the right thing.
|
| (Also no idea all the gadgets in-between house and
| generators, but assuming all the gadgets can handle load
| going in and out)
| shagie wrote:
| Part of that storage problem is what Tesla and Australia
| did.
| https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/australia-
| picks...
|
| And there are other approaches to power storage. Thermal
| power storage is popular / useful with large solar
| installations. Hydro dams associated with a reservoir
| often have pumped storage where they can pump water back
| into the reservoir and then use it when its needed.
|
| The signaling and frequency matching is still an issue.
|
| I recall a company I worked at in California had two sets
| of generators. They had a diesel emergency generator for
| the data center and also a set of natural gas generators
| to cut down on power costs (when the price went high).
| The issue with the natural gas ones is that they needed
| something else to provide the utility frequency,
| something about them not being stable/consistent on their
| own.
|
| Rooftop systems have the possibility / likelihood of also
| destabilizing the frequency in the grid. https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Rooftop_photovoltaic_power_sta...
|
| > An electrical power system containing a 10%
| contribution from PV stations would require a 2.5%
| increase in load frequency control (LFC) capacity over a
| conventional system an issue which may be countered by
| using synchronverters in the DC/AC-circuit of the PV
| system. The break-even cost for PV power generation was
| in 1996 found to be relatively high for contribution
| levels of less than 10%. While higher proportions of PV
| power generation give lower break-even costs, economic
| and LFC considerations impose an upper limit of about 10%
| on PV contributions to the overall power systems.
|
| There's a reference to that at
| https://www.worldcat.org/title/ieee-transactions-on-
| energy-c... - which I don't have access to to quote from.
|
| The key point to this is that if solar power is
| increased, then the grid as a whole needs to also
| increase its power to get back in control of the load
| frequency. That is likely what you're seeing. By itself,
| this storage isn't sufficient for answering that issue.
| Ideally, the solar systems would have their own local
| batteries and respond as part of a smart grid to
| contribute according to the load frequency. ... But that
| costs more money for the installation and consumers are
| hesitant to do that.
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/news/tesla-powerwalls-
| hooked...
|
| https://www.provisionsolar.com/general/grid-outages-and-
| the-...
| Axien wrote:
| Out of curiosity, has the mining yet payed for the
| rig/card?
| onethought wrote:
| No where near. But if you factor the tax I was paying
| (I.e assuming I didn't earth it). It will reach cost
| neutral in a year and be returning margin after that.
|
| They are increasing this tax as well shortly... so it
| will get better.
| istorical wrote:
| You are the exception of all exceptions. What percentage
| of GPUs being purchased for the purposes of crypto are
| for reasons like yours vs being bought by already wealthy
| conglomerates and mining groups to further enrich the new
| crypto multi-millionaire/billionaire class.
| onethought wrote:
| Aren't wealthy just buying giant TH asic machines?
|
| The gpus are good exactly because they are efficient but
| if you didn't care about power consumption, ASICS are
| more profitable (in terms of cost of setup vs return from
| mining).
|
| The primary reason I went with gpus, is because I can
| shut them off based on solar excess in 100w increments.
| So if I'm 200w in excess, turn 2 cards on. 300w - 3 cards
| etc.
| esyir wrote:
| They're not. Asics are more a function of the coin being
| mined. Namely, if asics are out and competitive, they
| generally replace gpus altogether as they're both more
| powerful and efficient. See btc, where gpu mining is
| completely worthless. Eth on the other hand has no
| notable asic out AFAIK, and requires gpu mining. Eth
| miners, regardless of scale, thus require gpus.
| onethought wrote:
| btc mining isn't worthless - just you don't directly
| mine. You sell your compute to the pools.
| fastball wrote:
| It's not anyone's responsibility to make things "better"
| for you or anyone else.
|
| The person I was replying to said that mining was
| destroying the planet. This doesn't seem particularly
| true to me if you're mining on renewables.
| whydoibother wrote:
| Aren't most miners in China and use coal power? Seems
| like it is contributing to destroying the planet then.
| fastball wrote:
| Yes, but you'll note that this is an argument I never
| made.
| shagie wrote:
| If one's motivation for using green energy is to make the
| environment not go to crap as fast, then using green
| energy to mine crypto doesn't help anything and the use
| of green energy is nothing but a fig leaf.
|
| If one wants to mine crypto, then do it as cheaply as
| possible instead. It really doesn't matter what the
| source of energy is. The entire system of crypto mining
| is inherently about who can use the energy the cheapest.
| Whats more, if someone gets energy cheaper it forces
| others to consume more power too.
|
| If crypto is mined, it really doesn't matter what it uses
| power it - mining crypto is still increased consumption
| of power. Someone else is going to have to use non-green
| energy to do whatever they're going to do.
| fastball wrote:
| Hm, no, not really.
|
| Energy production is not zero-sum with some fixed amount
| of non-renewables.
|
| If I install solar on my house, I'm not forcing anyone
| else to use non-renewables. If I then use that solar to
| mine crypto, I'm... still not forcing anyone to use more
| non-renewables.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > increasing the consumption of energy which is at the
| core of the problem.
|
| How is consuming energy a problem? There is a blob of
| infinite energy on the sky and practically all of it is
| wasted.
| esyir wrote:
| Oversimplifications like this are a fantastic way to
| avoid the core issues. Harvesting said ball of energy
| isn't free. Solar tech and near future power infra is
| certainly not at the maturity level for this, especially
| when the consumer is a power and semiconductor black hole
| of demand.
| henriquez wrote:
| I'm not sure how crypto mining infringes on anyone's freedom?
| bl0b wrote:
| Could you explain how you see crypto miners as infringing on
| other's freedoms?
|
| I certainly agree with your first sentence, and think NVIDIA
| crippling hash rates on their GPUs is the lesser of two evils
| - just because I think crypto miners are a) wasting massive
| amounts of electricity and b) messing up prices in the GPU
| market.
| Valmar wrote:
| Let's see... crypto-miners hoarding GPUs by the tens,
| hundreds, even, driving up GPU prices for the non-miner.
| Also, when the cycle busts, hoards of cheap, abused mining
| cards flood the second-hand market, making it difficult for
| companies to sell fresh cards, and also possibly hurting
| the company's reputation when an abused mined-on GPU fails
| prematurely.
|
| Miners can whine, all they want, but something needs to
| happen to hamper their greed for virtual money.
| bl0b wrote:
| Jeez I know all that and support this move by NVIDIA.
| Fuck the miners for all I care, I thought I said as much
| in my original post.
|
| I just don't think they're 'infringing on my freedoms' or
| whatever.
| seneca wrote:
| > Freedom is great when people aren't using their freedom to
| infringe on other people's freedom.
|
| Other people driving up the price on something you want is
| not "[infringing] on other people's freedom". It's an
| inconvenience, but you're still completely free to buy at the
| inflated price.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Could the price ever reach a point where you would say it
| infringes on the general public's freedom to purchase? Or
| are all prices simply greater and greater inconveniences?
| Vrondi wrote:
| No. There is no constitution of any nation which says you
| are owed the freedom to be guaranteed that a luxury good
| (like gaming graphics cards) will be available when you
| feel like buying it. Market scarcity of luxury goods has
| no infringement on anyone's freedom. Just like market
| availability of luxury cars or gold jewelry in no way
| infringes on anyone's freedom.
| paulmd wrote:
| the beauty is that there's no constitution of any nation
| that says miners are entitled to cheap gaming GPUs for
| their farms either.
|
| if NVIDIA wants to segment you out of the gaming market,
| that is their right as well. Free market cuts both ways -
| you are free to start up your own company and do it your
| way.
| Siira wrote:
| People hate competition. It's not like the big tech is made
| out of bricks. The small timer says competing users of GPUs
| are evil, the Apple lawyer bullshits on how they can't even
| allow mentions of alternative payment gateways less the
| security gods become angry.
| willis936 wrote:
| Indeed. I buy fast computers because they are fun toys. What if
| I want to play around with password cracking on my gaming
| machine? Is the hardware going to detect that I am running hash
| algorithms and throttle it? Is this a game reserved for state-
| level players behind closed doors?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > What if I want to play around with password cracking on my
| gaming machine?
|
| Currently, you'd have to pay $2500 or more to buy a scalped
| card anyway unless you get really, really lucky with
| something like the Newegg Shuffle.
|
| If they break the mining incentive, they're going to drop the
| price of these cards and also make them more available.
|
| I'd rather have a hashrate limited card that I can actually
| buy at a reasonable price than a fully unlocked card that
| can't be obtained for anything less than 3X MSRP.
| willis936 wrote:
| Well, the article does say that it will only be in a future
| revision of cards. I already bought a new 3070 from a
| friend for a mere 10% over the (already ludicrous) MSRP.
|
| What about when ETH moves to PoS or the crypto market
| crashes? The concern is that this feels more like a ratchet
| in a bad direction rather than a temporary fix.
| comboy wrote:
| "This reduced hash rate only applies to newly manufactured
| cards with the LHR identifier and not to cards already
| purchased."
|
| I think you got that, but just to be super clear that is the
| case.
|
| No need to be angry as far as I understand that's how chips are
| made nowadays. You can have wildly different consumer offerings
| on the same die.
|
| You buy 3 inflated balloons, seller takes five of them and
| while you are watching pops 2. "Did you really have to do
| that"? In chip manufacturing this makes a lot of sense. Your
| anger is basically towards a manufacturing process and naming
| not the end product. And the process is just highly optimized
| while naming keeps thing pretty transparent - it wouldn't look
| good if they tried to sell it as a completely new card.
| kemonocode wrote:
| It angers me too, and most people are definitely getting upset
| with the wrong party- it is not to say crypto miners are
| magically devoid of guilt or that there aren't issues with
| scalpers, but these are all, deep down, supply issues that have
| sprung due to an over-reliance on Just-In-Time manufacturing.
| Pandemic-induced shortages merely compound what was already a
| problem.
| barrkel wrote:
| It's market segmentation, and it's not a new strategy.
|
| The market is bimodal. There's the crypto miners and there's
| the gamers. Right now, gamers are getting starved out and
| middlemen are pocketing the surplus selling gaming cards to
| crypto miners.
|
| Nvidia want to capture more of that surplus for themselves,
| while also taking money from the gamers. Satisfy both markets
| with different products at different prices, prices that leave
| less money on the table.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| a succinct, correct explanation imo. if your angry, it should
| be at crypto before anything else. a largely useless tech
| that has lots of negative externalities, like this one.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Given there is just more demand than supply. With this model
| they are still sitting customers who are willing to pay less
| for the same good. If there wasn't such a tight supply
| constraint right now, this strategy would make 100% sense to
| me. Right now they should just auction the cards off from
| their website. Keep all the margin and get the cards to the
| buyer for whom the goods are worth the most
| smoldesu wrote:
| I dunno, the freedom fighter in me thinks this is a terrible
| idea, but my rationale says that it doesn't make much of a
| difference. Nvidia's hash rate limitation is really their way
| of telling miners that they aren't interested in their
| business. I _suppose_ I could see Nvidia taking a hard left
| turn here and stopping acceleration for other things (like ML
| and physics calculations), but why would they? CudNN and PhysX
| are already such massive investments to them that throwing it
| out would break comparability with several games /apps and
| outrage the professional/consumer market.
|
| So given how few choices Nvidia has, I think I trust them to
| call this. At the very least, it should reduce their hardware
| demand to tolerable levels, so they can focus on securing
| better silicon rather than simply _more_.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Don't these hardware manufacturers already deliberately reduce
| the performance of some chips just so they can sell them for
| cheaper without actually developing and manufacturing an
| additional line of chips (i.e. price discrimination)? This
| doesn't seem much different.
| Siira wrote:
| Price discrimination is evil. Perfect discrimination leads to
| products having zero economic worth to the consumer.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's easy to think of it that way. But here's another way
| to think about it: a manufacturer has two assembly lines
| for two different products which are sold at two price
| points. As they scale up production, they realize that they
| could realize significant economies of scale if they
| combine their assembly lines and only produce the more
| expensive product, but then apply an "artificial"
| limitation to half of those products so they can still sell
| to both markets. Is it somehow wrong for them to offer the
| same two product lines to the same two markets, but just
| with a more efficient manufacturing process?
| nickff wrote:
| De-rated units are usually chips that didn't perform as well
| as they could have. A variety of manufacturing discrepancies
| (defects) can cause excess heat dissipation or non-functional
| cores.
|
| Selecting what a given unit should be rated to (clocked at or
| enabled to do) is often known as 'binning', and is common
| throughout the electronics industry.
| paulmd wrote:
| > De-rated units are usually chips that didn't perform as
| well as they could have
|
| "usually" is not correct here. They are _sometimes_ chips
| that didn 't perform as well, but _usually_ they are
| actually higher-tier chips that are artificially locked
| down to perform at lower levels.
|
| AMD had over 80% of their Zen1 chips and over 70% of their
| Zen2 chiplets coming off the line with 8 fully functional
| cores. Yet they probably have 60% of their demand being
| 6-core or 12-core parts (2x 6-core chiplets). What do they
| do? Lock off 2 cores and sell 8-core parts as 6-core parts
| and 12-core parts.
|
| It is _nice_ that they have something to do with the chips
| that actually _are_ broken, but most of them are just
| gimped for price discrimination and market segmentation.
|
| https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-yields-80-all-8-cores-
| functiona...
|
| https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-zen-2-production-
| yield...
|
| Same for the Phenom II X3 - almost all of those really had
| 4 functional cores and you could usually turn them back on.
| Why were they being sold as 3-cores? Price discrimination
| and market segmentation.
|
| Or for a more recent example - the rumors of an impending
| 3080 Ti launch in January turned out to be true! Someone
| got a picture of the actual chips, with a big line through
| the 3080 Ti part number, re-marked with the part number for
| a 3090. NVIDIA decided to cancel the 3080 Ti launch, and
| sell the parts as 3090 - and those parts were actually 3090
| tier parts that were being marked down and sold as 3080
| Tis.
|
| https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-quietly-remarking-
| geforce...
|
| It is a _reality_ in this industry that you are constantly
| being sold artificially gimped parts, because price
| discrimination is the financially optimal strategy. It 's
| better to charge a price-insensitive customer _way_ more,
| and to still have high-volume parts for price-sensitive
| customers, than to have insufficient inventory to supply
| price-sensitive customers, or to price everything "fairly"
| and lose the price-sensitive customers due to prices being
| too high. But due to the way yields and binning work (you
| don't want to have high-volume SKUs that are difficult to
| produce - you want high yields even in your top SKUs) you
| have the most parts available in the bins that have the
| lowest volume, and the lowest amount of (broken) parts
| available in the lower bins that you sell the most of.
| neither_color wrote:
| That's called binning but it's not as bad as it seems and it
| reduces waste. The way chips are manufactured all the high
| end and lower end variants come from the same process, but
| the company can only guarantee the performance of the higher
| binned ones.
| neither_color wrote:
| While I wholeheartedly agree that nvidia should do this, what
| bothers me is that they take functionality away without adding
| anything in or lowering the price. They are selling a
| "technically" inferior SKU for the same price.
| paulmd wrote:
| > take functionality away without adding anything in
|
| coincidentally they just announced official support for GPU
| passthrough on consumer gaming cards, very likely as an olive
| branch to prosumers to calm the outrage over this issue.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > While I wholeheartedly agree that nvidia should do this,
| but bothers me is that they take functionality away without
| adding anything in or lowering the price.
|
| Vendors are selling cards at 10-50% above MSRP and scalpers
| are selling them at 200-300% of MSRP precisely because
| they're usable for mining.
|
| By breaking the mining incentive, they _are_ dropping prices
| for consumers. Considerably.
| CardenB wrote:
| Due to supply constraints, retail does not represent the true
| price. 3080s are generally going for $3k on eBay right now.
| Their move is allowing the price of the card to LOWER back to
| retail price.
| lacker wrote:
| They aren't really "selling" the unlocked RTX 3080, though.
| They go for $2500 on ebay, and you're essentially winning a
| lottery if you manage to get one at the advertised $800
| price. In practice acquiring a restricted RTX 3080 is going
| to be a lot cheaper than acquiring an unrestricted one.
| exmicrosoldier wrote:
| I work in SaaS. Availability is a key feature.
|
| A service with more features that I can't use is less
| valuable than one with less features that I can use whenever
| I want.
| Scarblac wrote:
| In an abstract sense, yes.
|
| But crypto with proof of work is such a huge energy wasting
| uselessness that any action against them is welcome. Besides if
| they don't, then their old markets will disappear because they
| can't get cards anymore and start doing other things, and then
| when crypto is made illegal or crashes for good, they suddenly
| lose their whole market.
| saurik wrote:
| But this isn't an action "against" mining: this is just so
| they can use DRM techniques to build the computational
| equivalent of a network neutrality violation to price
| discriminate a high value use case to their CMP HX line.
| bb88 wrote:
| If I were a chip manufacturer like NVDA, I would pursue the
| crypto market with a special chips for each different crypto,
| to move the crypto market off their gamer line.
|
| Then let the crypto people pay 6x for 4x performance using half
| the power, e.g, meanwhile using that income to fund the
| research for the the 3nm, 2nm, 1nm production lines.
| emsy wrote:
| If we didn't have such a dire chip shortage I would be upset on
| principle, but I see this as a move that's supposed to help
| long time customers get a hand at a _Graphics_ card at a
| reasonable price. Once mining will ebb off, those customers are
| unlikely to keep buying Nvidia products so it's entirely
| understandable why they would do this. Also, it's not like on
| iOS where the company whitelists apps, this is a very specific
| blacklisting.
| varispeed wrote:
| What is the business case for prioritising casual non-tech
| customer over bulk order specialist customer?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The casual customer will still be buying GPUs 10 years from
| now.
|
| The bulk order GPU miners will stop ordering GPUs the
| minute mining becomes unprofitable. With proof-of-stake and
| ASICs on the horizon, this could happen rather abruptly.
|
| When miners are done with GPUs, they're going to unload
| them on the secondary market. The used GPU market is going
| to be flooded with GPUs that have been overclocked and run
| with the demanding synthetic workloads 24/7, which is going
| to create a high failure rate. This is going to sour a lot
| of people who buy those used mining cards and experience
| failures later.
|
| In short: They're gaining goodwill with the long term
| customers at the expense of the short-term customers. This
| is fine, because the short-term customers will disappear
| soon and the long-term customers can consume all of their
| production anyway.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| This doesn't really make sense to me. What would the
| "casual customer" do if nvidia didn't introduce this
| segmentation? Would this completely halt the gaming
| industry such that 10 years from now no one would even
| consider buying a GPU? I don't believe that.
|
| Also, if they're able to produce both consumer GPUs and
| miner GPUs to meet both demands, what's stopping them
| from doing it now? Is it not worth their while at current
| prices, so bumping the miner GPU prince by a significant
| amount would change that? Why not just increases prices
| as it is? It seems to me that the actual price charged by
| amd and nvidia isn't that outrageous, it's just that the
| cards are bought well in advance and possibly scalped
| later.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Nvidia does not want to hike the prices because last time
| they did this in the same circumstances they lost a lot
| of goodwill.
| patrickk wrote:
| Actually GPUs used for mining are typically undervolted
| to keep power costs down, and by running them 24/7 there
| is less thermal expansion and contraction so they're not
| expected to fail at higher rates than other GPUs.
|
| Source: I used to mine ETH years ago on used AMD GPUs
| when that was still profitable. From perusing mining
| forums this is still standard practice. I eventually sold
| all the GPUs and all of them worked flawlessly.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Doesn't really matter. Running a card 100% 24/7 is still
| harder on it that gaming a couple hours per day.
|
| GPUs are relatively reliable, but fans less so. The
| failures are usually an early death of the fan, which
| can't be replaced without strapping something else to the
| shroud with zip ties or watercooling it.
|
| Miners aren't usually impacted because the failures
| happen after several years. It's the downstream buyers
| who lose out and then associate the brand with premature
| failure.
| mdoms wrote:
| They're also instantly selling every single GPU they can
| produce either way, so there's no downside.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| This - plus if all the new GPUs are going into ETH miners
| rather than gaming rigs, what incentive will game
| developers have to target new features or optimize for
| them?
| bee_rider wrote:
| And it is a pretty common complaint that companies
| sacrifice long-term interest for short term concerns. It
| is interesting to see a company apparently intentionally
| make the opposite decision (and have people still
| complain).
| dlp211 wrote:
| Isn't this true of any and every decision? There will
| always be people with different opinions, so when a
| decision is made, those on the "losing" side of that
| decision will complain.
| capableweb wrote:
| "If we didn't have such a dire X I would be upset on
| principle, but I see this as a move that's supposed to help
| ..."
|
| What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it
| get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by
| itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all
| the time. But don't call it a principle.
|
| Unlikely that mining will disappear because NVIDIA limits a
| specific algoritm/client software/however the limit is
| implemented. It will, like most "limit for your self-
| protection" systems, eventually be broken. Miners are already
| not afraid of picking apart the components they are using, so
| neither software nor hardware is safe.
| emsy wrote:
| I think your criticism is valid, but I don't think it's
| sensible to adhere to principles in a black and white way.
| For me, the minor restriction put in place by Nvidia is the
| lesser evil when you consider that they could just as well
| sell out to the miners and drastically increase their
| margins. In fact, I think it's a very sympathetic move. I
| don't think "it will be broken" is a good argument, because
| the intent displayed by Nvidia does matter.
| capableweb wrote:
| > but I don't think it's sensible to adhere to principles
| in a black and white way
|
| I agree with you, you should for sure listen to criticism
| against your principles, and challenge them yourself too.
| But if they change because "if we didn't have such a dire
| X", I wouldn't call it a "principle" anymore. A principle
| (for me) would mean that you don't compromise on it "in
| emergency" but rather that it's something fundamental you
| believe in, without much reason in many cases.
|
| > because the intent displayed by Nvidia does matter
|
| Yeah, agree again that it matters, but as a gamer myself,
| I'm afraid it doesn't solve the problem for me. I want to
| be able to buy graphic cards myself too, and these
| "fixes" from NVIDIA looks (to me) like posturing without
| actually try to address the core problem (low supply).
| I'd love for them to come up with a real solution, that
| doesn't try to decide how people use their computers,
| even though I don't want to mine anything myself.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Their intent is to limit what people can do with their
| hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell
| the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do.
|
| I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when
| it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again.
| However, I will never support hardware manufacturers
| infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for
| the sake of their business model.
|
| If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make
| so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to
| afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the
| hardware can do.
| istorical wrote:
| If it suddenly became wildly profitable to buy all of the
| bread and rice and any form of carbohydrate from food
| manufacturers and grocery stores and burn it in a field,
| would it still be morally wrong for food producers to
| figure out a way to cripple the utility of their food
| products by making them unburnable? Is there some
| capitalist principle or moral principle of the free
| market that overrides all other human needs and values?
|
| What is the principle you are defending and at what point
| does it become less important than other principles?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If the choice was between restricting food - i.e making
| it less profitable to burn, to make it more available to
| the hungry and letting food be free and the hungry
| starve, then that's a pick between the best of two bad
| options. Clearly it's better to feed people than let food
| be unrestricted.
|
| In this case though the choice is between restricting
| hardware to give gamers more affordable GPUs. The benefit
| doesn't match the cost.
|
| The principle is something like freedom or ownership.
| Arbitrary restrictions are bad because freedom is good.
| By definition arbitrary restrictions aren't needed
| (arbitrary) and reduce freedom (restriction).
| bscphil wrote:
| You missed the (extremely good) point that istorical is
| making.
|
| The argument in this subthread has been over whether we
| should be mad at Nvidia _on principle_. For example, as
| capableweb puts it:
|
| _> What worth is a principle if you don 't still have it
| when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which
| is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart
| people do it all the time. But don't call it a
| principle._
|
| You seemingly agreed with a "principled" reading of the
| situation: "That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I
| tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to
| do."
|
| istorical is arguing, by giving an extreme case, that we
| _don 't_ have a consistent principle against limiting the
| capabilities of a product when it will benefit a customer
| who matters more.
|
| After all, if we've agreed that it's morally wrong to
| "cripple" a product, then what worth is that principle if
| we abandon it during a crisis? Let the people starve!
| You're rightly repulsed by that idea, and so you're
| retreating to the position that we're just going with a
| cost/benefit analysis. Preventing food from being burned
| has a cost and a benefit. Preventing GPUs from being used
| for crypto has a cost and a benefit.
|
| The thing is, this gives up the supposed moral high
| ground that many in this thread have tried to promote as
| a reason to be mad at Nvidia. From the perspective you
| present, it's perfectly reasonable to look at the
| situation and say that preventing GPUs from being used
| for crypto will have more benefit than cost. (I certainly
| think so!) There's no inconsistency you can draw out of
| someone weighing the various benefits and costs
| differently than you do.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| No, I think I addressed that point directly. It is
| morally wrong, or against principle, in my view to do
| things that cause people to starve to death and to impose
| arbitrary limits on things. When the only possible choice
| is between two wrongs, letting people starve or limiting
| the combustibility of our food, we should pick the least-
| wrong of the two options - limit food combustibility in
| order to feed more of the starving.
|
| This is not abandoning a principle but rather picking a
| higher principle to follow when two or more principles
| conflict. The point I was making is that we are not
| currently in this situation. We aren't starving people by
| denying them access to the latest and greatest graphics
| cards for cheap.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Freedom is only good until an incentive aligns that
| causes harm to the long-term stability of an industry or
| society. Right now, people who want to create value
| cannot do so because a paperclip maximizer has found a
| way to exploit the system for its own gain. Nvidia's
| move, futile as it may be, aims to maintain the stability
| of the GPU market for professionals and consumers, the
| actual value producers of society. Crypto mining does not
| produce true value commensurate to the burden it is
| currently placing on all other industries that use
| computing power.
| arsome wrote:
| The economist in me can't help but state the obvious: If
| those other industries were doing something so much more
| valuable, they'd aurely be willing to pay just as much
| for GPUs.
|
| Of course, it's not really the big value-producing
| activities getting hit here, it's gaming.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Their intent is to limit what people can do with their
| hardware.
|
| Not really. The intent is to get graphics cards in the
| hands of gamers and professionals, instead of in the
| hands of crypto miners.
|
| That is the end goal here. If you have a better solution,
| of how to do this without people getting around it via
| reselling, ect , please suggest it.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| My solution is not to do that. Make and sell the cards to
| the people who will buy them. If you're selling out make
| more and/or raise prices.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > If you're selling out make more and/or raise prices.
|
| What if you want to raise prices only to crypto miners,
| and not raise them for gamers/professions, in order to
| support your long term customers?
|
| There are lots of very good business reasons to provide
| preferential treatment to a specific customer base, and
| to raise prices on a different customer base.
|
| It is called price discrimination, and is very useful.
|
| Do you not support companies making obvious business
| decisions like this, with their own company, that have
| large benefits to their existing customer base, as well
| as being perfectly rational from a business perspective?
|
| Having crypto miners subsidize an existing customer base,
| makes a lot of business sense, and helps out a lot of
| people.
|
| And it is all done, with people making voluntary
| decisions with the products that they choose to sell.
| Don't buy the product, if you don't like it.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If you want to help long term customers send discounts to
| people who have bought cards before. You don't need to
| cripple the devices.
|
| I don't support companies making the choice to limit
| their compute. I think companies should sell general
| purpose computers.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > send discounts to people
|
| No, this doesn't solve the problem.
|
| Because what they want to do is ensure that the cards are
| not resold to miners, and instead stay in the hands of
| long term customers.
|
| > You don't need to cripple the devices
|
| First of all, they aren't crippled for the existing
| customers. They are only limited, for this other use case
| that the company doesn't care about.
|
| And they _do_ need to limit that functionality, if they
| want to prevent those cards from being resold to crypto
| miners.
|
| > I don't support companies
|
| Then don't purchase their product, if you don't like it.
| That is kind of the point of all of this. They don't want
| you as a customer. And it is their company, that they can
| do what they want with.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Okay, so the end result is exactly the same for one of
| two groups: miners or gamers. Nvidia just gets to choose
| which group gets access to cards.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Not really. The intent is to get graphics cards in the
| hands of gamers and professionals, instead of in the
| hands of crypto miners.
|
| Perhaps I'm missing something, but why doesn't nVidia
| just make the best cards they can, and sell them for the
| highest price they can? What does nVidia care if their
| customers are using their cards for gaming or mining?
| stale2002 wrote:
| > What does nVidia care if their customers are using
| their cards for gaming or mining?
|
| Because it makes a lot of business sense to prioritize
| the long time gamer customer base, as opposed to the
| crypto market, which could disappear very quickly.
|
| Prioritizing certain customers, that will be around in
| the future, makes a lot of sense.
|
| It also helps build a gaming ecosystem. If gamers don't
| have graphics cards, then the gaming ecosystem as a whole
| suffers, and could hurt their future business.
| gpanders wrote:
| > Their intent is to limit what people can do with their
| hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell
| the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do.
|
| If you need to run millions of hashes per second then buy
| one of the non-LHR models. No one is forcing you to buy
| one of these chips and Nvidia is not taking anything away
| from you.
|
| This is like saying that Intel limits what people can do
| with their hardware because they make both i3 and i9
| chips. There is a spectrum of options to fit more
| people's needs.
| californical wrote:
| This is different than just product segmentation or
| binning chips - this is hardware restricting software.
|
| How would you feel towards Intel if they didn't allow you
| to run Microsoft Office on an i3 chip because it's a
| "consumer grade processor" - you have to upgrade to an i5
| or higher to run "business programs".
| gpanders wrote:
| But that's not what they're doing. They're simply
| limiting the hash rate. You can still run mining
| software, it just won't be very good at it.
| kuratkull wrote:
| It's more like you wanting to buy an i3 that is up to
| spec for your games, but then Intel launches a new batch
| of those i3's with intentionally reduced gaming
| performance because it's not meant as a gaming CPU (in
| the eyes of Intel), please upgrade to an >= i5
| emsy wrote:
| >If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make
| so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to
| afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the
| hardware can do.
|
| If there are poor people why don't they print more money?
| But seriously, I addressed this in my reply: there is an
| ongoing chip shortage in the industry (besides the fact
| that it may not make sense to scale a production line for
| a demand surge).
| tshaddox wrote:
| > What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when
| it get challenged?
|
| Huh? To me, refusing to even acknowledge or entertain
| criticism for one's principles is one of the worst things I
| can imagine. Principles ought to be routinely subjected to
| criticism, no different than scientific theories.
| capableweb wrote:
| > refusing to even acknowledge or entertain criticism
|
| I'm not advocating for you not listen to criticism aimed
| towards your principle. But if your principle gets put to
| the test and you abandon it, it's no longer something you
| fundamentally agree on, it was some "light belief" that
| you had.
| mdoms wrote:
| This is nonsense. Principles should adapt to the context
| they're applied in. In principle I'm against big
| government intervention into our personal lives, but you
| bet your ass I'm in favour of lockdowns when thousands of
| lives are at stake. I'm not going to let thousands of my
| compatriots die out of principle.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This is just imprecise statement of principle. It's more
| like you're against the government intervening unless
| they're credibly doing it to save lives. If someone
| discovered how to turn a microwave into a nuclear bomb,
| presumably you'd support government intervention to
| collect all the microwaves, even if they had to intervene
| a lot in our lives. Likewise, you support government
| intervention to reduce covid deaths, etc.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Sure, you could just say that your "principles" are
| simply the entire exact sequence of actions you take in
| your life. That way you could by definition never change
| or violate your principles.
|
| But usually people use "principle" to refer to a
| relatively concise statement that can be applied to a
| large variety of situations.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm not familiar with any definition of the word
| principle that includes the idea of "concise".
|
| Principle as I'm using it here is a moral belief or
| guide. It's less a description of what you do and more an
| explanation for why you do what you do.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I just mean that it must be more concise than a lookup
| table from every possible situational input to the
| recommended output. The same is implied by the term
| "explanation."
| tshaddox wrote:
| Replace "principle" with "scientific theory." Why
| shouldn't principles be subject to tests and criticism?
| Natsu wrote:
| If it were due to new facts and information, sure, but a
| lot of time the "new" principles appear to be self-
| interest biases manifesting.
|
| Also, if your principles are likely to change quickly,
| it's probable that they haven't been thought through very
| thoroughly to begin with. It's not like you have to wait
| for situations to actually arise to consider them.
| just-ok wrote:
| In the same way that a scientific theory was meaningless
| if it failed a test, a principle was meaningless if it
| needed to be adjusted when actually put to use.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Superseded scientific theories aren't all "meaningless."
| Newton's laws of motion are superseded, but they aren't
| meaningless, and you presumably wouldn't say that
| scientists who updated their beliefs in the face of new
| evidence and explanations were doing anything wrong.
| just-ok wrote:
| You're right: "meaningless" was a heavy-handed attempt at
| continuing the parallel on my part. And sure, they
| weren't _doing_ anything wrong, but they fundamentally
| _were_ wrong in the rules they followed previously.
| Similarly, if you adjust a principle, you admit that it
| didn't hold for you in the first place.
|
| As a tangent: while the parallel to scientific theories
| is good on the surface, it does lump in this idea that
| there's a _universal_ set of correct principles. Isn't
| that just philosophy, then? Logical arguments about which
| principles are sound & universal. Maybe the lesson is to
| pick principles from the battle-tested ones rather than
| trying to develop your own.
| void_mint wrote:
| > What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when
| it get challenged?
|
| The realities of life make most principles less finite than
| one would hope. If Nvidia doesn't want to rebrand as a
| crypto-hardware company, they're going to take action so
| their products and brand match _their principles_.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| How big is each of your principles (in terms of information
| complexity) that they cover significant enough number of
| all possible conditions and circumstances?
| just-ok wrote:
| I'm sure plenty of people would agree to an absolute "I
| don't steal" principle--one that covers a pretty
| significant number of conditions & circumstances-and yet
| not go back to the register when they accidentally walked
| out of the grocery store with something, or compromise it
| more significantly under stress of hunger. In this case,
| one could argue "I don't steal" was never a principle
| they actually held.
| renewiltord wrote:
| A principle is a moral heuristic so you don't have to scan
| to root of your moral argument tree on every moral
| question. As a heuristic, it attempts to compress the moral
| space down and will naturally have exceptions.
|
| As a compressed form of your moral judgment, it is also
| useful for you to quickly communicate your position on the
| moral space, and it is up to participants in social
| interactions to decide whether or not someone is good at
| this moral judgment compression.
|
| For instance, I have a principle not to lie in general.
| Most social participants know that this does not constrain
| me from lying in specific situations. After repeated
| interactions they can tell whether this principle of mine
| is held in a manner that's useful to them.
|
| The same principle also allows me to quickly judge
| situations that require me to lie. Is it okay for me to
| tell this person that their house is painted poorly? Well,
| I have this anti-lie principle so that pulls me toward
| "yes". I might have other principles that pull me in other
| directions.
|
| Of course you can treat principles as immutable moral rods.
| This presumably has some value to you. In general, people
| do not act in this manner, however.
| just-ok wrote:
| I think your loose definition of "principle" does not
| meet many others': it's definitely intended to be
| stricter than a heuristic.
|
| Of course even though you can have _relaxed_ principles,
| e.g. "I usually don't lie" vs. "I don't lie," I think the
| point here is that if you believe or preach a particular
| "principle," but then adjust it for yourself when it's
| convenient (for example a "just this once" scenario), it
| was never a principle to begin with.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Actually, observationally I believe my definition of
| principle to be far more accurate. People self-report
| principles as being far more immutable than they behave
| like.
|
| I have not yet met someone who rigidly adheres to theirs.
| Perhaps if I had met the Dalai Lama but nearly everyone
| else will find that the moral space is so fraught that
| they cannot adequately compress it into immutable laws.
|
| Usually, should one demand such adherence one would find
| one met with accusations of "looking at the world in
| black and white" and "lacking nuance".
|
| Of course I don't really intend to change your mind, but
| I do intend to transmit what I have observed.
| vehementi wrote:
| No. Only the miners. All for this.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Nvidia sells toys for gamers. Expensive toys, sure. But crypto
| is for people wanting to convert graphics cards into serious
| money. Nvidia would probably want to extract a majority of the
| profits of such customers if it can, because it's doing the
| majority of the work.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level?
|
| Since you're asking about feelings: Nope. I'm not a miner, and
| I believe the whole crypto thing is a pyramid scheme that is
| basically gambling in another form, so I'm not angered. In
| fact, I'm glad: I hope it keeps uninformed people from spending
| huge sums on bogus "get rich quick" schemes, just like the 2008
| housing market was enabled by people who didn't understand
| balloon mortgages, and slimy lenders that exploited them. Now
| if I could only convince my friends that are losing their
| shirts in DOGE + Robinhood to cut their losses and put that
| money into actual investments.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You can still buy unlocked GPUs. What is wrong with creating a
| new product people want? I want a gaming GPU that is powerful
| and reasonably priced and actually available to be purchased.
| Unless Nvidia does this, how else can they provide that product
| for me?
| nucleardog wrote:
| And unless Nvidia does this, what does their market look like
| in 5 or 10 years?
|
| People won't wait around not upgrading their systems forever
| because the price of their cards has been bid up by crypto
| miners to unaffordable levels.
|
| At some point Nvidia simply won't have a consumer market
| anymore. They'll let go of a market-leading position in
| favour of the crypto miners.
|
| What are they going to do when the crypto mining goes away?
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Yes, it sucks, but the tragedy of the commons is real[0]. Not
| that I defend NVs solution, but I think the problem is worse
| overall.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Not at all, part of the reason is crypto miners buy up all the
| supplies and gamers can't buy them. Then when crypto prices
| fall they dump old cards back onto the market. It hurts both
| sides
| NortySpock wrote:
| It looks like this is tied to the hardware, so miners should
| look to avoid a particular manufacturing run of a SKU.
|
| Personally, I'm ok with this approach as it's tied to the
| hardware, and can be researched by everyone ahead of time to
| avoid "Model X, manufactured from Y to Z dates". Hopefully this
| can be determined from the SKU + serial number easily by a
| human reading the serial number.
|
| It's not a software driver change nerfing the card remotely,
| which I would be absolutely against. It appears it could be
| eventually reverse engineered and bypassed, which I'm also ok
| with.
|
| It's also not immediate e-waste as miners will avoid it anyway,
| and gamers can just use the card as normal regardless of the
| manufacturing run -- this isn't hardware that lacks video
| ports.
| racl101 wrote:
| Naw. They're trying to recognize the pain of their consumers.
| And trying to do something to address it.
|
| Better than nothing.
| [deleted]
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm all for it. My system with a 3080 had a hardware issue so I
| needed to swap it for a new one. It took me weeks of
| shenanigans with the vendor because they couldn't get a new
| card to send me a new system. And that was after a month's wait
| to get the original system, also due to supply constraints. I
| have actual work to do, and am fine with NVidia making it
| harder for make-money-fast potlatchers if that means I can
| actually buy their product to do useful work.
| paulmd wrote:
| AIB partners are selling a significant number of GPUs
| directly to miners, bypassing the distribution chain, without
| warranty, at about 30% higher prices than the distributors
| pay.
|
| So just FYI this largely comes down to your vendor making a
| decision that they'd rather sell a card to a miner than
| service your warranty request. They have cards, just not for
| you.
|
| https://videocardz.com/newz/chinese-gpu-miners-are-now-
| bulk-...
|
| > We have heard many stories where miners in China are
| queuing up to NVIDIA board partner factories in hopes to buy
| graphics cards in bulk. Some AIBs agree to sell cards
| directly to them because those clients pay more (usually 1/3
| more than any distributor) and they get limited or no
| warranty at all.
| colordrops wrote:
| I bought an MSI desktop with a 3080 specifically for gaming.
| I didn't even know you could mine ethereum with a 3080 until
| after buying it. I've been running a miner using power from
| my solar cells when I'm not gaming. I don't deserve to have
| my card crippled. Fuck NVidia.
|
| EDIT: Ok, I bothered to read the article. This is a hardware
| measure for new cards, not existing cards.
| knorker wrote:
| No matter if you think of what's happening here, NVidia is
| _clearly_ not the bad guys in this story.
| _vertigo wrote:
| It's honestly pretty surprising to me to see how many people on
| here are supporting this move. That's not what I would expect,
| I would expect people on HN to object to this move on
| principle.
|
| Maybe my prediction in where most HN commenters stand in
| principle on this issue is wrong, or just maybe, this is a rare
| example of a time when the principle (hardware should be free
| to run at their max capability, not deliberately hamstrung,
| etc. etc. - to me, this kind of ties in with the "software
| should be free" principle) conflicts with a more immediate
| desire to play the latest video games (lol).
|
| Harder to take the principled approach when you've been waiting
| "like 11 whole months for the 3080 I mean seriously dude".
| aeternum wrote:
| How do you feel about laser printers and color photocopiers
| refusing to photocopy government currency?
| _vertigo wrote:
| What, you mean because they are legally obligated to refuse
| to do so?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The free market and personal liberty aren't magical tools
| that when combined produce a functional system. From the
| outside the GPU market is probably unfixably broken. Capacity
| to manufacture is an extremely expensive investment that will
| be wasted if cryptomining on GPUs becomes merely somewhat
| less effective. Meanwhile GPUs are being driven out of the
| price range where their natural market can actually afford
| them.
|
| Imagine if it were so profitable to haul small trailers of
| goods around for amazon that basic passenger cars went from
| 20k to 70k and nobody was interested in expanding car
| manufacturing to meet the new demand because the capacity
| might well go to waste next year. It would be untenable.
|
| If car manufacturers started selling cars that were
| deliberately shitty at towing but still worked great for
| moving people from A to B I think they can be forgiven.
|
| We want freedom to use our hardware but we need to have a
| functional market as well and this one has been broken for
| years with no sure end date.
| gruez wrote:
| > It's honestly pretty surprising to me to see how many
| people on here are supporting this move. That's not what I
| would expect, I would expect people on HN to object to this
| move on principle.
|
| Sounds like free speech. People were all for unrestricted
| free speech... until the right wing started using it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I think it's hard to take the principled approach when you
| see that the result of sticking to principles results in
| large organizations enriching themselves while ignoring the
| myriad externalities.
|
| At least, it makes you re-evaluate your principles.
| _vertigo wrote:
| What, externalities like energy waste? If that's the case,
| why target ETH, isn't ETH going to Proof of Stake soon?[1]
| I admit I don't really know if what Nvidia is targeting
| applies to both pre-merge and post-merge ETH
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194586
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > isn't ETH going to Proof of Stake soon?
|
| Ethereum is going proof of stake soon for a few years
| now.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| > I would expect people on HN to object to this move on
| principle.
|
| I cannot think of any principle that would cause me to object
| to this.
|
| Blind fealty to general purpose computing here conflicts with
| the very real world impact on non-crypto consumers. If we're
| being utilitarian, it seems to me that it would be obvious
| that this is a good move.
| _vertigo wrote:
| I mean, why are non-crypto consumers better than crypto
| ones from a utilitarian POV? (I play video games and
| dislike crypto - I'm just asking). I suppose that people do
| things other than gaming with 3080s, because I would be
| hard pressed to make a convincing argument that gaming is
| somehow so much more valuable of a hobby than mining crypto
| that it's worth the hit to general purpose computing to
| specifically ban crypto
| istorical wrote:
| I think the missing factor here is that mining groups are
| sort of like neo-feudalists.
|
| If crypto ends up becoming the de facto world currency,
| then mining groups that are already wealthy purchasing
| all available stock of GPUs to mine and further enrich
| themselves is sort of like if 70% of land was owned by
| wealthy nobles, and they used the profits from their land
| ownership to purchase all new land-producing/discovering
| capital and therefore become the owners of all new land
| coming onto the market. It's like the worst nightmare of
| those worried about income inequality. And it just so
| happens to affect retail consumers who just want "land"
| for other purposes than becoming richer.
| 1_person wrote:
| > 70% of land was owned by wealthy nobles, and they used
| the profits from their land ownership to purchase all new
| land-producing/discovering capital and therefore become
| the owners of all new land coming onto the market
|
| So, basically, like REITs? It's funny that graphics card
| feature sets are what generate moral outrage when a
| feudal regression happening in real time before our very
| eyes in regards to the basic necessities of life.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| It's a lot easier to cripple graphics cards than it is to
| do anything political
| nitrogen wrote:
| I use my GPU to render visualizations for my work and for
| educational YouTube videos. It's not just gaming, but
| even then, belittling gaming is kind of silly.
| Entertainment has value too, and that entertainment
| supports lots of actual people doing actual work.
|
| And crypto itself is the biggest hit to general purpose
| computing outside of the walled garden world of phones.
| What computing can be done if crypto speculation consumes
| all available computing power?
| Daishiman wrote:
| Content creators, specialty industrial systems, R&D
| researchers, and designers are core customers of nVidia's
| products too.
|
| They frankly contribute to society in a way that
| speculators never will.
| totalZero wrote:
| "Hardware should be available" seems like the kind of axiom
| that FOSS people would support, especially when the reason
| for lack of availability is a crypto mining profit motive.
| wpietri wrote:
| No principle exists in a vacuum. In practice, all are
| balanced against other principles.
|
| Let's run with your "software should be free" as an example.
| Licenses like the GPL family apparently work against that, in
| that they add restrictions. But so-called "viral" licenses
| aim to maximize a different kind of freedom for a larger
| number of less powerful players. Some call this hypocritical,
| but it's just balancing principles while taking into account
| outcomes.
|
| Another way to put it is that principles for most aren't
| religious commandments; they're mental tools to push the
| world toward a set of preferred results.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Without price discrimination, everyday users end up paying
| more for a given product while for-profit entities would pay
| less.
|
| When a company releases a product, they price it according to
| how much profit they want to make per unit sold. Market
| segmentation allows them to sell their product at a lower
| margin to lower income users and shift much of that profit
| burden to corporate customers who can easily afford it.
|
| Where I take issue with this practice is when manufacturers
| start suing users who modify their own hardware to enable
| features that they didn't pay the manufacturer for. Tesla
| selling heated seats as a software upgrade is a good example.
| It's fine if they want to build the hardware into every Tesla
| and only enable it for users that pay for it, but suing
| customers who modify their vehicle to turn on the heated
| seats on their own is way out of line.
|
| I don't think Nvidia is going too far here, unless they start
| suing customers who try to write custom drivers that bypass
| the limitation.
| neolog wrote:
| Why does Nvidia even want to sell to low-priced buyers, if
| they are saturating their manufacturing capacity with the
| high-priced buyers alone?
| babypuncher wrote:
| Because those price-sensitive buyers (PC gamers) are far
| more likely to be loyal customers down the road than
| crypto miners, who will immediately stop buying GPUs as
| soon as mining stops being profitable again.
|
| Nvidia wants to give PC gamers a reason to stay on "Team
| Green" by making it easier for them to get a card at a
| reasonable price during this perfect storm of limited
| silicon availability and insane crypto mining demand.
|
| I actually think that this particular move is more about
| rate limiting purchases intended for crypto mining than
| it is about putting miners in a different market segment.
| akersten wrote:
| It's been a shift I've noticed over the last ~15(?) years of
| browsing these and similar forums - as they become more well-
| known and frequented by the general public, the opinions
| start to lose nuance and aren't as tightly coupled to the
| principles from which the forum was borne.
|
| Similar example - government regulation of tech: if, 15 years
| ago, you were to tell a community of Hackers that the EU was
| planning a massive law to regulate the way you can process
| data that internet browsers voluntarily send to your server,
| there would be principled outrage. But, speak ill of GDPR on
| today's HN, and you'll quickly find yourself inundated with
| anti-tech talking points.
|
| The filter bubble doesn't last forever :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Or perhaps those of us who've been here since Fidonet are
| weary of nuance-free libertarianism. _Shrug_
| Daishiman wrote:
| Not really.
|
| Principles are borne of small communities because small
| communities can afford to be principles.
|
| Before software ate the world, the impact that damaging
| actors had was much more limited. A few computers would get
| a few viruses here and there but that was it.
|
| We live a world where computers have been integrated into
| the fabric of society, and where system risks do not have
| easy, principled answers.
|
| And if principles don't adapt and negotiate with reality,
| its defenders will just be isolated from the rest of
| society which can't afford to lose a lot of other things,
| which include other, possibly more important, principles.
|
| What changed with regards to GDPR was that 15 years ago
| there weren't Facebooks, Amazons, and other megacorps that
| had the personal data of 30% of the world's population
| available for their use. Tech monopolies encroached
| different product areas.
|
| What changed in 15 years is that we grew up, we acquired
| power, we became more integrated into society and as such
| the risk profiles change. You either do, or you become
| irrelevant like many of the Free Software activists who
| were a vanguard back then and whose opinion nowadays
| matters little.
| orangecat wrote:
| _It 's honestly pretty surprising to me to see how many
| people on here are supporting this move._
|
| Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. Support for general purpose
| computing and user freedom has fallen substantially in the
| last several years. Look at iOS, where many geeks are happy
| to have a megacorporation tell you what you're allowed to run
| on "your" hardware.
| im3w1l wrote:
| And I'm not surprised support for it has fallen. The people
| who support general purpose computing never explain why
| it's important. They just state the principle as if it's
| self-evident, but clearly it isn't to a lot of people.
|
| But to be fair to them, maybe they are not stating the
| reasons because they worry that voicing their fears would
| be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think you're reading too much into people's reactions. I
| think this is a good move for Nvidia in the medium and long
| run. Gaming is the stated purpose of these cards; hashing is
| an unexpected and temporary phenomenon for them. Ethereum is
| moving away from PoW, and more regulation is undoubtedly
| coming to crypto, with its environmental cost likely a
| compelling bullet point. Why wouldn't they try to get back to
| their core business of selling GPUs to gamers?
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get
| that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such
| an attack on general purpose computing.
|
| That's a weird hill to die on, since they're explicitly
| marketing and selling these cards with "LHR" branding and NOT
| discontinuing other non-LHR product lines. These are cards
| specifically for folks who don't use the features which are
| throttled.
|
| If they were doing this across the board, that's one thing. But
| they're not. If it means lower costs or increased availability
| for consumers who want them, that's a win.
|
| Moreover, they're not disabling anything, they're throttling.
| One or two GPUs are hardly going to mint you a fortune in ETH
| in the first place. The difference in hash rates is not
| affecting anyone who meaningfully cares about general purpose
| computing. Nobody is switching their industrial mining rig over
| to play Dota. They've throttled an extremely niche use case
| which makes the cards more broadly available to the public
| instead of a very specific single-purpose industry: that hardly
| seems like an attack on general purpose computing.
| babypuncher wrote:
| You say that, but but you might change your tune if 4 months
| from now you can easily buy an Nvidia card because miners
| stopped buying them while AMD cards are still scarce.
| paulmd wrote:
| AMD is actually going into this full-throttle, they are not
| only starting production of mining cards _on the same node as
| their gaming cards_ (unlike NVIDIA, where the mining cards
| are on a different older node that doesn 't compete for wafer
| allocations), but they aren't even limiting mining
| performance on their gaming cards
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rdna-mining-
| graphics-c....
|
| So if they follow through on their "no mining limiters on
| gaming cards" you can expect miners are going to get both the
| gaming and the mining cards from AMD, and that the number of
| wafers going to gaming cards is going to shrink.
|
| (AMD cards already have the best value in terms of hashrate-
| per-dollar btw, 6700XT and 6800 are good mining cards,
| comparable to 3060 Ti mining performance for less money)
| totalZero wrote:
| > Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level?
|
| Nah. I shed no tears for the miners. They're in it for profit
| and their profit is not my problem. Nothing about their
| business is "general purpose computing."
| linspace wrote:
| I couldn't care less about crypto mining and I think, right now
| at least, it's doing more harm than good. But I'm against
| putting artificial restrictions on general computing, whether
| or not I agree on the application. So, yes, I think it actually
| should be illegal for NVidia to do this.
| void_mint wrote:
| At some point, someone has to take action against harmful
| behavior, right? In the last few years, we've seen tons
| extremely problematic behavior arise out of well-principled
| technology (all of social media, cryptocurrency, etc). Groups
| of people say "When will we do something?!?!?!", and then, when
| something is done, other people say "But the principle of
| ___!".
|
| Sometime, someone has to do something about problematic
| behavior. The US government isn't going to do anything about it
| (as is evidenced by reality), but private companies are more
| than welcome to shape their products to match that company's
| intended vision for their product. Twitter didn't want fascist
| rants, Nvidia doesn't want all of their cards to be hoarded by
| crypto miners.
| cma wrote:
| Do you really believe Nvidia is being an enforcer here to
| "take action against harmful behavior"? It's just price
| discrimination. They saw they were leaving money on the
| table. Unless they thought it a huge PR win to do it, it's
| probably not much different in motivation than the previous
| thing with them segmenting out datacenter use.
| behringer wrote:
| As a gamer, I'd much rather they take miner's money for
| miner's uses and leave me able to play games in my spare
| time.
| imbnwa wrote:
| I can't believe this is so downvoted. So I, a gaming
| consumer, have to compete with bots every release because
| there's so much money in accommodating miner demand for
| the same cards? That's ridiculous
| kyboren wrote:
| No, that's arbitrage.
| totalZero wrote:
| Not quite. Arbitrage implies it's not the same market.
| behringer wrote:
| Is that a fancy word for scalping?
| kyboren wrote:
| No, scalping is a loaded word for reselling.
|
| This whole situation, and especially the anger at other
| market participants from people like you, is totally
| ridiculous. We know how markets work. NVidia is pricing
| their units at far below market value. What did you
| expect? Next you'll complain that water is wet and that
| the wind blows.
|
| NVidia could solve this problem immediately by correctly
| pricing their units. If they want to, they can even have
| a conditional rebate--or make special individualized
| offers--to subsidize targeted buyers who they believe are
| "legitimate" gamers.
|
| But instead they insist on continuing to mis-price their
| products. Shortages are the inevitable result.
| graynk wrote:
| > We know how markets work
|
| Badly. They work badly.
|
| > But instead they insist on continuing to mis-price
| their products
|
| They are not mis-priced, they are already a pretty hefty
| buy. If the prices were to increase even further, _then_
| it would be mis-priced, as no-one needs to spend this
| much on a videocard to play videogames. The fact that
| gamers have to compete with miners (for whom it's an
| investment) and AI researchers (for whom it's a job tool)
| does nothing to justify the purchase for the higher price
| kyboren wrote:
| No, they work very well. You just don't like it because
| other people are willing to pay more than you are.
|
| > They are not mis-priced
|
| They _are_ mis-priced. The market value is much higher
| than MSRP, which you can see on e.g. eBay. There is
| nothing to justify here, it is simply an objective fact
| they are mis-priced.
| behringer wrote:
| They are mispriced as far as gaming equipment goes.
| Nobody will release a 2000 dollar game console because
| nobody would buy it. However, release a 2000 dollar game
| card that only those willing to mine with it for 6 months
| can afford, and you don't have a gaming market for long.
| katbyte wrote:
| It's how I feel about getting a ps5, scalpers grab your
| all the inventory and I refuse to buy one from them so
| here I am just given up on a next gen consolfor the near
| future
| void_mint wrote:
| > Do you really believe Nvidia is being an enforcer here to
| "take action against harmful behavior"?
|
| Nvidia has deemed crypto mining harmful to their brand and
| product and have taken action against it, so yes I do
| believe that.
|
| > It's just price discrimination
|
| And?
| undersuit wrote:
| I felt similar anger for similar decisions. GPUs are complex
| pieces of hardware present in so much of our world but we are
| reliant on the manufacture to provide a driver to control the
| hardware. An open(source) driver is nice but doesn't allow you
| to do anything not documented, and open hardware is an
| nonstarter for capitalism with our weak IP laws(but hey let's
| protect a drawn mouse indefinitely.)
|
| Nvidia has done things like this before and it can get worse.
| Imagine a future GPU where only authorized drivers have access
| to certain features, and I'm not talking about the difference
| between consumer and workstation GPUs unlocking a few obscure
| openGL functions in the drivers.
| jp_sc wrote:
| It does, but that the fact that the ponzy scheme that is
| cryptocurrency hasn't been made illegal by now should angers me
| even more.
| Terr_ wrote:
| That's inaccurate, a core feature of Ponzi schemes is that
| they require fraudulent activity, where someone is _lying_ to
| participants about how much money is "theirs" and the way in
| which it grows.
|
| Cryptocurrencies don't do that, the system isn't lying to you
| about how many whatevercoins you own.
|
| Pyramid-scheme? Maybe. Pump-and-dump? Happens sometimes.
| Hugely speculative asset? Definitely.
| [deleted]
| floil wrote:
| It's not a whole new level. An aspect of Quadro differentiation
| has, since ages ago, been based on selectively disabling
| features that the consumer gpus silicon was capable of. It's
| the same strategy here.
|
| This makes sense to Nvidia because it creates a segment
| differentiation and will allow them to charge more for the
| higher hash rate parts.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| What if they do it effectively and AMD GPU end up twice as
| expensive because gamers and miners have to compete for cards
| and the miners want 30 and you want 1.
| caconym_ wrote:
| My next GPU is going to be one that a) supports the features I
| want, and b) that I can actually go out and buy without putting
| hundreds or thousands of dollars into some economic parasite's
| pocket. It's not just "hard" to buy high-end GPUs right now--
| it's _impossible_ unless you make a lifestyle out of chasing
| them down.
|
| If this has any effect on anybody who isn't a crypto miner,
| it's going to be to open up possibilities and/or save them
| money. I have trouble finding fault with that, and we're
| surrounded by far more egregious erosions of our "right" to buy
| and use general-purpose computers.
| kyboren wrote:
| They are not economic parasites. They are the physical
| manifestation of the Invisible Hand. These are people doing
| God's work making an efficient market. If you don't want
| arbitrageurs to capture that value, maybe NVidia should start
| pricing their products correctly so that _they_ capture the
| value. This isn 't rocket science.
|
| > If this has any effect on anybody who isn't a crypto miner,
| it's going to be to open up possibilities and/or save them
| money. I have trouble finding fault with that, and we're
| surrounded by far more egregious erosions of our "right" to
| buy and use general-purpose computers.
|
| This is a wildly short-sighted take.
|
| First they came for mobile users, and I did not speak out--
| Because I like Daddy Cook telling me what math I can do.
|
| Then they came for the cryptocurrency miners, and I did not
| speak out-- Because I _deserve_ a subsidy for my video gaming
| habit.
|
| Then they came for unlicensed cryptographers, and I did not
| speak out-- Because I have nothing to hide and if this has an
| effect on anybody besides them it's just going to be to make
| their skills more valuable.
|
| Then they came for the debuggers-- But I still didn't speak
| out, because we're already surrounded by egregious erosions
| of our right to buy and use general-purpose computers, so
| what's the point, amirite?
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| > Then they came for the cryptocurrency miners, and I did
| not speak out-- Because I deserve a subsidy for my video
| gaming habit.
|
| Are you suggesting that anyone who buys something and then
| doesn't use it to generate the maximum profit possible for
| themselves is being subsidized by someone else?
|
| That doesn't even remotely make sense.
|
| What's your stake in cryptocurrency?
| kyboren wrote:
| Not at all. Simply: If the market value of an item is
| $2500, and I demand the ability to buy it at $750, I am
| demanding that _someone, somewhere_ subsidizes my
| purchase.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The keyword that you left out is "now". In one year
| (hopefully), supply will match demand and you'll be able
| to purchase it at MSRP. At that point, you're subsidizing
| your own purchase by applying patience.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| They are indeed economic parasites. Much like landlords,
| they are not doing any useful work, not contributing to
| society in any way, but sitting on their ass expecting to
| collect a free paycheck while other people work.
|
| Miners are parasites.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > They are not economic parasites. They are the physical
| manifestation of the Invisible Hand.
|
| Why do you (apparently) imagine these things are mutually
| exclusive?
|
| > maybe NVidia should start pricing their products
| correctly so that they capture the value
|
| I do happen to agree with this in principle, up to a point,
| and I've said as much in the past. It's easier said than
| done, though, especially when the scarcity is expected to
| be temporary and there are OEMs and retailers between you
| and the buyer.
|
| Ultimately, Nvidia may feel that it makes more sense to
| (attempt to) cater to the steady, predictable consumer
| market for their products, rather than alienating those
| buyers in favor of crypto miners during a period when they
| aren't able to satisfy both. On the face of it, not having
| intimate insider knowledge of their business, I can't say I
| think it's a bad judgment call.
|
| > This is a wildly short-sighted take.
|
| You obviously think you're very smart and everyone around
| you is not nearly as smart, but you're just going to have
| to live with the fact that I and many others disagree with
| you here. And you've shown with everything after this line
| that continuing to discuss this tricky (and very
| interesting) moral question with you would be a total waste
| of time, so I'm not going to bother.
|
| (But I guess there isn't much point in _you_ trying,
| either, because ... well, you know.)
| kyboren wrote:
| > Why do you (apparently) imagine these things are
| mutually exclusive?
|
| An economic parasite extracts rent. Arbitrageurs add
| value by reducing spreads, adding liquidity, and
| improving allocative efficiency.
|
| > Ultimately, Nvidia may feel that it makes more sense to
| (attempt to) cater to the steady, predictable consumer
| market for their products, rather than alienating those
| buyers in favor of crypto miners during a period when
| they aren't able to satisfy both. On the face of it, not
| having intimate insider knowledge of their business, I
| can't say I think it's a bad judgment call.
|
| That's fine; it's their prerogative. But people should
| understand that it's NVidia's policies, not crypto
| miners, that are responsible for supply shortages in
| traditional retail channels and making arbitrageurs rich.
| The blame is entirely misplaced.
|
| > You obviously think you're very smart and everyone
| around you is not nearly as smart, but you're just going
| to have to live with the fact that I and many others
| disagree with you here. And you've shown with everything
| after this line that continuing to discuss this tricky
| (and very interesting) moral question with you would be a
| total waste of time, so I'm not going to bother.
|
| You're wrong about that, but you're right that I'm going
| to have to live with the fact that people disagree with
| me. Same thing goes for you.
|
| I think it's a real stretch to call this a moral issue.
| But you're right that this conversation is unlikely to
| have a productive end. Way too many jimmies have been
| rustled.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > I think it's a real stretch to call this a moral issue.
|
| After your little tribute to Niemoller there, I'm
| surprised you'd claim otherwise--but maybe you just find
| it a useful rhetorical device to use as a bludgeon in
| your quest for reduced spreads, added liquidity, and
| improved allocative efficiency. I suppose it wouldn't be
| the first time somebody's invoked the specter of Hitler
| and the Nazis in an argument with little or no regard for
| the awful human weight of the events they're alluding to.
| kyboren wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't clear about what I was referring to: GPU
| resales are not a moral issue. Restrictions on
| computation very much are.
|
| Maybe I misunderstood what you were calling a moral
| issue. If you were referring to the restrictions on
| computation, then I agree.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Cryptomining angers me on a deep level far more than the
| nascent attempts of Nvidia to segment it. I think they're doing
| an incompetent job of diminishing the value of it, but at least
| they're making an effort to do so.
|
| Cryptominers are a far greater threat to general purpose
| computing than Nvidia. They ought to be compelled by law to
| purchase carbon credits for their mining, to offset the
| environmental destruction their petty "get rich quick" efforts
| have inflicted on the planet, enforced through Coinbase et al.
| and with noncompliant (offshore) exchange/wash platforms
| blocked and their users prosecuted through national laws and
| international agreements. Cryptominers and the malware they've
| created makes a very strong argument for walled gardens with
| enforcement and review of applications, simply because the vast
| majority of PC users are worse than useless at preventing
| misuse of general purpose Windows.
|
| I also think this proves Apple right on integrating the GPU on-
| die with the CPU, and not selling the CPU standalone at all,
| because Apple -- unlike Nvidia and AMD -- is having no such
| trouble with miners on _their_ general computing platform. This
| issue is for whatever reason restricted to DIY PCs, and
| cryptomining will be the end of DIY PCs if this keeps up.
|
| (Perhaps you meant "DIY computing" rather than "general purpose
| computing"? I definitely see Nvidia's steps as interfering in
| the build-your-own computing market, but if it keeps the DIY
| computing market from dying off in favor of Apple, isn't that a
| _desirable_ outcome?)
| prestigeoctopus wrote:
| If you use any of the services of Amazon, Netflix, Google or
| any of the other hundreds of services that are running off of
| data-centres then you are being a hypocrite.
|
| If you have a PC of any sort. You are being a hypocrite. If
| you use any modern technology at all you are being a
| hypocrite. The logic you operating under can be extended from
| crypto currency mining to any other generally in the IT
| space.
|
| Lunatics such as yourself anger me (I've looked through
| enough posts in your history to know that you believe that
| employment is "wage theft" and are likely to be some sort of
| quasi communist). Not only will you argue that things need to
| be restricted because you don't approve of an activity, but
| then you argue for government intervention (which won't have
| the intended result btw) which is both invasive, costly and
| draconian because _you_ don 't approve of how someone else is
| using _their_ hardware which they have purchased legally.
| However when _you_ approve of the activity /product there is
| no complaint. If you were consistent you would also call our
| any of the cloud computing platforms, the internet as a
| whole, social media or any HFC trading.
|
| Simply put you are speaking outside of both sides of your
| mouth.
|
| As an side. You will call for governments to
| incentivise/restrict usages of PC hardware and data, ignoring
| the fact that governments routinely get it wrong. Back in the
| mid-2000 Diesel cars were promoted all over Europe as "green"
| as they were more efficient than Petrol vehicles. Anyone that
| has ever owned a diesel will tell you this is a nonsense, you
| can literally see the soot on the rear of the vehicle build
| up over time from the exhaust. CO2 emissions would be lower
| (at the time Diesels had higher MPG than Petrol vehicles) but
| particulates are obviously higher. If you get what you want
| because restricting people's freedom is what people seem to
| want to demand these days and the majority of politicians are
| spineless.
| LeftTriangle wrote:
| Yes. Everyone disagreeing with you is just making excuses for
| manufacturers to turn customers into serfs.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| GPUs by definition are not general purpose computers. Remember
| the G in GPU stands for Graphics, not General.
| jagger27 wrote:
| That hasn't been true in a very long time. You can run
| arbitrary code on a GPU.
| JimBeans2131 wrote:
| Yes you can run arbitrary code extremely inefficiently,
| which reinforces the point they are not general purpose by
| definition.
| 8note wrote:
| Doesn't the G in GPU stand for Crypto now?
| outworlder wrote:
| > I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to be AMD due to this
| behavior by Nvidia.
|
| I was thinking about buying NVIDIA for the next GPU based on
| performance numbers alone.
|
| However, against it there's:
|
| 1) Terrible Linux support(and history). This is specially
| important now that most of Steam's library runs on Linux
| without issues. It was eye-opening to see Cyberpunk running
| almost perfectly on DAY ONE with the same performance as
| Windows. In the case of AMD, with open source drivers.
|
| 2)Control freak shenanigans (see also: this thread). This is
| doing nothing to address the GPU shortage. It's just dishonest
| market segmentation.
|
| 3)Their completely unacceptable behavior regarding reviews.
| They were punishing reviewers that didn't place enough emphasis
| in ray tracing. They would be blacklisted just by saying it's
| not important (which I happen to agree with). They handled the
| situation horribly.
| endgame wrote:
| 4) Crippling the ability to GPU passthrough (subpoint of (2),
| I suppose)
| navaati wrote:
| To give them credit when it's due, they recently lifted
| this limitation.
| endgame wrote:
| Too late for me. I bought an AMD GPU last year.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| All I can say is that that company well deserved Linus
| Torvald's famous middle finger: "NVidia has been the single
| worst company we've ever dealt with, so NVidia F--- YOU!"
|
| And they certainly haven't disappointed since back then.
|
| Petty.
| godelski wrote:
| > It was eye-opening to see Cyberpunk running almost
| perfectly on DAY ONE with the same performance as Windows.
|
| I'm looking at Cyberpunk right now (because it is on sale)
| and Steam says it is windows only. Most of my Steam library
| doesn't work on linux, what are you running differently? I'm
| only just getting back into games after a long hiatus.
| krastanov wrote:
| Pretty much the only non-native games I can not run on my
| Linux computer are the ones that incorporate anticheat
| detection. I just use Proton, as it is built in to Steam.
| Origin games do cause some headaches, but usually because
| of the origin client, not because of the game. Examples of
| "heavier" games that run fine for me at highest settings
| (radeon 580): subnautica, tomb rader, mass effect
| (andromeda), alyx, population one.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Windows-only games can run on the Linux version of Steam
| using a feature built into the app called Steam Play, which
| allows games to be run on unsupported platforms using
| compatibility layers. Steam comes bundled with the Proton
| compatibility tool, a fork of Wine maintained by Valve. It
| has very high compatibility, as long as you aren't looking
| to play competitive multiplayer titles.
|
| Here's a community maintained compatibility list:
| https://www.protondb.com/
| godelski wrote:
| Thanks!!!! I found the option. I've heard great things
| about proton just didn't realize I had to flip a switch.
| asgeir wrote:
| You might want to look into GloriousEggroll, it tends to
| have better support for media and such.
|
| https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/wiki
| godelski wrote:
| And just proving why I love Hacker News. I'm going to
| test proton out a bit then I'll check this out. I
| appreciate all the links and help
| coolspot wrote:
| 1) I have NVidia RTX 2060 in my Linux laptop (Lenovo Legion)
| and NVidia RTX 3070 in my Linux Ryzen desktop.
|
| Previously had 1060 in Intel Linux desktop.
|
| Zero issues.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I'm on the same boat, however, it's a bit unclear if parent
| is complaining [also] about their open source support.
| Their antagonistic position towards open source (AFAIK
| there's no comparison to AMD<>Nvidia open source drives) is
| a big issue for me.
| volta83 wrote:
| > about their open source support.
|
| Which support?
|
| They have an official closed-source driver. That's what
| they support.
|
| Parent is complaining that when they run an unsupported
| third-party driver, it doesn't work as well as the
| actually supported driver.
|
| I think these distinctions are important, becaues NVIDIA
| is not telling anyone that they have (1) an open source
| driver, and (2) that this driver is well supported.
|
| Their supported driver works great.
|
| OTOH AMD does have an open-source driver that they
| support. In my experience, this driver works much worse
| than NVIDIA's proprietary driver. You can't use AMD GPUs
| for compute, etc.
|
| At the end what this means is that users currently have
| to make a choice. Do you want a GPU driver that works
| well, or a GPU driver that's open source?
|
| I don't like to have to make this choice, and every
| individual weight these values differently.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > I think these distinctions are important, becaues
| NVIDIA is not telling anyone that they have (1) an open
| source driver, and (2) that this driver is well
| supported.
|
| this is not correct. this is an extract from an nvidia
| presentation:
|
| > We'll report up-to-the-minute developments on NVIDIA's
| status and activities, and possibly (depending on last-
| minute developments) a few future plans and directions,
| regarding our contributions to Linux kernel; supporting
| Nouveau (the open source kernel driver for NVIDIA GPUs,
| that is in the Linux kernel), including signed firmware
| behavior, documentation, and patches; and NVIDIA kernel
| drivers.
|
| Now, even putting this aside, the situation is not so
| black-and-white.
|
| I wasn't able to boot Ubuntu with my latest Nvidia card.
| The closed-source driver can work perfectly, but it
| doesn't boot a Ubuntu image. I don't remember the
| details, but I think rebuilding the image with closed-
| source drivers didn't produce a functioning system, and
| if memory serves me well, I had to go as far as booting
| with another card.
|
| Therefore, a closed-source only approach does actively
| damage the open source world in a concrete way.
|
| Second, the nv driver story (obfuscating the code) is
| really deplorable, and there's no excuse for being
| explicitly antagonistic.
|
| All in all, I think that being fiercely closed-source
| (they'd be good friends with the GNOME devs...) in a open
| source world, can't avoid doing concrete damage.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| The driver you are using is a BLOB that comes from closed
| source. Many people who use Linux are against that, and
| would rather have open source drivers (which I think nvidia
| used to have but discontinued?).
| slownews45 wrote:
| I'm thrilled by this. This has been a common approach in I
| think almost every industry.
|
| What nvidia is doing is recognizing that the needs of existing
| long time consumers / clients / partners are not being met by
| the current situation. Yes, it inflates short term profits and
| increases their pricing power, but long run if you can't buy
| nvidia for your dev box, your game box etc, this reduces the
| long run nvidia ecosystem.
|
| Crypto folks come and go. Serve them on a short term basis with
| something at a higher price point or make them lock in long
| term orders
|
| Almost every business works this way. Long time regular
| customer - you get pricing option A. Rando runs in with lots of
| cash? You don't let them destroy your long term customer
| relationships, but sell them some extra / high margin stuff if
| they are willing to pay enough.
|
| Intel just went through this ecosystem pain with ARM. They said
| no to doing iphone chip. Now an ecosystem has built up around
| ARM with far more investment than would have been there without
| apple leading the way.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > Crypto folks come and go Do they more than gamers?
| Complaints about miners buying all the graphics cards have
| been going on for years now
| akersten wrote:
| If this works (spoiler: it won't, it will be cracked within a
| month), it will create more e-Waste as miners will toss their
| no-video-output-mining-only cards after they're no longer the
| latest tech, instead of being able to resell them to gamers,
| thinning the used graphics card market, forcing more gamers
| to buy new from nVidia instead of rebuying old cards online.
|
| That makes me angry, it should make you angry too.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I don't like Nvidia's approach for other reasons (mostly
| 'cause market segmentation raises prices in the end imo).
| But I'm pretty sure miners very price oriented. They'd sell
| rather than trash whatever cards they have. And it seems
| unlikely they'd be using any unsellable cards since those
| are energy inefficient.
|
| There's a shortage of Nvidia card/chips after all.
|
| Edit: Now I read the article, this is literally only being
| added to new cards and with a warning.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Right - old cards will still work. And they would DEF
| sell 1,000 cards at $500/card even if that's a fraction
| of retail.
| eropple wrote:
| This can be just as easier, and probably more truthfully,
| read as "miners can no longer make the used market a
| minefield by selling overtaxed consumer cards without
| disclosing their provenance." Because, yeah, having ex-
| miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing on the used
| market. Great!
|
| Cryptocurrencies are not inherently good or valuable and
| cryptocurrency people aren't special and their world-
| burning habits and desires need not be privileged.
| dijit wrote:
| > Because, yeah, having ex-miner cards burn out is a
| pretty common thing on the used market.
|
| This is mostly a myth, miners cards are usually
| undervolted, and only a subset of the card is used.
|
| If your CPU only used it's floating point unit then it
| wouldn't be as intense as if you were using the whole
| thing.
|
| The only potential issue is thermal damage, but that's
| hard to place and has to be close to, or in excess of
| 90-110c.
| eropple wrote:
| It's not a myth. These things get racked in stacks of
| GPUs in what may or may not be actually-cooled data
| centers. Undervolted or not, when you couple that with
| constant load you're stressing devices manufactured to
| _consumer_ specs.
|
| The excusemaking is pernicious.
| corndoge wrote:
| None of this disproves GP's claims.
| krapht wrote:
| ? My CPU actually underclocks itself if I am running a
| heavy AVX-512 workload. Actually, back when I had it in a
| cheaper motherboard, my system would crash because the MB
| couldn't deliver enough power to the CPU.
|
| But I agree with the first sentence. Lots of miner cards
| are undervolted because what matters is performance per
| watt, just like many server cpus.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| It underclocks, but generates more heat in the AVX-512
| case (that's the whole reason for the underclocking). If
| miners are undervolting to reduce power consumption, heat
| generation is going to lower by necessity.
| plantain wrote:
| The core clock is undervolted while mining - but the
| memory clock is absolutely cranked to the maximum it will
| support.
|
| I've been idly mining on an RTX3080 for 6 months now, and
| the hashrate has slowly gone down about 20% since new. I
| suspect the thermal pads on the memory chips are slowly
| cooking. I replaced them once already and restored a bit
| of hashrate.
| optymizer wrote:
| out of curiosity, and if you don't mind sharing that
| info, how many bitcoins have you mined with 1 card in 6
| months?
|
| Did it pay for the electricity and the card itself at the
| current BTC price?
| plantain wrote:
| It earns about $6-10US/day, off surplus solar during the
| day and about 50c of grid electricity through the night.
| optymizer wrote:
| Interesting, that's much higher than I expected. Thanks
| for the info!
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > overtaxed consumer cards
|
| Actually, miners optimise for computation/kWh of
| electricity (versus computation/16ms of time for gamers),
| which leads to running mining GPUs at significantly
| _lower_ wear and tear level (lower voltage scaling, lower
| clock rate, etc) than gaming GPUs.
|
| > having ex-miner cards burn out is a pretty common thing
| on the used market.
|
| Having used GPUs _in general_ burn out is somewhat
| common, but it 's _less_ common for ex-miner cards than
| for ex-gamer cards.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Being angry / outraged / upset is somewhat newer on HN.
|
| Not discounting it, but I tend to be more interested in the
| . well . interesting conversations and questions then to go
| down the angry / upset / outraged path.
|
| The no video out cards used in mining are already out of
| gamers hands. If they throw them away (they won't -
| existing product is working fine) they would no need to buy
| non-gaming product. Finally, I think you underestimate the
| value of the existing product, if they did want to resell
| into gaming market they would probably find success.
| luma wrote:
| They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix
| on the model number. As someone who has been trying for
| months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this
| is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a
| card.
|
| This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should
| make you angry either.
| akersten wrote:
| The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us,
| but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme
| has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is
| the least of its environmental impact.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Has anybody written about the opportunity cost to society
| of technological resources going to crypto mining instead
| of to consumers, creators, and scientists? I'd be
| interested in reading such an analysis of cost/benefit of
| crypto vs. creation with the limited supply of hardware
| and electricity.
| christkv wrote:
| Not to mention the massive amount of electrical power
| consumed to perform the calculations.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| You aren't joking!
|
| From March 2018:
|
| _Today, a half-megawatt mine, Miehe says, "is nothing."
| The commercial miners now pouring into the valley are
| building sites with tens of thousands of servers and
| electrical loads of as much as 30 megawatts, or enough to
| power a neighborhood of 13,000 homes. And in the arms
| race that cryptocurrency mining has become, even these
| operations will soon be considered small-scale._
|
| For people clamoring for renewable energy, this is an
| obscene amount of energy needed to do a single task -
| mine bitcoin. Which should make it even more obscene that
| all of that energy is being used for what? The benefit of
| a few people. Staggering to think how common this is and
| the article even states a 30 megawatt system is small
| compared to some of the other sites that are out there.
|
| https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoi
| n-m...
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Keep being angry. It will be much larger in future, and
| use magnitudes more energy. Either make peace (with the
| drumbeat of human progression), or spend your days being
| angry at something you don't understand. Your choice!
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| randomhodler84, have you heard the phrase "last man
| holding the bag?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagholder
| This crypt ponzi scheme turned the natural progression of
| itself into a meme that reinforces itself. But GME is at
| $180, so you could be right. Stupidity could yet win and
| our future could be doomed to feed an ever increasing
| amount of resources into accounting. I hope it's just
| mania and we can go back to regular low energy databases
| to keep track of funds.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Yes, and also yes, it is a meme. Money itself is just a
| meme, we just don't all agree to its definition. Bitcoin
| as a meme is self reinforcing, incentivizing meme, with
| so many self defense mechanisms -- it's crazy. Highly
| contagious too! Groundbreaking and game changing in its
| very existence. What I wonder about constantly "is it the
| greatest meme"? Bitcoin consumes the lives and speech
| patterns of its advocates far stronger than any religion.
| It's easy from the outside to say "that's not rational".
| Can we ever go back to less?
|
| Argument: money is a meme. Bitcoin could be the strongest
| meme ever, as demonstrated by its consumption of energy,
| a proxy for human perceived value. Arguing over energy is
| just arguing over human preference.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash
| created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield
| washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.
| lstamour wrote:
| What about the electricity cost for powering the card.
| Doesn't that outweigh the e-waste part by a significant
| margin?
|
| Just because a card can't be used by gamers doesn't mean
| the card must be tossed, there are plenty of non-gaming
| uses such as AI. You'll probably see an aftermarket for
| both types of cards.
|
| Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are
| highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an
| industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you'd like
| to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They're still
| perfectly good for gaming... except everybody wants the
| new RTX ray tracing etc.
| stormbeta wrote:
| > Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are
| highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an
| industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you'd like
| to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They're still
| perfectly good for gaming... except everybody wants the
| new RTX ray tracing etc.
|
| This is highly inaccurate, particularly on the used
| market. People want cards that can handle whatever games
| they play within their budget. A lot of older cards run
| tons of games quite well still, especially if you accept
| lower framerates / resolutions.
|
| RTX in particular isn't actually that coveted by gamers
| from what I've seen. It's seen as a nice-to-have at best.
| zaptrem wrote:
| I sold a very used GTX 1070 on eBay for $325 only three
| months ago.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >Unless you'd like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070?
| They're still perfectly good for gaming... except
| everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.
|
| Or to run higher resolutions, or to play flight simulator
| at reasonable refresh rates, etc etc.
| k12sosse wrote:
| I got mine after a 6 months wait on EVGA.com. Worth the
| wait. Best of luck
| skjoldr wrote:
| ...Why would you toss a perfectly working piece of
| equipment that brings you profit? If anything, there is a
| second hand market for mining cards for those who want to
| set up a mining farm for cheaper with a bit more risk.
| [deleted]
| earthtolazlo wrote:
| Proof of work makes me angry. I have a difficult time
| getting too upset over any attempt to curtail it.
| mrgordon wrote:
| I'm not sure it curtails it rather than just generating
| new card types that can only mine coins and then are
| garbage
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Don't be angry. Just try to understand it. It's all we
| can ask.
| paulmd wrote:
| there's no such thing as a "mining-only" card, they are
| still good for compute tasks like grid compute.
|
| what you are looking at is a future that is very, very
| bright for BOINC and folding@home scores.
|
| the cards will never be worthless, if nothing else someone
| will buy them up for 25 bucks and store them until the
| (inevitable) next mining crisis, and any reasonable miner
| is going to chose 25 bucks versus having to pay to dispose
| of them properly (ahahah, sorry, we all know if it comes to
| that they're going in the nearest creek).
|
| anyway you get the point though, the value is never going
| to _actual_ zero, people will buy them for development
| work, for grid compute, or just as a bet on the next mining
| crisis. A hundred bucks for a card is better than nothing.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Nvidia isn't doing it for their customers, it's to reduce the
| aftermarket price drop next time crypto drops.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| To add on:
|
| none of it is malicious. its just the market stabalization
| problem
|
| a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price
|
| b) let's charge miners 3x, because they willing to pay 3x,
| and destroy the scalping market which is VERY anti
| everything. Scalpers hurt literally everyone.
|
| c) let's not de-stabalize nvidia's income again when eth
| drops in value. They don't want to be beholden to a coin's
| gamble either. Basically as it stands Nvidia is far invested
| into eth's value and if it drops their sales drop sharply
| because of a massive influx of cheap supply.
| knz_ wrote:
| > a) let's keep consumer grade stuff stable in price
|
| Consumer GPUs had far from a 'stable price' before the
| mining boom.
|
| GPUs have more than tripled in MSRP once you factor in that
| NVIDIA has moved lower-tier chips that previously only
| featured in their lowest end x50 and x60 tier GPUs up the
| stack and started selling them for $400+ MSRP. Look at the
| GTX960, which launched at $150 in 2014, against the 3060
| which launched at an MSRP of $330.
|
| It's even worse at the high end. Flagship GPUs like the
| 980ti and 1080ti launched at MSRPs of $650 and $700
| respectively, now the high end GPUs are $1200 (2080ti) and
| $1500 (3090).
|
| > none of it is malicious.
|
| It absolutely is malicious. NVIDIA is trying to stop a
| strong second hand market from being formed so that they
| can continue to charge ridiculous prices for GPUs that
| should be 1/2 to 1/3 their current price if the market was
| healthy.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know how you think that if GPUs were cheaper then
| miners would be buying less of them. Miners are a black
| hole for computing power - they can absorb near infinite
| amounts of processors since they know (or strongly
| believe at least) that they'll pay for themselves pretty
| quickly.
|
| I think Nvidia has some problems and their chips should
| be cheaper - but if that were the case then this solution
| (splitting the markets into regular consumers and miners)
| would be even more necessary.
|
| I also disagree with it being malicious, I think it's a
| perfectly reasonable decision to attribute to some pretty
| sane decisions around market preservation. We here know
| about miners eating up the GPU supply, but for the
| average consumer Nvidia is just hording their chips or
| they're idiots that didn't produce enough - no matter
| what the imagined reason they're the people between the
| average consumer and shiny ray tracing in minecraft.
| knz_ wrote:
| > I don't know how you think that if GPUs were cheaper
| then miners would be buying less of them.
|
| It would increase supply by forcing fabs to scale (would
| take years anyway, but should happen sooner rather than
| later).
|
| > Miners are a black hole for computing power - they can
| absorb near infinite amounts of processors since they
| know (or strongly believe at least) that they'll pay for
| themselves pretty quickly.
|
| And that isn't going to change even with these limited
| GPUs. Mining with ethash is still profitable even with
| the halved hashrate, and other algorithms like kawpow and
| cn-gpu are not limited at all.
|
| The only thing that's going to get rid of PoW mining is
| the entire shitcoin market tanking. As long as the bubble
| continues there's going to be idiots spending money on
| scalped GPUs.
| munk-a wrote:
| The fabs did scale down near the beginning of COVID-19
| AFAIK when the economy was in a panic and all sorts of
| manufacturers were canceling orders from people further
| up the chain - and that does account for some of the
| shortage we're seeing now (since that production time was
| resold to other consumers) but it's a much smaller impact
| than the 30XX line's attractiveness to miners. I don't
| think there is honestly the capacity to meet these levels
| of demand right now (as opposed to there being readily
| available production capacity that's either idle or doing
| something that could be outbid).
|
| I also don't really see how keeping all of the consumer
| groups (miners and regular folks) using precisely the
| same model of card instead of two incredibly
| unbelieveably similar cards would actually increase
| demand. If anything there being a card optimized for
| hashing (i.e. with unnecessary bits stripped off) might
| lower the cost to produce such a card and allow miners to
| actually purchase more of the card compared to paying for
| a nearly top of the line consumer video card.
|
| I don't actually know how much we'll see Nvidia try and
| scale up (since that extra purchased capacity will be a
| liability if Eth suddenly tanks) but I think their
| decision to increase scale will only be minorly impacted
| by this effort. I will admit there will be some impact
| since they could refuse to increase the 3070 supply
| (please correct me if I've got model numbers turned
| around) without having as dramatic an effect on their
| customer base - however, that'd honestly just return them
| to square one where the miners are going to pick up
| consumer grade 3080s to keep up with mining projections.
|
| I think the important thing here is that nothing is being
| made impossible - it's being made difficult which should
| have a corresponding effect on the value of these cards
| to miners unless they screw it up again in a major way.
| People trying to absolutely prevent video game piracy
| have either
|
| 1. Screwed it up and allowed a sharpie to defeat their
| system
|
| 2. Bricked a whole bunch of legitimate users' computes
| and ended up in class actions
|
| The successful approach to prevent piracy is to price
| things fairly and while making it less convenient to
| pirate things - honestly a huge driver here in the modern
| world is content that's enriched by being online, not
| stupid "You must have an internet connection to play this
| single player game" but "If you're online you can tap in
| a friend for help" - that sort of online integration
| significantly lowers the value for pirates while allowing
| legitimate users to only see upsides.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| > Look at the GTX960, which launched at $150 in 2014,
| against the 3060 which launched at an MSRP of $330.
|
| Looks like I'll be hanging on to my 960 for the
| foreseeable future, then. I'm not interested in mining,
| but I've started thinking a bit about playing with CUDA,
| and I'm suddenly a lot less interested if Nvidia might
| decided to gimp my work because I inadvertently did $FOO
| that is commonly done by miners.
| acomjean wrote:
| I notice Microcenter has limited gpu sales to one per
| customer per month.
|
| Its weird when brick and mortar are like limiting sales,
| but on the other hand, they want to keep pc builders happy.
|
| https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/7334/graphic-
| ca...
| paulmd wrote:
| partners and distributors are forcing retailers and
| etailers to take PSUs and motherboards if they want to
| get GPUs, frequently very shitty mobos+PSUs that have
| been stuck in inventory for a long time and they've been
| having trouble moving. Like, large quantities, 50 A320
| motherboards for one GPU type quantities.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxGtMHXWpMw&t=300s
|
| This is one of the reasons that Newegg is doing the
| Shuffle with those terrible deals - they are passing some
| of the junk they've been forced to buy along. So now you
| get a 3 year old watercooling-only mobo and a grenade-
| tier PSU with your GPU.
|
| This applies to brick and mortar stores too, it's not
| just about keeping PC builders happy, but if they let one
| guy walk in and buy every GPU they've got, then they
| don't get the person coming in to build a PC and buying a
| motherboard, memory, etc, and they _need_ to move those
| products because distributors are making them buy them to
| get GPUs.
|
| The behavior of the AIB partners and distributors is
| really, really predatory here, they are definitely taking
| advantage of being the ones in control of a highly
| desirable commodity.
| slownews45 wrote:
| nvidia could take advantage of eth craze in short run and
| auction cards or chips. They would make a ton more in short
| run. But crypto folks would be only customers (in short
| run) and rest of market would risk migrating away from
| them.
|
| Crypto is very very frothy, so preserving some supply to
| bread and butter / ecosystem supporting sales makes a lot
| of sense to me.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| Except that miners will simply workaround the downgrade
| software (as they did in the past) and regular consumers
| will be the only ones with crippled hardware
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nvidia is implementing a hardware fuse system (a-la the
| Nintendo Switch) to prevent firmware manipulation. I
| can't speak to how secure these new cards will be, but
| the Tegra was an absolute pain in the ass to work with.
| It took a year before people even figured out how the
| firmware was loaded, much less how to interoperate
| between custom and official ones without blowing a fuse.
| To this day, approaching half a decade since the Switch's
| launch, you cannot coldboot the Switch into custom
| firmware.
|
| Considering Nvidia's history with hardware DRM, I think
| there's reason to be scared. Plus, they've undoubtedly
| paid attention to the community as the Switch was
| exploited, and probably intend to further secure the
| firmware interface with what they've learned.
| taftster wrote:
| > approaching half a decade
|
| So 4 years?
| longhairedhippy wrote:
| I think the big difference here is there is no money
| behind hacking the Switch, it's an interesting problem to
| a small(ish) subset of people. There's tons of folks that
| would make actual hard cash off those hacks which will
| make them much more invested in finding out how to work
| around the solution.
| humaniania wrote:
| No money in video game piracy? What?
| https://jolt.richmond.edu/2019/02/09/the-unwinnable-war-
| on-v...
| munk-a wrote:
| Eeeeeh, I give a lot less credence to that then I did
| when I was in college - back then it seemed like everyone
| was pirating everything (because, facts) but now a days a
| major consumer for video games is the millennials that
| have passed the cash vs. free time tipping point of
| piracy being attractive.
|
| Also, reasonably priced services now exist - I used
| pandora when I was in college and enjoyed it even with
| how hamstrung and limited it was - now I use spotify and
| like... why even bother pirating music now?
|
| Sure occasionally pirating a big title from Ubisoft out
| of spite alone is pretty attractive but I mostly just nab
| things off Steam and leave it at that.
|
| Nintendo's anti-piracy efforts are so incredibly
| misguided - the hardware is the majority cost expenditure
| for most users and you've already collected that cost so
| why not try and make your platform not annoying. Allow
| people to mod games and run indy titles if they so
| desire. Most of this anti-piracy stuff is just lowering
| the value to the end consumer anyways.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Nintendo's anti-piracy efforts are so incredibly
| misguided - the hardware is the majority cost expenditure
| for most users and you've already collected that cost so
| why not try and make your platform not annoying.
|
| because the console makers make little (or more often
| lose) profit from each system, so the draw is to make up
| or it by selling software. first party software or 3rd
| party software they get 30% of sales from.
|
| >Allow people to mod games and run indy titles if they so
| desire
|
| Tell that to the poor PSP. The reality is that 1% use it
| to run emulators or make homebrew and 99% use it to run
| free games. To the ordinary consumers, these aren't
| general purpose computers to tinker around with, they are
| toys to entertain themselves with. They have computers
| and phones for the former.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you're arguing here. If you're
| trying to claim that piracy has no value proposition,
| then you're missing a market of people who maintain these
| torrents/sites with the hopes of archiving them for the
| future.
|
| > Nintendo's anti-piracy efforts are so incredibly
| misguided - the hardware is the majority cost expenditure
| for most users and you've already collected that cost so
| why not try and make your platform not annoying.
|
| Because they don't make money on the Switch. In fact, in
| the first few months of selling it, they were losing
| about $30 on every unit sold because of how expensive
| shipping was. Even today, the Switch runs a pretty thin
| profit margin, if any. Same goes for the PS5 and Xbox
| Series X, which gives you a pretty good idea of why these
| companies are so keen to keep an iron grip on software
| distribution.
| fomine3 wrote:
| You should check non-developed country.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Do game pirates make 10 million from hacking a game?
|
| Because miners do.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's certainly not for lack of trying. Fail0verflow, one
| of the largest and most successful CTF teams in the
| world, spent nearly 2 years trying to reverse engineer
| the bootloader, and ended up never finding any real
| security exploits in the process. There were warmboot
| attacks (see Fusee-Gelee) that involved code injection,
| but even then the machine would still recognize it was
| running in debug mode, and block the user from access to
| certain functions. Besides being a great anecdote here,
| the history of Switch hacking is really interesting, and
| well worth looking into if you have the time.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Hardware fuse? Trying to run custom software can actually
| brick hardware now?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Not exactly, but it can be used to prevent you from
| running custom firmwares or reversing an update. On the
| Switch, each update would burn a physical fuse on the
| board, giving the OS a reliable way to determine what the
| latest update that Switch received was. Prior firmwares
| cannot be booted on a device with too many fuses burned,
| which is why the "1.0.0 Nintendo Switch" is going to
| become an increasingly hot commodity in the coming years.
| danielheath wrote:
| The switch contains a lot of hardware fuses, with an
| instruction to blow one.
|
| IIRC it's used (among other things) to set a minimum
| firmware revision - after upgrading to a new (signed)
| firmware it blows a fuse so you can no longer run an
| older signed firmware, which stops you rolling back to
| when a vulnerability still existed.
| senectus1 wrote:
| e-Fuse. Samsung have been doing this for years on their
| phones. They tie it into their Knox system.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| Reading the Nvidia announcement it's not a software
| upgrade, but a change in hardware. It only affects cards
| made after late May.
| gsich wrote:
| They said that previously. Then they released an unlocked
| BIOS by "accident".
| mrb wrote:
| Nvidia did not say it will be a hardware limitation. In
| fact, they will almost certainly implement it in
| software. For example a "Lite Hash Rate" card will
| probably have a bit permanently set to 1 in the
| firmware/eeprom. The driver will read the bit, and
| arbitrarily enforce the restriction on such LHR card.
| This solves potential legal issues of retroactively
| crippling cards already out in the market, since only new
| cards sold from now on as "LHR models" will have the bit
| set to 1.
|
| But miners will find another software hack (just like
| they did for the RTX 3060 earlier) to bypass the
| restriction.
| rincebrain wrote:
| IIRC wasn't that software hack based on NVIDIA
| accidentally releasing a driver version that supported
| the 3060 but didn't enforce the LHR?
| munk-a wrote:
| I still think it's pretty likely we'll see a work around,
| but if that work around is a custom made firmware patch
| (like it was for the driver update they deployed IIRC)
| then that will probably mean the chips you purchased have
| a less rosy long term cost as future driver updates won't
| be applicable to your altered firmware. If it requires
| any physical tinkering with the chip then it definitely
| increases the effective cost by forcing a labour/card
| cost and opening up the possibility of expected chip
| defect as you break some proportion of the hardware you
| purchase in the process of fixing it.
|
| That all said - yea some people are totally going to hack
| that or my name isn't 46 DC EA D3 17 FE 45 D8 09 23 EB 97
| E4 95 64 10 D4 CD B2 C2.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| 100% this in the short term, but in the long term
| workarounds will become harder to find. Have a look at
| iOS jailbreak history.
|
| I just hope they don't kill functionality which matters
| for other meaningful purposes, like deep learning.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| There's not money to be earned by jailbreaking iOS that
| increases in value the harder it is to jailbreak.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Yes, there is currently a ~$1m public bounty, probably
| more if you know where to look privately. You'd have to
| check your ethics at the door in both cases, but they do
| exist.
| mrb wrote:
| c) is nonsense. There are no downsides to a temporary boost
| in Nvidia's profits, even if it means profits eventually
| falling back to normal levels when ETH drops in value.
| Also, LHR (gaming) GPUs and CMP (mining) GPUs share the
| exact same supply chain and components. When/if crypto
| demand suddenly drops, Nvidia will still have to deal with
| the oversupply of components. Having segmented the market
| between LHR and CMP GPUs does not in any way make it easier
| for Nvidia to forecast overall production capacity.
| lazide wrote:
| It is a real risk when gamers (the every day bread and
| butter) or ML model folks (emerging bread and butter)
| markets will stop using them because they can't get
| reliable supply. Both of those groups do quite a lot of
| driver validation, workload tuning, and other platform
| specific stuff. If another competitor gets those markets,
| that will hurt for a long time.
| jvol83 wrote:
| According to Tom's hardware analysis the CMP gpus are
| leftover Turing architecture that would otherwise have
| gone to the now less desirable GTX 1660 Ti, or 2080 Ti.
|
| And when they are finally using the new Ampere silicon,
| it's likely those chips that did not pass QA for being
| made into a RTX 3080.
|
| So they are getting rid of overstock/dead stock already.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Scalpers hurt literally everyone._
|
| They help people who are willing to pay the higher prices,
| and they provide a market signal encouraging producers to
| increase output.
| eropple wrote:
| There _is_ no additional output.
| beckingz wrote:
| The issue is that production is inelastic compared to
| demand, so scalping provides no additional value and
| creates higher prices by making demand seem even higher.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Aren't scalpers only there because the product is clearly
| underpriced? Why not increase prices till the scalpers are
| gone or simply auction the GPUs off? That's clearly what
| the market is pointing at.
| matwood wrote:
| The scalpers are there because the supply of cards is too
| low. There is a global supply crunch for pretty much
| everything right now, but Nvidia also doesn't want to
| build out supply for something (mining) which they
| consider a short term issue.
|
| Increasing supply is the way to get rid of scalpers.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Absolutely - if they wanted they could make a killing
| (short term) and auction to Eth farms.
|
| That said, they are trying to preserve market / mind
| share in the longer term with existing customers (gamers,
| AI/ML) and partners (OEMs etc). And those folks aren't
| ready to pay the crypto price point.
|
| So they are giving up short term money (from auctions
| etc) for ideally long term market share.
| shados wrote:
| Normally I'd agree (eg: I think limited concert tickets
| should simply be auctioned off).
|
| This is a little trickier. You have a consumer grade
| product aimed at a mass market segment (gamers) being
| used as a glorified financial market device (crypto).
|
| You could just sell it at whatever price people are
| willing to pay for (crypto) and make a big buck. You'd
| likely wreck the gaming industry in the process. If you
| feel the crypto market is there to stay forever and that
| it's your best bet as a manufacturer going forward, it
| could possibly be a good move.
|
| If you think its a temporary fad though, that the gaming
| market has a larger long term return (if it's allowed to
| thrive), and that this setback, even if temporary, is
| harmful to your long term plan, then it's an issue. If
| you think that the gaming industry beyond the GPU market
| (eg: streaming grids) have value, and you want to foster
| those because it will make more money in the long run,
| then the current situation isn't looking so good.
|
| What it looks like is a large public company thinking
| more than quarter to quarter for once. It's actually kind
| of confusing, but that's what it looks like to my
| untrained eyes.
| [deleted]
| jhauris wrote:
| Short term they could make a lot of money that way, but
| then they may lose gamers who will likely still want gpus
| after miners no longer need them. It's not a one off
| transaction.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Because the scalpers _won't_ go away. There will always
| be some poor sap willing to pay double market value for a
| scalped product.
| drdeca wrote:
| If they were being auctioned in the first place, why
| wouldn't that person just buy it in the auction
| originally?
| XorNot wrote:
| That's not the point: the point is that Nvidia want to
| still have regular customers who, when they think "I need
| a gaming rig" think "Nvidia".
|
| If Nvidia becomes "GPUs are cryptominers", then once
| demand dries up, their marketshare is zilch, and no one's
| writing games optimized for Nvidia cards anymore, and
| there's a big pile of bugs they've not fixed with new
| games trying to use Nvidia cards.
| paulmd wrote:
| Even worse, consoles aren't having these availability
| problems. If you buy a console, and you start building a
| games library, making friends who you play with on a
| daily basis (and you usually cannot crossplay between
| consoles and PC due to skill differences between
| controller/m+kb, sometimes it works with a controller on
| PC but most of the time it doesn't) then you are now
| locked into that ecosystem. You aren't buying a NVIDIA 40
| series card, you are buying a PS5 Pro. The longer this
| goes on, the more customers NVIDIA is losing _in the long
| term_.
|
| Inventory levels for consoles aren't quite normalized and
| available but with a stock tracking discord you can have
| a decent shot at getting a notice, going to a website,
| and successfully checking out if you hurry. In contrast
| you have zero shot at GPUs as a human, there are "cook
| groups" (the same groups that buy up fancy sneakers and
| scalp them) using backdoor exploits and botnets or
| networks of proxies embedded in browser addons, and the
| hardware is literally are gone the second it's up, or
| even before.
|
| Rather notoriously, one of the cook groups got ahold of
| the DigitalRiver item IDs for the 3080 before the launch,
| and they used API requests to poke orders into the
| backend. So the items sold out before the listing even
| went up on the website. That is emblematic of the
| problem, every mechanism is being probed and any backdoor
| is being used to punch in orders before humans can get
| them. There are exploits and botnets and proxies being
| used and everything, hugely organized and sophisticated
| operations.
|
| Every major retailer and every AIB partner (Zotac, Asus,
| etc) is heavily botted to the point where you stand no
| chance unless you pay for a $600/mo sneakerbot.
| fsn4dN69ey wrote:
| To be honest, I used a Telegram alerts group (Brobot) for
| 3090s and 5950Xs and was able to get both within a week
| of trying. There were only a couple opportunities but I
| managed to get 2x3090s and a 5950x within those windows.
| It's definitely doable, just very annoying. I'd rather
| get a spot in line than race to be through the door every
| time.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Sounds pretty exactly like PS5 availability
| [deleted]
| microtherion wrote:
| > Even worse, consoles aren't having these availability
| problems.
|
| Have you tried buying a PS5 lately?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This is missing half the story. Yes, things can be
| temporarily underpriced and then an appeal to scalpers
| makes sense, as scalpers can instantly raise the price to
| the market clearing rate. But at the same time they can
| instantly _lower_ the price to the market clearing rate.
|
| What manufacturers and consumers both want is price
| stability. They want prices to change in regular
| intervals and in predictable amounts. Both producers and
| consumers, but much more producers than consumers, need
| to make long range plans which require stable pricing. So
| when the iPhone first came out there was huge demand. Why
| didn't Apple auction the phones off? Because Apple wanted
| to anchor expectations for what the phone would cost over
| the long term. They certainly did not want consumers
| thinking that if they waited the phone would become
| cheaper. Thus they did not want consumers to think the
| phone's price was subject to a daily auction. Instead,
| it's better for Apple to have occasional shortages than
| to let people think that iPhone pricing will be moving up
| and down a lot. That allows consumers to make long term
| plans as well.
|
| So manufacturers want stable pricing, they want happy
| consumers, and they don't want surprises. Consumers want
| the same thing. That's why people hate scalpers. You can
| draw all the supply demand curves you want, but that
| doesn't change the fact that people need to make long
| range plans, and this requires stable pricing.
| lmm wrote:
| But "scalpers" are the people who stabilise prices, by
| buying when it's cheap and selling when it's expensive.
| (Remember that a nominal low price that you can't
| actually buy at is worse for the consumer than a high
| price that's actually available).
| [deleted]
| asddubs wrote:
| c.2) let's produce huge amount of e-waste once coins drop
| again
| kbenson wrote:
| > Scalpers hurt literally everyone.
|
| Not entirely true, and also not accepting that one person's
| "scalper" is another person's "bought this but decided I
| would rather have the money it seems to be worth now that I
| see how much this is".
|
| Secondary markets provide liquidity, allow for original
| sellers to trade money for time, provide reputational
| protection based on societal perceptions (this one is a bit
| weird, and maybe the less defensible of the reasons.
| Selling your own inventory on a secondary market to avoid
| negative press for high prices is thwarting normal market
| information principles, IMO), etc.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Yeah I always find it interesting that statements like
| that ("scalpers hurt literally everyone") can just be
| made and treated as gospel by most people. Not only is
| the statement not self-evident, but to your point, just a
| small amount of thought on the issue makes it obvious
| what the value is.
|
| People love to get mad at a scapegoat rather than a root
| cause. So you blame the scalper rather than realizing
| that the concert you bought the ticket for set their
| prices way too low - perhaps because selling at the
| "true" price (somewhere between the sticker value and the
| scalped value) - would generate negative goodwill, or it
| would give the perception that an event (say Coachella as
| the classic example) is only "for rich people". The irony
| is of course that selling at an artificially low price
| doesn't suddenly make it not for rich people, it just
| adds a small random chance that you'll be able to convert
| your own time sitting there refreshing the website across
| many browsers into a cheaper-than-it-should-be ticket.
| But functionally the vast majority of people end up
| buying from scalpers or at least at a slightly above
| sticker price.
|
| There's a related discussion about so-called "price
| gouging". IMO it's the classic scalper argument but just
| in a different form. Price gouging laws are not just
| immoral but are actively ineffective at their stated
| purpose; they just lead to the hypothetical price-gouge
| transaction never occurring. If you drive across state
| lines to bring HAM radios or water filters or what-have-
| you during hurricane katrina, and try to sell at above
| market rate, you'll be tossed in jail and your goods will
| be seized by the police, rather than making it out to the
| people who actually need them and are willing to pay 2x
| or 3x the usual price.
|
| TL;DR: We've all got these twisted beliefs about how
| pricing works or the law of supply and demand, an
| illusion supported by the fact that our respective
| societies are so technologically/economically advanced
| that we can have massive supermarkets where you buy
| commoditized items that you can get at reasonably similar
| prices anywhere. Whereas if you go back in history to a
| pre-industrial time, a form of pseudo-bartering was the
| default and there was not this idea of a commodity, but
| rather every transaction, every buyer:seller relationship
| etc was a unique and non-commoditized interaction and
| thus it wouldn't seem weird to have different prices for
| different people or different prices at different points
| in time, etc.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The irony is of course that selling at an artificially
| low price doesn't suddenly make it not for rich people,
| it just adds a small random chance that you'll be able to
| convert your own time sitting there refreshing the
| website across many browsers into a cheaper-than-it-
| should-be ticket.
|
| That depends on the level of demand and how low the price
| is.
|
| It's pretty easy to have a situation where the number of
| tickets available is higher than the number of people
| that would have bought tickets for themselves on day one,
| but you hit immediate shortages when scalpers are also
| buying.
|
| In a situation like that, scalpers are doing almost all
| harm. They add liquidity to a situation that already had
| enough liquidity, and extract tons of money in exchange.
|
| > If you drive across state lines to bring HAM radios or
| water filters or what-have-you during hurricane katrina
|
| That's the positive case. The negative case is someone
| buying it and putting it in their garage, or a store
| vastly increasing the price on something people need and
| they already had.
|
| If you're trying to get paid for your labor, like driving
| essential supplies around, I would not call that gouging
| in the first place.
| kbenson wrote:
| > It's pretty easy to have a situation where the number
| of tickets available is higher than the number of people
| that would have bought tickets for themselves on day one,
| but you hit immediate shortages when scalpers are also
| buying.
|
| But the total number of people buying tickets is the
| same, all that's happen is it's being temporally shifted
| for the gain of the people that can afford to do so. This
| _only_ works because the actual offered price of the
| tickets if far below that real cost people are willing to
| pay. If tickets were initially offered at an accurate
| price, there would be no money to be made buying them for
| resale (well, almost. There 's still the option for
| artist demand to change over time with popularity).
|
| There's only a few solutions to a supply and demand
| market problem where demand far outstrips supply that
| actually seem to work. Increase supply, or decrease
| demand. This has actually been done by some artists and
| solved the problem. Kid Rock, for example is known to
| play a large number of dates at a location, inundating
| with supply to the point only the best tickets can be
| sold for appreciable markup. Like, in his home town of
| Detroit, I think he played between 7 and 11 consecutive
| days in a stadium. Other artists will add dates after the
| initial sale depending on demand (which often destroys
| broker profits unless all those dates sell out too).
|
| > In a situation like that, scalpers are doing almost all
| harm. They add liquidity to a situation that already had
| enough liquidity, and extract tons of money in exchange.
|
| How good the liquidity there was and how much harm the
| brokers caused depends on how accurately demand matched
| supply. If there were 1000 ticket and 1000 people would
| ahve eventually bought them, then the brokers didn't
| really help. At the same time, they probably aren't going
| to make much money, since 1000 people willing to pay $40
| doesn't necessarily mean those 1000 people are willing to
| pay $60, and given that reseller exchanges charge about
| 10% of the sale cost, they need to charge a lot more to
| make a profit. Brokers don't tend to want to buy for
| events where they can't really make money, so they try to
| avoid these events.
|
| Alternatively, if the event has more tickets than
| consumers to buy them, brokers don't want to buy those
| either. Sometimes they do, and they sell at below market,
| sometimes well below market, just to recoup some of their
| money (having 20 tickets of 1000 at the event you bought
| for $40 when there's still 200 for sale on the primary
| market when the event is in a week means lots of tickets
| for sale for $20 or way less).
|
| Finally, there's events where there's a lot more
| consumers than there are tickets. Perhaps there weren't
| enough tickets at the sale day to sell out immediately.
| It would have sold out well before the event date though,
| because there are way more consumers than tickets. In
| this case, at that point liquidity would have dried up.
| Brokers provide liquidity over the lifetime of the event.
| That's what they provide, and for that they extract
| money. There's a debate to be had as to whether they
| provide enough value for that service, but it's false to
| say the event had "enough liquidity", as if there was
| enough liquidity there would be no margin for brokers to
| make money, especially not the 10% cost on sale price
| needed to make a profit on the exchanges.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > But the total number of people buying tickets is the
| same, all that's happen is it's being temporally shifted
| for the gain of the people that can afford to do so. This
| only works because the actual offered price of the
| tickets if far below that real cost people are willing to
| pay. If tickets were initially offered at an accurate
| price, there would be no money to be made buying them for
| resale (well, almost. There's still the option for artist
| demand to change over time with popularity).
|
| "all" that's happening, no. Causing people to pay more,
| even if they're willing to pay more, means they get less
| benefit out of the transaction.
|
| > Finally, there's events where there's a lot more
| consumers than there are tickets. Perhaps there weren't
| enough tickets at the sale day to sell out immediately.
| It would have sold out well before the event date though,
| because there are way more consumers than tickets. In
| this case, at that point liquidity would have dried up.
| Brokers provide liquidity over the lifetime of the event.
| That's what they provide, and for that they extract
| money. There's a debate to be had as to whether they
| provide enough value for that service, but it's false to
| say the event had "enough liquidity", as if there was
| enough liquidity there would be no margin for brokers to
| make money, especially not the 10% cost on sale price
| needed to make a profit on the exchanges.
|
| There would have been enough liquidity for the people
| that cared about the event to be able to purchase. That's
| _enough_ liquidity. There is more liquidity now, and the
| benefit is that some of the people who didn 't care very
| much get tickets too. This is a benefit, but it's not
| worth the downsides that the average amount paid goes up
| so much and that a bunch of people that were ready to buy
| a ticket on day one are now excluded.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| More often than not price gouging just makes things
| worse. During the early days of the pandemic you couldn't
| find toilet paper in stores, but there were people set up
| one the road side willing to sell it you for crazy
| prices. Did these people manage to setup an international
| supply chain to furnish their road side store? Almost
| certainly not, they cleaned out the supermarkets ahead of
| other people.
|
| The same thing happened with the colonial pipeline hack.
| andechs wrote:
| > moral but are actively ineffective at their stated
| purpose; they just lead to the hypothetical price-gouge
| transaction never occurring. If you drive across state
| lines to bring HAM radios or water filters or what-have-
| you during hurricane katrina, and try to sell at above
| market rate, you'll be tossed in jail and your goods will
| be seized by the police, rather than making it out to the
| people who actually need them and are willing to pay 2x
| or 3x the usual price.
|
| The reason is they don't want private individuals
| entering danger zones just to make a buck - a profiteer
| could easily end up a victim from the dangerous
| situation.
| jtbayly wrote:
| So now emergency workers aren't allowed to be paid.
| Congrats.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| What?
|
| "emergency workers" are not "private individuals".
| jtbayly wrote:
| The reasoning against private citizens was that taking
| risk to make money was inappropriate. That applies
| equally to emergency workers.
|
| And by the way, many workers during emergencies _are_
| just private citizens.
| lazide wrote:
| Do you have any data on that 'majority of people buy from
| scalpers' claim?
|
| One reason for anti price gouging laws is that it is not
| uncommon for people to buy out all supply, then turn
| around and charge more/sit on a stockpile to solve the
| artificially created shortage they themselves created - a
| term for that being 'cornering the market'.
|
| I haven't generally seen too much anger at someone
| legitimately opening up supply by importing more or
| opening up more supply lines (especially if they say
| that's what they're doing). People have been pretty open
| to paying more in that case (albeit maybe not 10x more,
| though that is more because it's hard to plausibly have
| such an increase in cost without literally airdropping
| supplies - which is a different beast).
| selectodude wrote:
| There's no shortage of people who tried to pull that and
| ended up with tens of thousands of dollars worth of
| toilet paper and hand sanitizer last year. If there's not
| an actual shortage, merely a demand shock, trying to
| corner a market will not go well for you.
| lazide wrote:
| And many more that made millions. The ones that get
| caught get penalized in public/shamed, but there are many
| more that were not - I personally saw many amazon sellers
| doing it for months without any apparently penalty.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| > Not entirely true, and also not accepting that one
| person's "scalper" is another person's "bought this but
| decided I would rather have the money it seems to be
| worth now that I see how much this is".
|
| That's a bit of a straw man, literally no one considers
| that scalping. It's generally understood to mean buying
| more of scarce product than you could ever possibly need
| with the intent to sell it at a massive markup.
|
| Scalpers are parasitic rent seekers in the digital age.
| They do nothing to improve the logistics or liquidity of
| markets. They merely seek to monopolise supply to extract
| profit from consumers for a product they did not produce.
| kbenson wrote:
| > That's a bit of a straw man, literally no one considers
| that scalping. It's generally understood to mean buying
| more of scarce product than you could ever possibly need
| with the intent to sell it at a massive markup.
|
| That is by no means the accepted definition, nor an apt
| description. I know people that bought two PS3's when
| they came out in 2006, one to play, one to sell. That is
| generally accepted as "scalping", but they were not
| buying more than they could ever possibly need.
|
| Many, _many_ people that participate in the resale market
| are people acting like this. They buy tickets for
| themselves and some extra ones while they 're at it
| because they were lucky enough to by available at the
| right time and/or get lucky. Sometimes they also do it
| for the occassional event or good they don't plan to use.
|
| These are "scalpers" in every single single sense of the
| word, and the only difference between them and someone
| that makes a business out of it is scale.
|
| > Scalpers are parasitic rent seekers in the digital age.
| They do nothing to improve the logistics or liquidity of
| markets. They merely seek to monopolise supply to extract
| profit from consumers for a product they did not produce.
|
| Scalpers are just brokers that work in a different
| product. They make money by arbitrage, where the primary
| sales market is underselling a good compared to the
| secondary sales market. Additionally, they provide
| accurate market pricing because people responsible in the
| primary market don't want to for whatever reason (common
| ones includes upsetting ones fans, it being more work,
| harder to work out contract payments, etc).
|
| And lest you think it's easy to just point at
| scalpers/brokers and at all the money they make because
| they're selling a $50 ticket for $200, consider that
| those are the extreme cases, and relatively few tickets
| go for that. There's also many tickets that go under
| cost. In the same event. By significant amounts. It's not
| uncommon to get tickets for 20% cheaper on stubhub. In
| some cases, when brokers have bought tickets and the
| event didn't sell out, you can find tickets for single
| digit dollars that went for $40+ originally.
|
| I've talked about this before here.[1] In that example, I
| pointed to the market conditions for a specific event at
| that exact moment, where the primary market
| (TicketMaster) wasn't sold out and charging $39.50,
| TicketMaster's own secondary market was charging $36.50
| for the same tickets, and Stubhub was charging $27. Who
| reaps the benefit of getting tickets for more than a 25%
| discount? Who do you think ended up paying for that?
| Where do you think the funds came from to pay for that?
| (here's a hint, you need to make an occasional 200%-300%
| profit in that business to break even over the long run
| in a lot of cases)
|
| Here's another question, why and how is this different
| than the stock market, and in the ways it's different,
| how does it matter to the perspective you're expressing?
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18027560
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| > These are "scalpers" in every single single sense of
| the word, and the only difference between them and
| someone that makes a business out of it is scale.
|
| You're right they are scalpers; they are buying more than
| needed with the hope of making a quick buck.
|
| However, like most things it's a matter of degree. Your
| friends were acting in the wrong and in the aggregate
| they did harm the market, but the people doing it
| professionally cause the most harm individually and hence
| tend to raise the most ire.
|
| > Scalpers are just brokers that work in a different
| product. They make money by arbitrage, where the primary
| sales market is underselling a good compared to the
| secondary sales market.
|
| They create scarcity in the primary market, which forces
| people into the secondary market. If scalpers did not
| exist, then the same number of people would get tickets,
| but there would be a greater welfare gain for consumers.
|
| > And lest you think it's easy to just point at
| scalpers/brokers and at all the money they make because
| they're selling a $50 ticket for $200, consider that
| those are the extreme cases, and relatively few tickets
| go for that. There's also many tickets that go under
| cost.
|
| They may be taking some risk in their venture, but
| they're still not providing any value. They are needless
| middlemen in a market that already sells direct to
| consumers. Also the cases are not that 'extreme', ask
| anyone trying to buy a graphics card right now, gasoline
| a week ago, or toilet paper when Covid-19 was starting
| up.
|
| > Who do you think ended up paying for that? Where do you
| think the funds came from to pay for that? (here's a
| hint, you need to make an occasional 200%-300% profit in
| that business to break even over the long run in a lot of
| cases)
|
| Presumably they are claiming a bigger share of the
| welfare pie than they are giving, else they wouldn't be
| participating in the market.
|
| > Here's another question, why and how is this different
| than the stock market, and in the ways it's different,
| how does it matter to the perspective you're expressing?
|
| The stock market has a social purpose. It provides a
| means for companies to raise capital to undertake
| investment. The market system is theorised to be the most
| efficient means to allocate this capital.
|
| The scalpers don't serve a social purpose, they merely
| extract welfare from transactions that would have
| otherwise favoured consumers.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Your friends were acting in the wrong and in the
| aggregate they did harm the market
|
| Please explain this harm to the market. I don't see how
| the market was harmed in any way.
|
| > They create scarcity in the primary market, which
| forces people into the secondary market.
|
| There _exists_ scarcity in the primary market, because
| otherwise there would be no benefit to buying the
| tickets. That 's a fundamental misunderstanding you have.
| Resellers do not generally create demand, they capitalize
| on existing or future demand.
|
| > the same number of people would get tickets, but there
| would be a greater welfare gain for consumers.
|
| Define "welfare gain". I contend there is also welfare
| gain for consumers with a secondary market, but not
| necessarily the same consumers. The primary market
| prioritized people that are available at certain times
| and have money available at the initial sale time. The
| secondary market prioritizes people that may not have
| been available at the initial sale time at the cost of a
| more variable cost.
|
| You can contend that your group of consumer is better or
| more worth than the group I've defined, but if that's
| your goal, please do so. Otherwise, a secondary market
| provides access for at _least_ the same number of people,
| and sometimes more, as it 's possible (and likely) that
| while some tickets might go at a premium, some others
| might go at a discount because of poorly executed
| strategies by brokers.
|
| > They may be taking some risk in their venture, but
| they're still not providing any value.
|
| They are. That are providing access. Without a secondary
| market, after the last primary market ticket was sold, it
| would be impossible to buy tickets to that event. Even if
| you allowed a secondary market but somehow restricted it
| to only those that intended to go but could not, you
| would shut out all those that wanted to go but could not
| be available to buy tickets during the period it was
| initially on sale on the primary market. For some events
| that's as short as a few seconds (and yes, even without
| brokers).
|
| > They are needless middlemen in a market that already
| sells direct to consumers.
|
| So is Amazon. So is your local Supermarket. So is any
| fresh fruit or produce market for that matter. I mean you
| can just drive to the farm, right? I hope you only like
| your produce and fruit in season, because people that
| warehouse it to sell at times when the market isn't flush
| with that product are just needless middlemen in a market
| that sells direct, right?
|
| > Presumably they are claiming a bigger share of the
| welfare pie than they are giving, else they wouldn't be
| participating in the market.
|
| If all you prioritize is cost, then you're not serving
| people very well. The very nature of a market is that the
| many diverse needs of the buyers will be served by
| different sellers that offer slightly different
| incentives for different costs. If we only prioritized
| for cost in food, we'd all be eating rice and beans every
| night and that's all that would be grown. Instead people
| prioritize taste, and nutrition, and health, and we have
| an actual market. If we only prioritized for cost in
| vehicles, we'd all be driving either a bicycle or a
| stripped down motorcycle, because who cares about comfort
| or safety?
|
| > The market system is theorised to be the most efficient
| means to allocate this capital.
|
| The market system is theorized to be the most efficient
| means to alloow buyers with diverse needs find a seller
| that can provide those needs. Sometimes that's cost,
| sometimes it's something else.
|
| > The scalpers don't serve a social purpose
|
| I've outlined some already above. To repeat, they provide
| liquidity, meaning there is availability of tickets at a
| cost people are willing to pay more often than without
| them. They provide the ability to find the true value of
| a ticket at any time, rather than the fiat price that was
| offered initially. This can mean that tickets are
| available for cheaper than originally offered for (see my
| real life example noted earlier).
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > So is Amazon
|
| You lost your entire argument right there. Amazon doesn't
| price gouge, and buys with the express intent to sell
| with reasonable margins to customers. They provider
| valuable services, like customer service and fast
| delivery. Scalpers provide jack shit value other than
| trying to rip off customers because they got something
| first, while offering no other value to customers.
|
| > they provide liquidity
|
| No, they don't. They steal liquidity, and sell items at
| markups while offering no other value to customers. None.
| Zero.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Amazon doesn't price gouge
|
| I didn't say they did. But by the argument of the GP,
| they are often (depending on the product) "needless
| middlemen in a market that already sells direct to
| consumers", which is what I was responding to.
|
| > They steal liquidity
|
| They offer stuff for sale in markets which would have
| nothing for sale at other times (because if supply didn't
| outstrip demand, there would be no profit to be made).
| That is liquidity where it might not have existed
| previously.
|
| I understand not liking scalping. I don't necessarily
| like it (I would prefer there was enough supply to
| satisfy demand). But there's a difference between not
| liking something and not understanding it and denying the
| reality of it. You can't stop it without understanding
| what makes people buy things to resell at a profit, why
| others are willing to pay that extra amount, and why
| there aren't enough of that thing to go around in the
| first place which allows it to happen.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| And you didn't provide any argument against them being
| "needless middlemen". Many middlemen are not needless,
| like Amazon, where a value is provided that benefits
| manufacturers, distributors, warehouses, sellers, and
| buyers. Some asshole buying tickets or PS5's specifically
| to resell with massive price hikes is not a valuable
| middleman providing a valuable service. They're a leech,
| forcing themselves into the middle of a transaction they
| didn't belong in the first place to steal value from both
| sides of the marketplace.
|
| HBO was a perfect example of this. Cable companies acted
| as the middlemen, because HBO didn't have the staff or
| inhouse expertise to operate a direct-to-consumer facing
| product. Now they do, but cable companies can still offer
| services that make their participation as middlemen
| sustainable and desirable for some consumers.
|
| > That is liquidity where it might not have existed
| previously.
|
| It did exist, only it was stolen by scalpers. They're not
| creating value out of thin air. They're not
| redistributing assets geographically to make them more
| accessible, or offering secondary insurance or warranties
| that make choosing them a smart option. They're stealing
| opportunities from actual customers looking to purchase a
| service or good, but instead are forced to secondary
| markets because of rent-seeking parasites.
| VMG wrote:
| Scalpers only exist in markets where somebody is selling
| products below value.
|
| Without scalpers, the product is distributed by sheer
| luck like a lottery, or being well-connected and knowing
| somebody who has early access to the product.
|
| You can argue that a lottery mechanism or being well-
| connected is more fair that having the necessary money.
| There are a lot of people in planned economies where
| everything from food to housing to transportation works
| that way, and they would probably disagree.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Not entirely true, and also not accepting that one
| person's "scalper" is another person's "bought this but
| decided I would rather have the money it seems to be
| worth now that I see how much this is".
|
| Even just dropping resales to one GPU per person per year
| would make an enormous difference, let alone if it was
| limited to people that genuinely bought the one GPU for
| themselves.
| kbenson wrote:
| It doesn't work. It's unenforceable without the
| government to enforce it, and even then people will skirt
| it.
|
| Rules constraining how a market functions often don't
| work or have unintended consequences. The only _real_
| solution is to attack supply and /or demand. A rule
| limiting how many a person can buy doesn't actually
| affect demand, it just affects that market's ability to
| respond to demand. You get people that circumvent that,
| and if it's onerous enough you'll get a secondary market
| where they cost more but there's no limit on the amount
| you can buy, if there wasn't one already.
|
| That is, it's restrictions on a free market which create
| secondary markets. If the price was constantly in flux
| base don demand, there would be no secondary market
| because it would provide nothing over the primary one.
|
| People don't want that though, because we've been
| conditioned over the last century to expect prices to be
| stable because we've had large companies that decided to
| innovate and compete in other areas that decided pricing
| things accurately based on real world local conditions. I
| mean, I understand, I'm the same way. I don't want to
| walk into a store and find the thing I went to buy is
| twice as expensive as it was yesterday.
|
| I do think that's a more natural and sustainable state
| though, as long as market principles are actually
| prioritized though, instead of just being paid lip
| service (having one entity control a large chunk of a
| market is bad, and so is making it hard to reason about
| items and features in a market, as competition and
| information are the life-blood of free-markets).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > It doesn't work. It's unenforceable without the
| government to enforce it, and even then people will skirt
| it.
|
| Okay, but when I said "dropping" I wasn't talking about a
| rule, I was using that to demonstrate the problem.
|
| > A rule limiting how many a person can buy doesn't
| actually affect demand, it just affects that market's
| ability to respond to demand.
|
| There's a nearly fixed supply, because no amount of
| demand can affect the shortages.
|
| There's a nearly fixed demand, because _enough_ of the
| cards are going to be sold at MSRP to keep stoking it.
|
| In a situation like that, someone arbitraging the prices
| is not helping supply and demand meet, they're just
| making a profit.
|
| You want _some_ amount of secondary market so that the
| people that very badly need a card can pay extra to get
| one now. But a tiny percent of cards going onto ebay is
| enough to fulfill that role. If half the cards end up
| massively marked up on ebay, it doesn 't help allocate
| them more efficiently in any significant way, it just
| takes more money from people.
| kbenson wrote:
| > when I said "dropping" I wasn't talking about a rule, I
| was using that to demonstrate the problem.
|
| How is restricting activity not a rule? I don't think it
| would demonstrate the problem at all because I don't
| think it would actually do much (most people would ignore
| it). Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you meant originally
| or mean here?
|
| > There's a nearly fixed supply, because no amount of
| demand can affect the shortages.
|
| If demand dropped to the point below supply it wouldn't
| be a shortage.
|
| > There's a nearly fixed demand, because enough of the
| cards are going to be sold at MSRP to keep stoking it.
|
| > In a situation like that, someone arbitraging the
| prices is not helping supply and demand meet, they're
| just making a profit.
|
| Sure they are. Without a secondary market and with a
| primary market that is fixed-price and a limited supply,
| after demand meets supply, _nobody_ gets any more of that
| product, which means there 's zero liquidity. With a
| secondary market, people re-sell for a profit, and the
| market has liquidity again. The people that want it are
| able to get it as long as they are willing to pay the
| extra amount. It's possible to buy the item where it
| would not be previously.
|
| > You want some amount of secondary market so that the
| people that very badly need a card can pay extra to get
| one now. But a tiny percent of cards going onto ebay is
| enough to fulfill that role. If half the cards end up
| massively marked up on ebay, it doesn't help allocate
| them more efficiently in any significant way, it just
| takes more money from people.
|
| I agree. I just don't think you can do anything about it
| usefully except to try to increase supply or reduce
| demand through various means. Everything else I've seen
| fails or has unintended consequences (which are hard to
| reason about ahead of time because they are by nature
| unintended).
|
| I'm not arguing free markets always produce a _good_
| outcome, but I do think they generally provide the _best
| outcome you can expect_ given the environment without
| relinquishing all control (and I think central planning
| only works for limited scopes and limited time frames).
|
| The simple solution is to just increase the price of
| these cards to what the market deems they are worth, and
| the resale market problem goes away. The problem is that
| nobody (even me) really _wants_ that, I 'm just willing
| to say that while I don't want it for various reasons, it
| does solve the problem. It does that by reducing demand
| by increasing the price.
| Nursie wrote:
| > It doesn't work. It's unenforceable without the
| government to enforce it
|
| It seems to be working pretty well here in the UK
| actually, for nvidia's Founders Edition cards. They have
| a relationship with a single retailer, and you can buy
| one card.
|
| Yes, people can circumvent it to a small extent, but not
| that easily.
|
| You're just parroting your free-market religion here.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| I guess the issue is, let's say you're doing something in
| CUDA, and the program uses $FOO, something commonly used by
| miners. Never mind that you're not mining any kind of
| cryptocurrency, the card or driver will decide that because
| you did $FOO, you're mining and gimp your work, or, let's say
| that they doubled down further, shut it down completely.
| amelius wrote:
| Meanwhile, Nvidia doesn't allow you to use your graphics card
| in a datacenter/machine learning setup. You need a special
| license for that.
|
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nvidia-updates-
| ge...
|
| So let's not pretend that Nvidia is acting in the interest of
| their clients at all times.
| creato wrote:
| One could argue this is the exact same thing: protecting
| their long-time customers from a small number of big
| customers (datacenters) that can afford to dramatically
| out-price their gamer customers temporarily, but might
| disappear (if they develop their own hardware?) not too
| long from now.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think it's more that Nvidia knows datacenter customers
| have the money to pay a premium for "datacenter grade"
| products.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Isn't that kind of the point? If consumers and
| enterprises were competing for the same product, we would
| probably see a similar situation as we are with consumers
| and miners.
| babypuncher wrote:
| We would also see higher prices for consumers, since
| Nvidia would need to crank up higher profit margin a bit
| on their RTX cards to make the same average profit per
| chip sold without their high margin Quadro cards going to
| enterprise.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I suppose the "long term customers" for these GPUs are
| gamers, right? Don't they also come and go? I don't
| particularly follow this as I'm not really into games, but it
| seems to me that AMD has had quite an impressive growth
| recently. Does that mainly come from people new to the
| market? I'm actually a "new to the market" buyer, and I
| bought an AMD mostly because I'm mainly a Linux user and
| didn't want to take any chances with nvidia given the horror
| stories I've seen floating around these parts.
|
| The issue with the GPU market is that since it's a duopoly,
| customers don't really have anywhere else to go. My
| impression is that people mostly bounce between the two. I'm
| not sure how many people have that much of a "brand loyalty",
| especially since this is the "enthusiast sector", so I guess
| people don't just buy whatever they find at the corner store.
|
| To me, this looks more like market segmentation, the same way
| that you can't run virtualization on their consumer products,
| and you can't have ECC RAM on consumer intel chips. I really
| don't think they're doing this from the goodness of their
| hearts towards those poor gamers who are priced out of the
| market, but because they figured that miners would be ready
| to pay more. Which is pretty obvious, since scalpers are
| managing to sell those at outrageous prices, someone has to
| be buying them, right?
| lacker wrote:
| It isn't the "goodness of their hearts", Nvidia just wants
| to maintain their position as the market leader in the
| markets that will be there for a long time. Gamers is one
| such market. Some gamers are loyal to a particular brand of
| graphics card, but there are also just network effects to
| being the most popular. Game designers spend extra effort
| making sure their games work well on the most popular video
| cards. Influential people like YouTubers, streamers, or
| game reviewers are more likely to buy elite hardware and
| talk about what they got.
|
| Market segmentation would only really make sense if Nvidia
| were capable of saturating all the demand from miners, and
| wanted to squeeze out some extra margin from them. But
| right now it doesn't seem like Nvidia is actually able to
| manufacture enough to meet the market demand at $800 like
| they initially intended.
| Qwertious wrote:
| It's a matter of loyalty - miners have _zero_ loyalty and
| will always buy whatever their spreadsheet says is
| cheapest.
|
| In contrast, gamers tend to stick with brands, and if
| they're _forced_ to switch due to lack of supply, their
| loyalty (and therefore future bias toward you company)
| might switch with it.
|
| So while miners may be willing to pay more money per card
| today, they're not worth the future loss of revenue.
|
| Like you said, you don't buy Nvidia because you're
| concerned about Nvidia support. If Nvidia was the _only
| option_ , you would likely decide "fuck it", deal with any
| Nvidia problems (and become more familiar with running
| Nvidia) and become less concerned about Nvidia problems in
| the future because you have more experience dealing with
| them. And that means AMD may have lost future sales to you.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Fair enough, I must have underestimated the loyalty part.
|
| Probably because I'm not much of a gamer and hardly have
| brand loyalty in general. I always tend to compare
| products and buy what seems to be the better value.
| chrisan wrote:
| > Don't they also come and go?
|
| Myself and most of my gaming friends have been buying
| nvidia cards for (soon to be) decades now.
|
| Basically since 3dfx went belly up
| babypuncher wrote:
| Gaming demand is fairly constant, while mining demand ebbs
| and flows with the value of cryptos. Last time this peaked
| was in early 2018.
|
| Nvidia knows their loyal, regular customers are PC gamers,
| so it's in their best interest to make sure these customers
| get the best buying experience to ensure they stay repeat
| customers.
| josefx wrote:
| Gamers need games to play and if gamers buy more AMD cards
| because high end NVIDIA is not an option then game
| developers will focus their efforts more towards AMD. Going
| by steam NVIDIA currently has three quarters of the PC
| Gaming market cornered, that is a lot of motivation to
| focus development on their hardware and an edge they do not
| want to loose.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
| slownews45 wrote:
| The ecosystem nvidia has built and maintains is a KEY
| differentiator.
|
| Basically, for machine learning, AMD is nowhere - the
| ecosystem is on nvidia (provided you can buy their stuff).
| If they can't deliver, then whatever crazy thing AMD is
| trying in this space (been a few tries) may take hold more.
| Getting developers access to nvidia becomes key then -
| games / machine learning tooling etc all then gravitates
| that way.
|
| For gaming you do end up with some options. Nvidia / AMD /
| Intel. Wide range here, but been pretty steady need for
| graphics including top end and lower end options. The OEM's
| are also customers in this space, everyone going to remote
| work with virtualized workloads as well if they need a
| graphics option there and more.
|
| Yes, they are segmenting, but in short run they are giving
| up $ they would get by selling all stuff with full Eth
| enabled and perhaps auctioning cards. They'd make a ton in
| short run, but a few user bases would abandon them. It
| really is not going to be good for their business if they
| have another 6 months of supply issues.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I don't think this is "recognizing customers", I think this
| is just sectioning markets. I'd dreading Nvidia crippling
| deep learning for all those not paying X more dollars (as the
| situation already is for server farms).
|
| Long term, the aim has to be selling cards by usage rather
| than by cost of production (obvious with the aim of prices
| higher than the cost of production by different amounts). How
| many people like Adobe's creative suite? Student software
| versus professional software, etc.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Def doing it for themselves, I see it in this case as
| customer base preservation. Most of their other approaches
| have tried to move users off their lower end products. This
| time they are trying to preserve lower end product
| availability (smart).
| knz_ wrote:
| > I'd dreading Nvidia crippling deep learning for all those
| not paying X more dollars (as the situation already is for
| server farms).
|
| This already changed years ago when NVIDIA removed the last
| non-crippled double and half precision GPUs from their
| product lineup. The cheapest GPU you can buy for ML now is
| the titan v, which was $3000 at launch.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Scientific calculation need double but ML don't need
| double, isn't it?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I'm only planning at this point - so I don't know but am
| very interested. I see the RTX 3080 reviewed as the most
| cost effective chip you can get for deep learning. I have
| the impression a lot of research is moving to lower
| precision also.
|
| https://timdettmers.com/2020/09/07/which-gpu-for-deep-
| learni...
| narism wrote:
| They have been going the other way recently: Titan V
| ($3000) -> Titan RTX ($2500) -> RTX 3090 ($1500). The
| 3090 beats the Titan RTX in double precision and is close
| to 2x in single precision.
| m463 wrote:
| I thought the miner cards were cheaper. They are set up for
| mining and don't have video out.
| minsc__and__boo wrote:
| Yep, this is designed products for specific markets that are
| currently being untapped.
|
| It's allows for a premium charge on crypto-enabled cards
| while still capturing the consumer market. It's a great
| solution.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| They have separate product lines for mining. I don't understand
| the complaint. NVIDIA probably gets a ton of complaints about
| miners "stealing" all of the GPU cards.
|
| I think it's perfectly reasonable for them segregate the
| capabilities for their varying consumers.
| godelski wrote:
| > Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level?
|
| Yes. A lot of what has angered me about the situation is that
| there's these claims that these companies are going to help us
| as consumers but aren't actually doing anything that helps us.
| It is just show. They know it, we know it. So stop saying
| you're on our side and stabbing us in the back. As an example,
| look at NewEgg's product shuffle. It is a clear scam and
| actively helps miners. Microcenter, BestBuy, Amazon, and
| everyone else does the same thing but NE is the worst because
| the bundling with useless stuff.
|
| You want to help consumers? I have 2 models for you:
|
| 1) Create a signup list (like EVGA, but just select the number,
| not this list for every variant). Send out cards as they come
| in.
|
| 2) Only sell cards once or twice a month and in large pools
| (many cards in stock). This way you have a reasonable quantity
| of cards to hand out for the high demand instead of the small
| quantity that bots are always going to get to first. It should
| take only basic statistics to understand this. If a bot has an
| 80% chance of getting a product first and a consumer 20% then
| we need a bigger pool to draw from, not more pools (with small
| number of cards). More (small) pools helps the bots and harms
| the consumers. Larger and less frequent pools results in a
| larger set of consumers getting the products.
|
| With these two models you can better fight bots and stock
| doesn't need to be on the shelves for long periods of time.
| 8note wrote:
| Is there any reason to sell GPUs for consumers to have in their
| computers anymore? The crypto folks seem more than happy to
| take all the GPUs at a premium, and consumers can use laptop
| integrated GPUs
| behringer wrote:
| Good luck getting a next gen AMD GPU for any reasonable price
| if NVidia successfully segments away the miners and AMD
| doesn't.
| swiley wrote:
| Meh. It's pretty consistent with Nvidia's behavior. If you
| don't like being Nvidia's bitch then buy AMD and use open
| source drivers.
|
| Sorry for the strong wording but if people didn't tolerate this
| crap from GPU vendors that would solve a _lot_ of problems
| everyone has. You mention attacks on personal computing, the
| main reason everyone is stuck with vendor provided Android
| system software on their phones is because the closed GPU
| drivers are heavily coupled with it. Otherwise lots of people
| would have dumped it when they crippled the file API and
| started creating problems for termux. Because of this there 's
| no real competition for iOS so Apple and Google can pretty much
| get away with whatever they want.
| Bancakes wrote:
| Nvidia can't make nvidia laptops run well on Linux but they
| sure can cripple all their drivers, huh. That's what they're
| good at.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Hardware manufactures already segment features between
| consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is
| capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what
| algorithms one can run is a whole new level.
|
| The silicon might also be capable of running the latest nvidia
| self driving ML models, yet you don't get that just because
| it's capable- you have to pay them $x so that they have the
| money to pay their engineers to develop those features (and pay
| the company directors, and shareholders, etc). It's the same
| for things like the professional quadro view software -
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-in/design-visualization/software/q...
| - there's only a compelling business case to make this software
| as a result of the higher margins they make on quadro cards.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The situation fascinates me. It's one heck of an expression of
| capitalist market forces. Gamers can't get computational
| capacity for their graphics, because the market-clearing price
| for computing is the value of the cryptocurrency that that GPU
| could be mining instead. Every pixel you calculate has an
| opportunity cost of that calculation's worth in cryptocurrency.
|
| Nvidia wants to serve gamers over miners, presumably to
| establish and maintain brand loyalty for future purchases. If
| they can't increase supply, the only other way is to reduce
| miner demand. That's their goal; this limitation is just a
| technical detail of implementing that. Hardware segmenting to
| serve different markets has been a thing forever and I don't
| see any reason to call this out as any worse.
|
| That said, I like that Nvidia and AMD are taking different
| approaches here. That's free market capitalism, let the
| invisible hand guide the outcome.
| standardUser wrote:
| I find the energy used in crypto mining to be a crime against
| humanity and support reasonable efforts to curtail it. Until we
| price in the externalities of using fossil fuel energy, no one
| should be wasting energy on this scale for such a spectacularly
| nonessential purpose.
| sekai wrote:
| Nonsense for you maybe, would you call flight travel, cruises
| crimes against humanity?
| standardUser wrote:
| Air travel and cruises provide unique and tangible
| benefits.
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| > this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing.
|
| An attack on general purpose computing that only affects the
| people who've completely fucked up the GPU market in service of
| one narrow, non-graphics use case?
|
| Cool story, bro.
| Keyframe wrote:
| I'd be worried a lot if it were for existing products, but this
| is a right move in my opinion. Drastic times, drastic measures.
| eugeniub wrote:
| No I don't care.
| fomine3 wrote:
| I generally against to restrict what can be calculated, but now
| I have mixed feelings in this horrible market situation. I wish
| RTX 4000 series don't implement this restriction.
| optymizer wrote:
| I woke up early back on launch day in October 2020 to buy a
| 3080 when they said it would be available. Couldn't get one.
| Periodically I'd check newegg and other sites to see if the
| shortage is gone. Nope, on 05/18 it's still out of stock
| everywhere. Throwing $750 on a piece of hardware to play games
| shouldn't be this horrendous of an experience. I for one am
| glad nVidia is doing something about it.
| Siira wrote:
| They should just raise the prices. Supply and demand, you
| know?
| babypuncher wrote:
| That is essentially what they are doing, but in a way that
| doesn't burn their long-term customers (PC gamers). There
| will be crypto ready SKUs of these cards sold at a
| considerably higher margin.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I don't think PC gaming should require you to be part of
| the top 10% in order to fairly price computer hardware
| between mostly foreign miners buying scores of chips whose
| primary contribution to society is using 129 TW hours
| annually and individual users buying a single GPU.
|
| As a selfish American I would rather we arrange for GPUs to
| be useless to a small number of users buying a large number
| of GPUS for mining in order for the much larger group of
| users to be able to afford one GPU.
|
| If this strategy is successful and AMD doesn't follow suit
| nvidia GPUs will basically be the only ones most people can
| afford and if mining collapses years later AMD wont have
| any marketshare left to lose in the consumer space.
|
| The only other way to still get their hardware in front of
| people who they want to keep a relationship going with will
| be via privileging OEMs over selling individual GPUs but in
| fact people are actually buying machines for the GPU and
| turning over the remaining GPU less machine in the consumer
| market.
|
| As it stands the whole situation is broken for the only
| buyers that are sure to be here in 10 years and I would
| rather it move towards sanity sooner rather than later.
| Siira wrote:
| Who knows about 10 years in the future; Perhaps crypto
| '10x's, and gamers move to cloud platforms. If the prices
| should be raised, after some years, the added margin will
| add competitors and increase the efficiency, thus making
| chips cheaper in the long-term. Anyhow, makes more sense
| to advocate for silicon subsidies, which helps with
| national geopolitics as well.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Cloud gaming suffers from inherent issues having to do
| with latency that are unsolvable. If you place a lot of
| expensive machines very close to users its not economical
| and if you put the machines further away from users the
| latency sucks.
|
| It's likely that PC gaming will spend the next 40 years
| the same way it spent the last 40 years. It's also
| immaterial anyway. We need to not kill the PC gaming
| industry this decade not try to bring it back from the
| dead like lazarus with tech that may never come through.
| The same thing is true of using tax payer money to
| incentivize production of silicon. It may make sense for
| a number of reasons but its not a solution to I can't buy
| a GPU now. Making it uneconomical for miners to use gamer
| cards solves the issue this year. Meanwhile we can
| subsidize production of silicon in the states and work
| going "to the cloud" with the gaming industry if it makes
| sense. It's not an either or.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Prices have been raised.
|
| You can buy an RTX 3080 right now if you want. It's just
| going to cost you $2500 or so because vendors and scalpers
| are capturing that markup.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Sounds like Nvidia hasn't actually raised the price. They
| could just auction this off from their website directly
| and cut out the middle man.
| topspin wrote:
| I don't know with certainty, but I believe NVidia has
| raised prices. I base this on the prices that appear on
| the sites of custom system vendors. Until recently you
| could get a complete machine from many builders with a
| GPU at something close to MSRP. Now you can't. These
| builders (the larger ones anyhow) don't buy from
| scalpers, so that means the device manufactures have
| raise their prices.
|
| Anyhow, that's my theory. Anyone have actual recent price
| lists for NVidia GPUs? Otherwise we're all just guessing.
| optymizer wrote:
| They do sell cards on their website and they also direct
| users to websites of other manufacturers (like eVGA). The
| problem is nVidia had no protection against orders being
| placed by bots at the first second the cards go on sale,
| so it was virtually impossible for a human to order the
| cards, so the middle men got all the cards.
|
| Between the high demand with gamers, scalpers with bots,
| and crypto farms gobbling up _graphics_ cards, the prices
| went up by an insane amount, and some people did pay
| double to get their hands on it.
| [deleted]
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| So, you think poor people shouldn't be allowed to play
| games?
| Siira wrote:
| I haven't had a good GPU myself once in my life. I still
| could play plenty of older games. You're just selfish and
| entitled.
| [deleted]
| akersten wrote:
| Yep, this enrages me. Deliberately introducing faults into a
| product to make it less appealing to one market segment in a
| desperate attempt to cover for their supply chain failure.
| Stinks to high heaven.
|
| In addition the detection is not magic (it can't be) so there
| are going to be false positives. Can't wait until my games
| start dropping frames 30 minutes in because the driver decided
| my competitive FPS was actually mining crypto.
|
| Imagine a headline like "Charmin introduces toilet paper that
| cannot be hoarded, to prevent shortages," and it's because the
| TP biodegrades after 6 months.
| 542458 wrote:
| GPUs have been doing this forever. This is exactly the same
| as some features being enabled on quadros that don't exist on
| RTX/GTX/GT cards. That's (mostly) not silicon, that's just
| firmware.
|
| This isn't covering any supply chain failures (despite what
| nvidia says, the number of available GPUs remains
| approximately fixed), it's just more market segmentation to
| minimize the secondhand mining GPU market and capture more
| dollars.
|
| I was also concerned about detection false positives, but as
| far as I can tell they're detecting a very specific algorithm
| that only gets used for ETH mining - there have been no false
| positives that I can see. Some miners are even working around
| the limiter by introducing obfuscation operations, but that
| comes with a hashrate cost of course.
| akersten wrote:
| > GPUs have been doing this forever though. This is exactly
| the same as some features being enabled on quadros that
| don't exist on RTX/GTX/GT cards.
|
| No, I think this is the first time a GPU has been
| heuristically trying to detect what you're doing and self-
| limiting in response. How is that equivalent to features
| just being literally off?
|
| There's no special "mine-crypto" instruction in the CUDA
| ISA.
|
| > there have been no false positives that I can see.
|
| How can you see that? These aren't released yet and the
| GTX-3060 isn't really a popular card among serious gamers
| that would notice.
| 542458 wrote:
| The 3060 has been out for a few months now, and it has
| the limiter. Re: your edit about noticing, I strongly
| disagree. Tech reviewers would LOVE to run the "limiter
| cripples Blender/Tensorflow/whatever" story, but that
| hasn't happened. And in this market users are generally
| taking what they can get, so I've seen lots of people who
| would normally run 70/80/90s running 60s instead.
| nybble41 wrote:
| The existing limiter doesn't _work_ , though. It was
| narrowly focused and consequently easy for miners to work
| around. That's why they're making this new version. There
| is no precise test for whether a given workload is
| "mining", though, so we can expect more false positives
| to show up as Nvidia tries to close off the myriad ways
| to avoid detection and miners respond by making their
| computation look more like traditional gaming workloads.
| paulmd wrote:
| > No, I think this is the first time a GPU has been
| heuristically trying to detect what you're doing and
| self-limiting in response
|
| nah, remember when NVIDIA decided that Titans were now
| prosumer cards and would get Quadro series drivers, and
| then performance tripled in CAD applications once the
| limiters were removed?
|
| https://wccftech.com/nvidia-titan-xp-
| titan-x-385-12-driver-u...
|
| The distinction between a Quadro and a GeForce has
| literally always been drivers and firmware. NVIDIA would
| have the card look at the specific API calls being made
| and if it decided you were a CAD application then it'd
| slow itself down on GeForce cards, while running normally
| on Quadro.
|
| AMD does the same thing with Radeon Pro, and Frontier
| Edition cards, and so on.
|
| You literally don't understand that this has been the
| norm for a decade now. Miners are just crying because
| they're finally being asked to purchase a _business_
| segmented product for their _business_ venture.
| mrgordon wrote:
| The number of GPUs being produced may be constant but it's
| lower than desired. The issue is Nvidia worked with Samsung
| to fab their chips this time around and Samsung had poor
| yields. Nvidia should have used TSMC like AMD and Apple but
| they tried to use Samsung and got burned on supply. They
| said they will use TSMC going forward but in the meantime
| there are shortages.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I see no problem with it. I could see the argument that crypto
| is an existential threat to Nvidias business. If they lose a
| generation of PC gamers they risk that loss compounding years
| down the road as they and their children lean toward console.
| If they _want_ to serve those PC gamers first over crypto then
| they need to find ways to keep them as their customers.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I don't care. I have a 3080 I paid a pretty penny for so that I
| could play some games in high resolution and do personal
| machine learning projects. Between the cryto miners and
| scalpers I don't care what happens to those folks.
| [deleted]
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Given that they are struggling to ramp up production to meet
| demand this seems like a perfectly acceptable move when they
| are essentially unable to serve their most loyal customers.
|
| The problem really is that cryptominers will happily scale
| their purchases arbitrarily high
| m3kw9 wrote:
| With Ethereum 2.0 there is no need for these cards. I think in a
| few months if it goes well.
| SXX wrote:
| It's will be funny to see how HN crowd that support Nvidia here
| will react when Nvidia going to cripple ML features for the sake
| of market segmentation.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| There's precedent with crippled FP16 performance, so it would
| not be surprising to see such things in the future to attain
| market segmentation from consumer cards.
| ollien wrote:
| This is exactly why I'm worried. I took an ML class last
| semester and having access to CUDA on my 1080Ti (explicitly
| purchased for gaming) was a boon for my project group, since we
| could actually tune models efficiently.
|
| This might be good for the short-term, but it sets a precedent
| I'm really not happy with. I know they already do some of this
| with Quadro, but my understanding there is that the value add
| is in its reliability and certification, not ability to operate
| on workloads that have been artificially crippled on the gaming
| cards.
| nroets wrote:
| Could there be a valid reason for this ?
|
| For example: A trend may be appearing where hackers gain control
| of the GPUs of unsuspecting users and then mine crypto in the
| background. The GPU uses more power and slows down given the user
| a bad experience. Nvidia wants to decrease the value of such
| hacks and decided to cripple the hardware.
|
| Similarly reducing the incentive for employees to mine with
| company equipment and electricity.
| max_ wrote:
| >NVIDIA announced today that it's halving the hash rate for
| Etehereum cryptocurrency mining on the new GeForce RTX 3080,
| 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards to make them less desirable for
| miners.
|
| I have a question for someone familiar with GPU technicalities.
|
| Won't this affect other, non-mining tasks?
|
| Crypto mining is based on cryptographic hashing algorithms.
|
| So won't this affect people in security? That work with hashing
| algorthims? I suspect tools like hashcat[0] may be affected.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcat
| optimuspaul wrote:
| I am doubtful this will have any real affect of prices but I am
| hopeful. I need GPUs for deep learning and simply cannot afford
| the current prices if I can even find them available. I am so
| sick of cryptocurrency.
| jti107 wrote:
| interesting philosophical question that intersects with "right to
| repair" and "ownership of digital purchases". when you buy a
| product does the company get to dictate what you can do with it.
| Kranar wrote:
| When you buy a product? No.
|
| When you purchase a license agreement for software that the
| product depends on? Yes.
| gruez wrote:
| So apple restricting iphone repairs (by breaking
| camera/fingerprint reader, or nagging you about the
| battery/display) is totally fine because it's done in
| software?
| orky56 wrote:
| It's not quite so clear cut. Less and less hardware solutions
| can meaningfully exist without some software for it to
| provide the functions it was meant for when purchased. This
| is a slippery slope that brings together the right to repair
| & net neutrality law type arguments.
| skytreader wrote:
| Total hardware noob here. How do they do it? Is there a
| particular instruction that ETH needs to be "efficient" but games
| can live with throttled? Or perhaps a sequence of instructions
| that's signature to ETH?
| smiley1437 wrote:
| From what I've read, the card detects if it has been
| continuously mining for 30 minutes then throttles itself.
| levesque wrote:
| Going to be fun to see cases of false positives. "Help! My
| FPS drops 75% after running game for 30 minutes!"
| TwoBit wrote:
| Those games are using a lot more of the gpu than just the
| compute functionality.
| livre wrote:
| GP's question was about _how_ it detects it has been mining.
| Does it have a list of processes or executable names of
| popular mining software? Does it perform some kind of
| heuristic and detect if the code it is about to execute
| corresponds to a hashing algorithm? I don't know the answer,
| I hope someone can explain it to me and GP.
| [deleted]
| smiley1437 wrote:
| nVidia has been deliberately vague about exactly what they
| are detecting because it would make it easy for miners to
| develop a workaround.
|
| That said, Anandtech wrote about it briefly recently:
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16648/nvidia-updates-
| geforce-...
|
| They surmise that there is hardware-enforcement of
| BIOS\Drivers via some blown eFuses.
|
| Also they imply that nVidia does multiple checks such as
| whether it's running on a PCIe x1 bus (gamers would
| typically use x4 or more) and whether it's hooked up to a
| monitor. It's likely they check for other things too but
| they would keep it on the down-low.
| cerved wrote:
| I've seen HDMI plugs listed on eBay which supposedly
| "double the hash rate" on 3060. I figured it was some
| kind of scam but didn't know they were throttled.
|
| I'm curious about how this is implemented.
|
| I'm also somewhat skeptical about GPU makers doing this
| for compute in general.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Has anyone found out if Hashcat is impacted on the cards that
| have this already (3060)?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Going to be a fun future game of cat-and-mouse as miners figure
| out how to disable/bypass nvidia's electronic countermeasures.
| dheera wrote:
| Couldn't one just not upgrade their drivers? NVIDIA has no
| way of crippling an offline system.
| gotbeans wrote:
| I understand this might come at hw level. Driver could have
| little or nothing to do with it.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| This is for future manufactures, and it'll come out of the
| box disabled.
| sschueller wrote:
| Cards that have already been sold don't matter. New cards
| however become worthless to miners so the demand should go
| down as well as the prices.
|
| We will probably see cards with old firmware show up on
| eBay for a lot more money than new cards.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| It doesn't need to last forever, just long enough to prevent
| shortages from pissing off non-mining customers.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia releases updates to unlock
| hardware after a set time period.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Hacks that re-enable mining likely won't be showing up on tpb
| anytime soon! A bypass will be worth quite a bit of money for
| large miners that can get hold of the cards.
| snuxoll wrote:
| Scalpers benefit from it, and they have an extreme
| incentive to drive up demand.
| edave64 wrote:
| Probably not much of a cat-and-mouse game. Once they can
| bypass it once, all they have to do is not update. Unless
| Nvidia is prepared to release new hardware revisions every
| time.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| No new hardware revision needed. Just a new on-card BIOS
| requiring a newer driver with a more fine-tuned mining
| detection. Should be trivial for manufacturers.
| ssully wrote:
| They previously did this with the 3060 cards, but accidently
| released beta drivers that unlocked the countermeasures [1].
| I am sure people just start with using those drivers on the
| 3070/80 cards.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22331537/nvidia-
| rtx-3060-...
| paulmd wrote:
| the new cards (and the new revisions of the old cards)
| won't work on the old drivers
| Vespasian wrote:
| I think I read the new cards will require a higher driver
| version
| Alekhine wrote:
| It'll be a good opportunity to see some nice hardware hacks,
| sure. But I'd guess serious miners don't really wanna deal
| with that shit and will just buy the miner-specific cards or
| use ASICs. This measure just raises the bar enough to make it
| a hassle.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| Serious miners will go to great lengths to improve their
| efficiency by even a fraction of 1%. They will absolutely
| patch some drivers if it gets them better hashes/kwh (which
| it will or Nvidia wouldn't do this).
| balls187 wrote:
| Are serious miners buying supply constrained GPUs?
| HappySweeney wrote:
| The reason they are supply constrained is because miners
| are buying most (near all?) of the available stock.
| valuearb wrote:
| Serious miners are buying Antminers, not video cards.
| Franciscouzo wrote:
| Antminers are for mining Bitcoin, GPUs are mostly used
| for Ethereum.
| paulmd wrote:
| https://www.coindesk.com/bitmain-antminer-e9-asic-
| ethereum-m...
|
| ethereum is asic- _resistant_ , not asic- _proof_. It
| doesn 't mean you can't make ASICs, just that ASICs are
| <10x as efficient as an equivalent-node GPU, vs millions
| of times more efficient for bitcoin/etc.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| We'll see a cottage industry of modders. Turning a $300
| thing into a $600 thing should be a viable business.
|
| Though I've seen some really sketchy mods before... can't
| find it at the moment, but one involved taking a dremel to
| the chip to break an internal pad/link.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Miners are already doing hacks like this, i.e ETHlargement
| pill (which alters memory timings on 1080/1080Ti cards to
| improve ETH mining).
| alert0 wrote:
| Speculation having thought about this for a few minutes a few
| weeks ago. Given that a driver update disabled the feature, my
| guess is that they have certain kernels blacklisted. Really
| just the anti-virus equivalent of if (e.g.) Nicehash Miner, set
| throttle. A good way to test this would be to write a new miner
| and see what perf you can get.
|
| I have the driver with it disabled and would patch diff it
| against a new one if I had the time, but I'm very busy with
| work. It would be an interesting problem of binary diffing at
| scale (dozens of libraries). Very interested if anyone has any
| insight.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I never planned to mine cryptocurrency but such a move sends a
| very bad message to me as an end user.
|
| Fine, NVIDIA. I planned to have a dedicated Win10 gaming PC with
| an RTX 3090 and a separate Linux workstation but I guess it's
| better if I just get the Threadripper Pro workstation and equip
| it with an AMD 6900XT and do both my work and gaming under Linux.
| Will spend 40-50% less money, too.
|
| And Steam is getting better and better at gaming under Linux with
| each passing week so the Linux users automatically get in a
| better position with time.
|
| If that's how you want to play, good luck to you, NVIDIA. You
| just lost a future customer.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Why would them diminishing a certain aspect that you admittedly
| never planned on using in the first place affect your decision?
| Does your work involve computing millions of hashes, but isn't
| cryptocurrency?
| pdimitar wrote:
| No, my work doesn't involve that at all. It just sends the
| signal to me as a customer that they can limit what I do with
| something that I bought and is supposedly now mine. It's a
| slippery slope kind of situation where you don't know what
| else they might figure they'll want to limit in the future.
|
| I am not okay with that so I'll vote with my wallet.
| SXX wrote:
| Nvidia never applied those mining limitations
| rectoactivelyl they only announced for newer cards. Still
| they crippled VFIO capabilities with driver updates in past
| so they had bad track of record years ago.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yep, that's what worries me. They are cautious for now
| but if they don't meet pushback (or a financial hit) they
| might get bolder and start applying more and more
| restrictions.
|
| This is likely too paranoid for many but the technical
| possibility is there and believing in the good heart of a
| huge business is to me not a sound strategy.
| Const-me wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about that.
|
| I'd like to replace 1080Ti with 3080, but miners priced me out.
|
| I wonder how exactly nVidia is doing that? I do little integer
| ops on my GPUs, but I do a lot of FP64 ones. Just like these
| integer Ethereum hashes, FP64 is not used by videogames much.
|
| If nVidia does that performance throttling by detecting some
| patterns in the code, looking for Ethereum miners, AV-style --
| pretty sure Ethereum miners will find a workaround soon. These
| AV-style code detectors are unreliable by design.
|
| If nVidia does that by crippling specific low-level instructions,
| this gonna slow down innovation rate for everyone. Not just for
| me with my niche FP64 CAD/CAE workloads, for games too.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| This is done at driver level though right? So it'll be worked
| around.
| cletus wrote:
| I hope this is more successful than the last attempt (3060 Ti)
| where the "crippling" was just software and it was quickly
| circumvented, partly through NVidia's own screw up (they released
| a beta driver that didn't have that limitation).
|
| It's almost impossible to buy a GPU now. Anywhere you can
| occasionally buy them is heavily botted. Some sellers try and
| mitigate this eg Zotac has a queue system of questionable effect.
| Others do absolutely nothing (eg Amazon).
|
| You might say that's just supply and demand but it's not in
| NVidia's long term interest for crypto-miners to buy every GPU.
| Why? It kills the market for ML and gaming.
|
| What happens is as soon as the crypto market next crashes, those
| GPUs get offloaded and flood the market.
|
| I absolutely support NVidia in this, for several reasons. First,
| I'd actually like to buy a GPU for personal use. Second, there
| are real ethical questions around crypto, especially PoW. That
| will offend some people but it's true. Apologists will point to
| most crypto-mining using renewable energy. Yes, because hydro is
| the cheapest power. But all the hydro power use can actually
| limit the power and/or make it more expensive for everyone else.
|
| Wouldn't it be funny if crypto-mining is the solution to the
| Fermi Paradox where civilizations ultimately ended up cooking
| themselves in crypto-mining waste heat?
| didericis wrote:
| > Apologists will point to most crypto-mining using renewable
| energy. Yes, because hydro is the cheapest power. But all the
| hydro power use can actually limit the power and/or make it
| more expensive for everyone else.
|
| As an admitted apologist, that's one of the weaker arguments.
| The most compelling to me is that power usage isn't properly
| compared to traditional banking. Sustaining all of the people
| and in person infrastructure required for traditional financial
| transactions requires more than just calculating the cost of
| transmitting the transaction. In fact those parts are
| comparatively cheap, it's the verification that's expensive, in
| both systems. All of the people employed in banks who play any
| kind of role have an enormous amount of cost associated with
| their employment. I'd like to see a comparison of heating and
| cooling costs for all of the banks in the world, which is just
| a small slice of the total cost of traditional banking,
| factored in to comparisons. The only one I've seen compared it
| to the computing cost for processing VISA transactions, which
| didn't seem like a proper comparison.
|
| I'm also generally suspicious of some people (not everyone)
| who's gut instinct to environmental impact are limiting the
| spread of innovative and extremely useful ideas rather than
| looking at how to decrease the impact, particularly when those
| ideas help to decrease reliance on powerful central
| authorities. Proof of work is the innovation that allowed
| cryptocurrencies to scale to the level they are today, and it's
| precisely that work that allows them to operate securely
| despite being decentralized. Abandoning it because of the
| impact rather than reducing the impact would be like abandoning
| cars rather than making them electric and more efficient.
| detaro wrote:
| The focus is on transaction layer because that is what the
| crypto currencies provides. The blockchain doesn't run
| customer support, doesn't handle cash logistics, doesn't
| decide in conflicts involving the real world (e.g. if you do
| a blockchain escrow thing with multisig or smart contracts or
| whatever to give customers the equivalent of chargebacks in
| case of fraud, you still need humans to make the decision),
| ... so you can not just pretend all those human roles go away
| - and the people already working in blockchain ecosystems
| also aren't calculated against the blockchains in the
| calculations. Deciding which ones won't exist in the
| hypothetical all-blockchain world has far-reaching
| consequences, and probably something there is little
| consensus on. Proposals and estimations based on that would
| be interesting though.
| didericis wrote:
| Describing cryptocurrencies as a transaction layer does not
| describe the value. Communicating "Adam paid Bob X coins"
| is not hard.
|
| What's hard is having everyone agree on the same history of
| transactions. That's what cryptocurrencies provide. There
| is an enormous amount of accounting and verification work
| that goes on within banking systems to solve the
| verification problem.
|
| My argument was not that _every_ human role has a cost that
| needs to be factored in, but that _any_ human role has a
| high cost, and a large number of human roles require very
| large amounts of energy to support.
|
| A fair bit of what you describe also can in fact be done
| with just smart contracts where the contract and those who
| sign it (the human customers) makes the decision without
| any middleman (without a human escrow agent).
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| This will achieve nothing, just don't update the drivers.
| CivBase wrote:
| > "To help get GeForce GPUs in the hands of gamers, we announced
| in February that all GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards shipped with
| a reduced Ethereum hash rate," Wuebbling added.
|
| Is there any evidence that crypto mining plays a significant role
| in the ongoing hardware shortage? Any evidence at all? I see so
| many people complain about it, but I haven't seen any reason to
| believe crypto is one of the primary factors driving the
| shortage.
|
| I don't mine or trade crypto. I acknowledge the many problems
| with current crypto offerings and have no interest in dealing
| with the tech until those problems get sorted out (if that ever
| even happens). But I inherently don't like the idea of a hardware
| company intentionally crippling general computing tech like this.
| And it's especially frustrating to see them try to spin it as a
| positive move for their customers.
|
| The RX 6000 series was another huge step forward for AMD graphics
| hardware. Hopefully their 7000 series will be even more
| competitive. NVIDIA needs the pressure.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I know it's "fact" but is there any actual proof that demand
| during/from Covid and new generation of hardware worthy of
| upgrading to isn't the actual increased demand for GPUs rather
| than miners?
|
| I "know" miners are buying cards up and converting energy to heat
| while many would list climate change as important to them... but
| is there any proof it's miners driving the demand?
| akelly wrote:
| This won't really do anything for availability or reducing
| scalper pricing. Miners are a sizeable proportion of sales but
| far from the majority. Gamers will be able to buy more of these
| GPUs but less of the non-LHR or AMD GPU's. GPU prices won't
| actually change.
|
| The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining
| profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto price
| crash or Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake, the miners will flood
| the used market and ruin Nvidia's profits for a few quarters.
| Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only cards, because
| those can't be sold to gamers down the line. They'd rather mining
| cards become e-waste in a few years than get resold.
|
| People think Nvidia is doing this to try to help them get better
| prices now, but really Nvidia is trying to extract more money
| from gamers in the long term.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only cards_
|
| I thought the non-LHR cards are fully featured?
| riknos314 wrote:
| They have a SKU specifically targeting miners
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/
| mikepurvis wrote:
| There is some precedent for hacking ex-miner cards to route
| the video signal back to a motherboard output over the PCI
| bus:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4
|
| With so many more of them out there, it'll be interesting
| to see if this becomes more of a thing. Alternatively, it's
| easy to imagine that depending on just how constrained
| these are, they might eventually find homes doing non-
| crypto headless DC workloads, such as deep learning stuff.
| akelly wrote:
| They're not producing fully featured cards anymore. They're
| separating the market into RTX-LHR for gamers and CMP for
| miners.
| minikites wrote:
| >They'd rather mining cards become e-waste in a few years than
| get resold.
|
| After being used for mining, it's e-waste whether or not it has
| video out. This helps prevent some poor sucker from buying
| e-waste.
| creato wrote:
| One of the issues people have mentioned in this thread is that
| cards sold by miners are often burnt out or nearly burnt out.
| In that case, it seems like cutting off miners from the
| secondary market would be an _improvement_ for the secondary
| market.
| cle wrote:
| I don't know much about GPUs and am curious how this "burn
| out" happens, do you have a link for those of us who'd like
| to read more about this?
| bserge wrote:
| Just normal wear, accelerated because it's always under
| load. The used cards are fine most of the time if the
| temperatures were stable under 80-90 degC.
|
| The main cause of failure is the VRM, those components are
| the hottest, least reliable and least cooled.
|
| Sadly, sometimes a blown transistor or capacitor can take
| out the whole GPU.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If your GPUs run too long hot, the board literally starts
| to melt (the plastics, solder, etc).
| princeb wrote:
| on contrary, miners tend to run gpus undervolted and
| underclocked for efficiency. gamers tend to run gpus
| overclocked (and sometimes overvolted) for performance.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Miners care _enough_ about power efficiency and
| longevity; they don 't run cards super hot.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Most scale oriented mining rigs I've seen pack cards
| super close together, even if you run them at reduced
| frequencies thermal environment is not great. See https:/
| /us.v-cdn.net/5021640/uploads/editor/do/j86gsm9cxvl2....
| for example.
|
| Aside from a few top end models modern desktop GPUs are
| not designed for continuous operation at max load. When
| you combine than with higher temperature the lifespan of
| the cards is indeed reduced. The real question is how
| much this matters.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Latest Nvidia GPUs have large Tensor cores and RT cores
| but miners never use them. I wonder is it better for the
| situation.
| [deleted]
| op00to wrote:
| Too much heat causes flex and movement that can break
| solder traces, and makes it easier to let the magic smoke
| out.
| SilverRed wrote:
| Flex is caused when the temp changes. Mining cards stay
| at the same temp and don't move around a lot while
| overclocked gaming cards are getting flexed multiple
| times a day
| akelly wrote:
| There's three main ways GPUs wear out, silicon
| electromigration, electrolytic capacitor dryout, and fan
| bearing failure. And the first two happen much faster at
| higher temperatures. Temperatures are similar between
| gaming and mining, but miners run 24/7 compared to gaming
| 1-2 hrs/day, so the GPUs age like 10x faster. But still,
| GPU failures are pretty rare, I think the concern is
| overblown.
| girvo wrote:
| Miners undervolt and often underclock though: heat is
| their enemy, so they're more particular about this than
| gamers are these days.
| irq wrote:
| Totally true- I went through the process of manually
| overclocking my 2080ti for max hash rate and the best
| settings involved setting a power limit that is less than
| half the card's 100% limit.
| hddherman wrote:
| They also sometimes do GPU BIOS modifications, which is a
| fun thing to discover once the card ends up on the
| second-hand market and you happen to buy one. Luckily the
| fix is to reflash the BIOS using a matching one from
| TechPowerUp GPU database, but this assumes that you even
| know that this is something to pay attention to.
|
| Source: happened with an RX 560 that I bought second-
| hand. Driver installation failed in Windows 10 due to the
| modified GPU BIOS. Was fixed with a reflash of a stock
| GPU BIOS using atiflash.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Any idea what they modified?
| emmelaich wrote:
| > _Heat is their enemy_
|
| Sometimes literally:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8bp8a2QS4
|
| "A Bitcoin Miner Heatstroked In His Sleep. This Is What
| Happened To His Organs."
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > electrolytic capacitor dryout
|
| Has anyone spotted electrolytics on a card in the last
| ten years or so?
| akelly wrote:
| Uhhh every single one. Here's the Nvidia 3070 for
| example: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-
| geforce-rtx-3070-f...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't recognize the manufacturer's mark on those, but
| they're almost certainly solid polymer capacitors and not
| electrolytic.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've purchased graphics cards from the used market, and
| used them for years. Never any problems. One of my go to
| cards is 5 years old ... that's when I bought it - I'm
| guessing it's much older.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Anedoctal but my two last GPUs burnt out after a few
| years. Bought new GPUs from reputable suppliers. Never
| mined or overclocked besides factory overclock (which for
| most of the time I had disabled). I was playing a lot
| more than 1-2 hrs/day. I guess it was the worse of both
| worlds. Heavy usage + cycling.
| throayobviousl wrote:
| While the cards are used heavily, thermal cycling arguably is
| worse than running a card 24/7. These cards do not generally
| experience any thermal fluctuations and were probably kept
| within adequate temps
| alpha42 wrote:
| I someone who hasn't bought a /new/ card since a 980ti, I
| find this talk of 'crypto burned gpus' to be a bunch of
| hooey. 1080ti x3, 1660ti x2, 2080ti x2... (We keep three
| gamers in cards around here, those aren't 'oh noes, this one
| fried, get another)... not one of them has had an issue.
|
| Nor did the six P104s I picked up for an research project.
| And those cards smelled.. funny. I'm pretty sure they'd never
| seen aircon, and had no identifiable oem markings that I
| could find, but afaik, they're still chugging along 18 months
| after /whatever/ was done to them in their former life.
|
| Honestly, I wonder if 'gpu burn' wasn't nvidia's first
| attempt to mitigate the cashflow drain of the crypto-cast-
| off-market.. before they decided it was more convenient to
| blame the need for drastic measures on a supply chain issue
| of their own design. -sigh-
| Scramblejams wrote:
| Is it unsophisticated of me to assume that an ETH crash will
| just cause everyone with GPUs to switch to a different
| cryptocurrency? I'd expect miner demand to remain firm unless
| there's a broad crash.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Tepix wrote:
| I think it will help quite a bit. I've sold two graphics cards
| in the last year, both of them went to miners.
| gayfox wrote:
| Gamers won't be buying used 30xx cards from miners because by
| then nvidia will have released 40xx cards. Gamers are mostly
| kids running after shiny things.
| addicted wrote:
| Edited to remove incorrect info.
| throayobviousl wrote:
| Nvidia literally sells mining cards that do not have outputs
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/
|
| This is all a scheme to stop the used market from ruining
| their MSRP pricing.
| paulmd wrote:
| meanwhile, at AMD headquarters...
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rdna-mining-
| graphics-c...
|
| AMD isn't even going to limit performance on gaming cards,
| nor are they using a different node for their mining cards
| like NVIDIA. They are straight-up just going to shunt
| wafers over to mining cards, while letting miners have both
| the mining cards and the gaming cards.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| > The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining
| profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto
| price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake, the miners
| will flood the used market and ruin Nvidia's profits for a few
| quarters. Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only
| cards, because those can't be sold to gamers down the line.
| They'd rather mining cards become e-waste in a few years than
| get resold.
|
| Great commentary on the unsustainability of it all. Nvidia has
| no incentive to make sure the GPU market operates in a
| sustainable way by supporting a secondary market. Thus, they
| have every incentive to cut the legs out from under resellers.
| It would also be anywhere from hard to nearly impossible to
| give them an incentive to allow the secondary market to operate
| in such a way as to increase the sustainability of their
| product.
|
| Edit: Aren't we a bit touchy today? (Turn showdead on and look
| a little down thread.)
| RhysU wrote:
| Someone learned from the Cisco hardware glut in the dot com
| crash!
| cerved wrote:
| can somebody explain?
| lazide wrote:
| Cisco and Sun were the go-to big name equipment suppliers
| to many startups around the dot-com days. A lot of it was
| stupid expensive (like 150k for a sun server with the
| performance of a 5k Linux box, or 20k for a basic Cisco
| router). Well, when the startups folded a huge amount of
| that equipment got sold for pennies on the dollar and
| Cisco basically almost went bankrupt - and Sun basically
| did.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| They also learned from the previous crypto crash where they
| were stuck with a huge stash of 1060s.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Learned what? How to create a bunch of junk that will be
| unusable in a few years?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
| delfinom wrote:
| Just don't give them ideas about Cisco's current solution
| of moving to subscription based licensing network switches
| kogepathic wrote:
| _> moving to subscription based licensing network
| switches_
|
| Moving to? Cisco owns Meraki, subscription based
| licensing is Meraki's entire business model.
| [deleted]
| berdario wrote:
| That's basically GeForce Now, in this context...
|
| So, I'm afraid that they already got (and applied) the
| idea :p
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"Nvidia has no incentive to make sure the GPU market
| operates in a sustainable way by supporting a secondary
| market."_
|
| They do in the sense that buyers often consider future resale
| values when making primary purchase decisions. It's much
| easier to justify purchasing a $2500 "enthusiast" graphics
| card if you're confident you can get a decent chunk of that
| back when you sell it in 6-12 months.
|
| Similarly, car makers are incentivised to try to ensure their
| vehicles have decent resale value. Expected future residuals
| affect financing and purchase decisions today.
| finchisko wrote:
| In my experience base level items have much better resale
| value then more expensive items. It's true for notebooks,
| graphic cards and cars too. For example my iPhone 11 Pro
| has fallen to half of the price in one year, but entry
| level iPhone 11 probably has still 70% of its value. Same
| for Macbook Air, entry level with 8GB and 256 SSD will hold
| value better then maxed out one. Same with cars, extra
| premium equipment has basically no value for people that
| are buying used cars. So doubt that premium graphic cards
| are exception. Their value falls sharply over time, so not
| sure people buying them are considering resale value as
| argument to buy them.
| dmurray wrote:
| The entry level iPhone 11 and Macbook Air are still
| premium products. You're not reselling your EUR250
| unbranded Walmart laptop for anything more than scrap.
| taneq wrote:
| Neither was Walmart, to be fair.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Yep, it's premium to the point that's search function
| friendly. Apple machines will hold their value very well
| but it'll be weighted in favour of the basic version of
| each model.
|
| I think when you get to PC parts it becomes quite a bit
| trickier as everyone who is willing to buy used PC parts
| is way more knowledgable on exactly what they're looking
| for. A lot of things do hold their value pretty well. On
| the other side of things, you're taking such a risk
| selling computer parts on ebay (gotta be a lot of people
| frying components after buying them and not even
| realising it's their fault) that I can see why people
| couldn't be bothered taking the risk of reselling when
| they can just gift away the parts.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Sold used motherboard, it came back as e-waste
| robben1234 wrote:
| >Same with cars, extra premium equipment has basically no
| value for people that are buying used cars.
|
| It mostly doesn't impact price as is, but the top
| equipped car will get much more traffic from potential
| buyers and therefore can get away with setting the price
| a bit higher than the current market.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > car makers are incentivised to try to ensure their
| vehicles have decent resale value
|
| Is this actually true or merely a theoretical thought?
| Because it would seem that car makers are incentivised to
| ensure their vehicles annihilate a couple days after their
| warranty expires and/or after a couple of miles after their
| guaranteed mileage is driven, and comparing e.g. reputation
| of second-hand cars manufactured in 80es/90es/2000s/10s
| seems to support it.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Is this actually true or merely a theoretical thought?
|
| On one hand you have FCA (I'm sorry, _Stellantis_ ) which
| leans into its not so positive reputation and does just
| fine.
|
| The other hand you have Toyota who spend the 90s and 00s
| digging a goodwill moat in the minds of premium
| consumers.
|
| Both approaches work but for different demographics.
| You'll never see a 4Runner with a magnetic company
| sticker sitting in an industrial parking lot or in less
| well off part of town and you'll never see a Pacifica in
| an upscale suburban driveway.
| proudfoot wrote:
| I live in Palo Alto. I have a Pacifica (PHEV). I see many
| many Pacificas on the road and in driveways. The MSRP of
| a fully loaded hybrid is 54k. The MSRP of a fully loaded
| gasser is pretty close.
|
| The reputation hasn't stopped FCA from selling to this
| market. Wranglers and Grand Cherokees are pretty common
| too, as well as the rare Hellcat.
| organsnyder wrote:
| > Both approaches work but for different demographics.
| You'll never see a 4Runner with a magnetic company
| sticker sitting in an industrial parking lot or in less
| well off part of town and you'll never see a Pacifica in
| an upscale suburban driveway.
|
| Huh? Pacificas are everywhere, especially since they also
| have the only PHEV minivan in the US. In the PHEV
| Pacifica FB group I'm in (I do own one, so I am a bit
| biased here), many people have Pacificas alongside Teslas
| and other EVs. But even the gas Pacificas are everywhere,
| including "upscale suburban driveways".
|
| Though your point does still stand about FCA/Stellantis'
| reputation: we had to get over their our perception of
| them when we got ours, and I would never consider any of
| their other vehicles. But our Pacifica has been a really
| great van. I'm just amused that you picked the one
| vehicle in their entire lineup that doesn't prove your
| point.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I wanted to say Dodge Journey but they don't make that
| anymore and it wasn't really a popular fleet vehicle. The
| nature of the comparison I had to make kind of forced my
| hand. The Pacifica (minivans in general, too much $$ new)
| doesn't scream negative equity nearly as loudly as the
| Journey.
|
| You're right about the PHEV thing attracting a lot of
| people who otherwise would never own a Chrysler. Checking
| "just the right boxes" is something FCA is really good at
| with their more niche vehicles. The high horsepower
| Charger/Challenger/Cherokee and the Jeep Wrangler are
| amazingly good at creating a way for the married couple
| who can't agree on what vehicle want to both leave with
| enough of their boxes checked.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| They're not incentivised to do anything other than
| maximise their quarterly profits.
| bluGill wrote:
| I know that cynicism is popular, but in fact their
| incentives are for more than that. The executive who
| wants to last - and most do - needs to ensure there is a
| profit next quarter as well. Sure they will take profit
| today vs next week, but they also invest in r&d because
| they know if they don't eventually there will be no bonus
| at all next quarter.
| Danieru wrote:
| One of the tactics Nissan ran into big trouble with was
| their extreme reliance on fleet sales. Fleet sales juiced
| the profits but killed the used market, thus pushing
| Nissan's cars down market thanks to reduced resale value.
| This was an active criticism by investors and journalists
| during the Nissan down turn.
|
| Meanwhile Toyota is able to charge a meaningful premium
| because their cars retain value. So I do think it is safe
| to conclude in the case of cars the effect is real.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You came sooooo close to hitting the nail on the head.
| The first owners have a huge effect on a resale value of
| a vehicle.
|
| Who buys Toyotas?
|
| Why are those people's cars more valuable on the used
| market than corporate fleet's used cars?
|
| Now see if your model explains the used value of a Dodge
| Journey, oilfield pickup and whatever car grandma owned.
|
| Nissan spend the '00s selling to owners who's used cars
| are not held in high regard and this affected consumer
| perceptions of them. Toyota spent the 90s and '00s (and
| still is) selling to upscale people who treated their
| cars nicely and it affected consumer perception of them.
| BluePen8 wrote:
| There's also material differences, there's a reason the
| Nissan CEO from that era is currently a fugitive and on
| trial for financial misconduct.
|
| And not by some technicality either, he literally hired a
| paramilitary group to disguise themselves as musicians
| and smuggle him out of Japan while on bail.
|
| Since 2001 Nissan has used their defective CVT
| transmission in the vast majority of their lineup from
| the compact Versa to the Pathfinder SUV (aside from the
| sports cars and pickup trucks).
|
| The average time to failure depends slightly on the
| model, but it's often around 60-70k miles.
|
| The cost to replace it is typically most if not more than
| the value of a typical Nissan.
|
| Because they were selling defective cars, their buyers
| dried up, so they had to resort to buyers with sub-prime
| credit. At this point it's joked the Nissan Altima is the
| official car of bad credit or bad neighbourhoods.
|
| While the poor upkeep by the sub-prime owners certainly
| doesn't help, the poor resale value is largely due to
| everyone knowing they are ticking time bombs.
|
| I've shopped for many different used 10-15 year old cars,
| and through my research have found the used market is
| extremely accurate in pricing in expected upkeep or
| failures, even among different variants of the same model
| from the same brand.
|
| When I wanted an W211 E-class Mercedes (2003-2009), I
| researched the common failures and the cost to repair. I
| found the whole range was actually priced pretty
| similarly once you factored that in.
|
| There were major defects in the 2003-2004 models which
| would cost around $2500 to fix. The 2005+ models were
| worth about $2500 more than a 2004 (despite only being
| worth $5000 and $7500)
|
| The E500 had an air suspension failure issue which would
| be around $2000 to remedy, the same model year E320 with
| normal suspension was worth $2000 more. And for 2003-2004
| they were only worth $3000 and $5000 respectively.
|
| After months of browsing craigslist and test drives, it
| was clear it didn't matter which model or year I bought,
| a Mercedes W211 E-class was going to cost me $7500.
|
| At that point I figured I'd just keep saving and get a
| Lexus 2IS for $10,000 as it was much better value despite
| the difference in owner reputation.
|
| tldr: The used market knows exactly what a car is worth
| regardless of owner reputation. Nissans are worthless
| because they're shit cars.
| blagie wrote:
| I'm not so sure. I bought my car mostly to minimize
| total-cost-of-ownership. I assume I'll resell my car when
| the TCO of maintenance exceeds the TCO of a new car.
|
| I know a lot of other folks who do something similar to
| that too.
|
| TCO includes my time, so if I need to take a car to the
| shop, or miss meetings because things break down, that
| raises TCO by that opportunity cost. Selling a car is a
| hassle, and by the time I'm ready to give it up, it's not
| worth too much (and the buyers will probably be poor,
| since TCO exceeds a new car) so I don't feel the need to
| maximize resale value.
|
| While this is an overly rationalist way of phrasing
| things, but most people I know take a similarly pragmatic
| approach. Teachers. (Real, not software) engineers. Etc.
|
| I don't buy used cars, since some people sell to upgrade,
| and some sell because there's some issue. The headache
| adds a lot to the TCO.
| bluGill wrote:
| Car dealers make their money from trade-ins, parts and
| service (new sales are often a loss leader to get you in
| for service work - everyone is driving for the best deal
| even if the dealer loses money), so the dealers at least
| care.
|
| Car makers need to do well against the competition, and
| resale value is something that people look at. They want
| your car to last 10 years and then fall apart - that
| being about the time people start to be willing to call a
| dead car dead of old age. Though they do like having a
| few collectors cars that are a lot older than that around
| because collectors also feed into car culture.
| chme wrote:
| I would really like to see some data on how much resale
| value factors in for purchase decisions in regards to
| gaming equipment in average.
| robben1234 wrote:
| No real data, but in my decades of gaming I didn't really
| hear of people buying the top card in hopes to resell it
| later and make it affordable.
|
| In my experience people buy what they can afford. So
| mostly *60/*70 (Ti) Nvidia cards. Few people who I know
| bought the 1080 are still using it. The second life for
| gaming GPUs mostly is to serve friends/relatives who ask
| to help building a PC for them.
| ehnto wrote:
| Some anecdata, I buy midrange cards and never try to sell
| them. They usually end up in the machines of friends or
| family.
|
| The purchase price is what I am willing to spend on the
| device and it's usage, and a healthy dose of pragmatism
| about what is actually necessary.
|
| I also overclock to stretch their usefulness out but I
| must admit the leaps in each generation recently, as well
| as some fundamentally new technology capabilities mean I
| am not keeping up as well.
| saddestcatever wrote:
| On average, I imagine it's low. However, anecdotally the
| gamers I know who are buying $1000+ cards, generally do
| so every 2 years with the intent to flip them and buy the
| newest hottest card.
|
| In a similar train of thought - there might be better
| data on this question if one was to look at the
| photography equipment market. Or other used consumer
| markets with high re-sale value.
| Nursie wrote:
| I don't have data, but I do participate in an enthusiasts
| forum. It's a huge thing for a lot of them, because a top
| card costs quite a chunk of cash (even before the current
| shortage), maintaining resale value allows them to stay
| at the top for a relatively modest outlay every card
| generation.
|
| Of course right now you can sell 4 year old cards for a
| profit, the market is crazy.
| ppf wrote:
| >car makers are incentivised to try to ensure their
| vehicles have decent resale value
|
| Why? They are only incentivised to make more profit, and
| selling high-tech expensive cars that break after 10 years
| is great for that. The ones that will bear the cost of that
| will be either the financing companies (and it would be fun
| to see the market collapse as the current crop of shiny
| German cars hits the 2nd hand market and no-one is dumb
| enough to buy one), or those poor souls who insist on
| buying old-ish cars instead of leasing like everyone else.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Now days it is often the automakers _themselves_ doing
| the financing /leasing, so if a model has poor residuals
| it directly affects their profits.
|
| Even with third-party financing, the anticipated
| residuals influence the attractiveness of the lease
| offer. A cheaper lease offer means more sales for the
| automaker, and thus more profits.
| ppf wrote:
| Personally I don't think the market has yet caught up to
| the fact that today's new cars will make horrible
| purchases as the 3rd or so owner.
|
| All the financiers have to do is make sure someone buys
| it for a good price after 3 years of being leased from
| new. That's not a bad proposition - the car will probably
| last a while longer with all of its electonic toys and
| gizmos working. It's the buyer after that (of which I am
| usually one) that will find out how expensive the car is
| to maintain.
| sawjet wrote:
| What is unsustainable about Bitcoin?
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Is there _anything_ sustainable about Bitcoin?
|
| But getting back on topic, Bitcoin miners long since moved
| to custom ASICs, you can't make a profit with GPUs any
| more.
| irq wrote:
| I make $7-8 per day, after electrical costs, letting my
| 2080ti (normally used for flight sim, but when not in
| use...) run nicehash's miner software. My electricity
| costs $0.0816 per kWh.
|
| Not a ton of money but it adds up after a month and the
| GPU was a sunk cost since I got it for gaming. It
| literally is profitable, for my situation anyway.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| So at around $2500 a pop, you'd be looking at a year just
| to amortize your costs, and that's assuming BTC stays at
| its current insane levels. (A mighty assumption, since
| it's dropped 30% in the last week.)
| tempestn wrote:
| Or looked at another way, with only a year of mining you
| cover your costs, and everything after that is profit. I
| don't GPU mine, but I can certainly see why people do.
| parineum wrote:
| As long as it's taking a year to pay for itself, have a
| look at bitcoin's change in value over any recent 12
| month period.
|
| I'm not really a crypto guy but mining in your downtime
| on a decent gpu is a pretty good gamble.
| cableshaft wrote:
| He bought it for Flight Sim it sounds like, the mining is
| just a bonus.
|
| And Flight Simulator 2020 needs crazy specs if you want
| the pretty graphics at decent frame rates. I was planning
| on doing the mining on the side just to reduce how much
| it cost, but I'm mainly getting it for the pretty Flight
| Sim graphics.
| pfisch wrote:
| 2080ti's don't cost $2500.
|
| ???
| Plyphon_ wrote:
| You also need the rest of the machine to put it in.
|
| Can't just buy a gpu and plug it into a wall outlet.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Used on Amazon is $2099.00
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Oh yes they do: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=2080ti
| pfisch wrote:
| Scalpers prices are not retail. I have bought around 4
| 3070s/3080s all for under 1000 at actual retail pricing.
| mrweasel wrote:
| That's absolutely insane. I'm sure it's a nice card, but
| it's not worth three payments on my house.
|
| Doesn't all this limit the game publishers as well?
| Surely someone who is currently developing a game has to
| consider whether or not to even care that something like
| a 2080 even exists, it might as well not.
|
| And if games starts to be developed with older and slower
| cards in mind, to ensure that games can even play them,
| won't that hurt GPU sales in the future?
| greycol wrote:
| The volatility is the problem as it makes calculations
| unreliable but a year to cover your costs on a 2 year (if
| you upgrade to the latest graphics card every generation)
| or 4 year (if you go every second gen) life is a
| reasonable investment.
|
| It's literally a ROI of 100-300%.
|
| Or to put it another way it's similar to a risky stock
| with a compounding yearly return of 41% for four years.
|
| Using a graphics card for mining that you have anyway is
| just gravy (apart from externalities which are another
| big problem).
| einpoklum wrote:
| Please stop doing that. You are just wasting energy.
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Please continue being butthurt because you don't
| understand the value of energy. It's super cute.
| djmips wrote:
| But gaming is fine, that's not a waste of energy at all.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I didn't encourage or discourage gaming. Also, mining
| means stressing the GPU 24-7, gaming is occasional. ...
| if you're gaming 24-7, then please stop doing that to,
| it's not good for your physical and emotional well-being
| :-(
| PeterStuer wrote:
| In reality most mining happen with under-clocked GPU
| cores (and admittedly overclocked VRAM), and at very
| stable temperatures. The GPU that is used 24/7 for mining
| will be far less stressed than a GPU that is powered on
| and off, and cycles through a lot of thermal changes
| throughout the day
| einpoklum wrote:
| So, will the occasional gaming work still consume more
| energy / produce more heat?
| Dzugaru wrote:
| Well.. yes?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Las vegas called, they want you to know they have the
| brightest and most energy consuming lightsource* in the
| world blasting at the sky, drawing fambling addicts like
| a moth to a flame.
|
| *excluding laser research laboratories and weapons.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| The luxor light was originally 39 Xenon bulbs running at
| 7 kW each. 243 kW wasn't that much energy to start, but
| they actually run only half the bulbs now on a rotating
| basis. So about 120 kW.
|
| The light costs about $51 an hour. Arguably the smallest
| expense involved in running a casino hotel 24 hours a
| day. Less than a rounding error.
|
| They cut back to half-brightness not because of money, or
| energy, but because they thought the light pollution was
| a little excessive.
|
| The strip is mostly solar-powered so the Luxor is
| basically just taking sunlight and beaming it back up
| into the sky.
|
| It's not like you could take that energy and ship it
| elsewhere, or do something more productive with it. The
| Strip's solar plant exists because of The Strip. If the
| Strip didn't exist then you'd just have sunlight hitting
| rocks in the middle of the desert like everywhere else in
| Nevada.
|
| Oh, and moths to a flame? That's literal. There's an
| entire ecosystem built up around the moths who flock to
| the Luxor, the bats that eat those moths, and the owls
| that eat those bats.
| batmanthehorse wrote:
| they should also stop that
| sellyme wrote:
| > My electricity costs $0.0816 per kWh.
|
| I agree that the statement "you can't make a profit any
| more" is just incorrect because of the subjectivity of
| "you", but it's also worth noting that this is extremely
| variable - my electricity costs $0.38/kWh off-peak and
| $0.54/kWh on-peak.
|
| Whether or not mining on existing hardware is profitable
| depends entirely on where you live, and since we're
| explicitly talking about the effects of an _increased_
| demand on GPUs due to mining, people are clearly not just
| using existing hardware.
| verall wrote:
| If you're using nicehash you're not mining bitcoin. The
| payout is in BTC but it mines whatever it thinks is most
| profitable. On your 2080ti, it's not bitcoin.
| [deleted]
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| For one thing, it consumes more electricity than the entire
| country of Norway:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-power-
| consu...
| bitcoinmonger wrote:
| Correction: you need more energy than Norway to attack
| the system.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining
| profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto
| price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake, the miners
| will flood the used market and ruin Nvidia's profits for a few
| quarters. Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only
| cards, because those can't be sold to gamers down the line.
| They'd rather mining cards become e-waste in a few years than
| get resold.
|
| What they could have done is instead sell the video-capable
| cards in a way that discourages bulk buying (limits per
| customer, maybe a little bit bulkier and harder to correctly
| cool if several are in a rack) and then release a more bare-
| bone (no bulk, just a heatsink and optional fan) mining version
| that can be bulk-ordered and performs well in a rack mount.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Nvidia is trying to get miners to buy mining-only cards,
| because those can't be sold to gamers down the line. They'd
| rather mining cards become e-waste in a few years than get
| resold.
|
| On other note, the "cloud" Vega that AMD sold to the very few
| cloud videogaming companies comes with exact same limitations,
| and a clause of non-resale, and non-refurbishment. This way
| buyers, can't simply solder display connector to those cards,
| and sell them on open market.
|
| Imagine Intel would've sold their Xeons with the same
| limitations... but wait, they actually did this for "custom
| fused" Xeons they sell to big dotcoms.
|
| Now, who said that silicon vendors can't "vendor lock" their
| dotcom clients? By buying direct, all those dotcoms have
| exposed themselves to an even bigger supplier risk of this
| type, and not reduced it.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Why would a gamer not buy a second hand card from a miner?
| dreen wrote:
| tbf I wouldn't buy a cheaper used gaming card from a miner,
| because of potential ware. Electronics ware off, and a mining
| card would have been taxed much more than any card used for
| gaming.
| celticninja wrote:
| probably not, read this thread for details, but miners
| underclock and undervolt for efficiency. Gamers overclock
| for performance.
| dreen wrote:
| I have and the truth seems to be that if the miner took
| good care of the card it will probably be fine. Thats why
| I said "potential". This is not an acceptable risk when
| Im spending big on gaming hardware.
|
| edit: just to be clear, I dont have the expertise to
| check the wear, so it just seems like a bad gamble to me
| detaro wrote:
| the mining-only cards don't have video outputs
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Sounds like a win-win
|
| Gamers (generally very price-conscious) get a more stable
| close-to-msrp price now and in the future, nvidia secures their
| supply
|
| You're right with respect to e-waste, but I wonder if they may
| end up really subsidizing hobbyist data analysis.
| 22c wrote:
| I don't think this will help pricing or availability much
| either. LTT did a video on this topic somewhat recently and it
| turns out a lot of the reasons that you can't get a card right
| now is related to chip shortages and people (yes, regular
| gaming enthusiasts) buying any card they can find. Even cards
| that already have terrible mining efficiency are scarce.
| Phlarp wrote:
| Unless the miners are cutting off the supply at the silicon
| production level. What's to stop Antminer (or any other
| mining asic company) from paying 10x as much for a majority
| of TSMC capacity, RTX and Ryzen supply be damned.
| akelly wrote:
| Most of TSMC's capacity is allocated years ahead of time.
| They're contractually obligated to supply AMD wafers at a
| predetermined price and volume.
|
| Also, GPUs are pretty good at mining Ethereum. ASICs are
| only about 2x as efficient, many miners would rather have
| the security of knowing they can always sell their GPUs to
| gamers if it all comes crashing down.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| my 1080 ti sells for 30% more than i paid for it 3? 4? years
| ago. its price has fluctuated in mostly perfect tandem with
| crypto. just based on first hand experience, your claim (if its
| what you are actually claiming) that miners arent influencing
| the price is pretty wrong.
| akelly wrote:
| My point was more nuanced than that. Of course miners are
| influencing GPU prices. If miners stopped buying all GPUs,
| prices would probably go back to MSRP pretty quickly.
|
| But stopping miners from buying one GPU model won't make it
| sell at MSRP. Miners switch to buying other cards, driving
| the price of those even higher, but the LHR cards are still
| going to be out of stock everywhere and scalped for 2x MSRP,
| because there are so many gamers buying GPUs.
| lvl100 wrote:
| This is what they said in 2018. Turned out miners WERE primary
| driver of growth not gamers.
| jyrkesh wrote:
| 2000 series was expensive and underwhelming, and raytracing
| wasn't really viable in real-time with other graphical
| settings cranked up.
|
| 3000 series is a huge performance boost, reasonably priced
| (at least at MSRP), and gives comfortable buffer on lots of
| scenarios like high-end VR, 1440p at very high FPS, and comfy
| 4K with all the good stuff turned up.
|
| Meanwhile, the GTX 1080 was cheap and could basically play
| everything at 1080p. I think gamers just skipped over the
| 2000 because it was lame.
|
| But hell, I hope you're right. I'm still rocking a 980, and
| I've not had any success trying to grab a 3070 to upgrade.
| Maybe these LHRs will actually free stuff up. (But to be
| honest, the 980 is still doing fine with most of what I play
| at 1080p.)
| michaelbuddy wrote:
| 18 months ago I could get a 2070 Super for $550 and the
| 1080 Titan cards were $799 - 900 at launch and long after.
| The 2000 series was a lot of bang for the buck.
| kodt wrote:
| Don't gamers usually frown upon buying cards previously used
| for mining? It's like buying a used car that used to be part of
| a rental fleet.
|
| I suppose demand is high enough that people will buy whatever
| they can get though.
| akelly wrote:
| Hard to tell from an ebay listing whether it was used for
| mining or not.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Yes, in the same way that "audiophiles" frown on playing a CD
| before running it through the demagnetizer.
| thefz wrote:
| > The real reason Nvidia is doing this is that when mining
| profitability inevitably drops, either because of a crypto
| price crash or Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake, the miners
| will flood the used market and ruin Nvidia's profits for a few
| quarters.
|
| Taking into consideration that the gamer segment is now well
| aware that miners and scalpers are ruining their supply, I
| really hope that when the flood of used cards happen, nobody
| with a grain of salt will buy devices that have run at 98%
| their thermal limit for years. I really hope that market-
| ruining miners will find themselves with a ton of hardware
| nobody wants anymore.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Professional miners usually underclock and undervolt their
| cards. A constant load is also less stressful on the die and
| pcb than repeated heating and cooling cycles. The one thing
| you might have to replace on well kept GPUs are the fans.
| pferde wrote:
| Please take into consideration that this will be the same
| naive, impressionable "market segment" that repeatedly pre-
| orders new games, even though there is no real reason to do
| so, as the games are digital copies, so there is no scarcity.
| The same market segment also rewards shitty game companies,
| producing half-finished, barely working product, with their
| money again and again. All because of a combination of
| deviously good marketing and FOMO.
|
| So yes, I fully expect those soon-to-break GPUs to sell like
| hotcakes, and a lot of crying soon thereafter.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| PC's have limited/collector's editions too, despite the
| actual game ultimately being a digital code.
|
| https://www.gamestop.com/video-games/pc-
| gaming/games/product...
|
| It's not like pre-orders are objectively useless like some
| people may paint it.
|
| > The same market segment also rewards shitty game
| companies, producing half-finished, barely working product,
| with their money again and again
|
| Most people buying PC games aren't the ones buying top of
| the line dedicated GPU's for their gaming rigs. They also
| aren't ones who will scrutinize super technical details
| (nor even gameplay elements) as if they are Digital
| Foundry. Lotta weird generalizations here.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I'd rather buy a used card from a professional miner than
| from an enthusiast gamer. The former card will have run at
| very stable thermals, while the latter will probably have
| gone through a lot of thermal stress resulting from heating
| up and cooling down, and component stress from power on/offs.
| Corazoor wrote:
| I find the argument for this move unconvincing: Nvidias failure
| to meet demand is somehow the fault of... the customers? But
| since there are morally aprehensible workloads, it is totally
| fine to... throttle them? Not prevent or contractually prohibit,
| as one might expect... And of course it is Nvidia who decicdes on
| the morals of your workload.
|
| I mean, seriously, how can anyone be ok with that?
| skjoldr wrote:
| They can't improve the supply any longer, so they are cutting
| demand instead.
|
| Why would you prevent mining if some gamers do want to utilize
| their idle GPU power? Mining is supposed to be for everyone.
| jcheng wrote:
| I didn't see Nvidia weigh in on the morality of any workload,
| just like nerfing FP64 performance in their GeForce cards
| wasn't a statement on the morality of double-precision
| workloads. They're trying to steer cards towards a particular
| segment of the market, there can be a lot of reasons for that.
|
| For example, they might believe that while selling to gamers is
| less lucrative than selling to miners in the short term, the
| gaming market will always exist while the mining market dries
| up the moment GPU mining is no longer profitable; so
| maintaining a good relationship with the gaming community is
| important for their long term health. Or maybe they're just
| tired of gamers yelling at them.
| lacker wrote:
| _how can anyone be ok with that?_
|
| I don't want to mine cryptocurrency on my graphics card. So
| given the choice of buying an unrestricted one off ebay for
| $2500, or a restricted one for the originally suggested price
| of $800, I would rather buy the restricted one. Nvidia isn't
| being dishonest, they aren't throttling the cards they already
| sold, they aren't claiming anything is moral or immoral, they
| are just offering a new product that does exactly what I want
| for cheaper. So I'm certainly okay with it.
| poglet wrote:
| I would like that too but it doesn't seem to be the case with
| the 'restricted' RTX 3060 (I would like to get it at RRP).
| lamontcg wrote:
| This is how community standards works.
|
| The government should never mandate that video card
| manufacturers do this, or don't do this.
|
| If you don't like it, set up your own video card business that
| caters to crypto mining.
|
| The vast majority of NVidia customers are applauding this move
| though.
|
| This is the free market working, but if you're into crypto you
| may not like it because you're not winning the marketplace of
| ideas.
|
| (And IMO if you support cryptocurrency you should appreciate
| this as well, because astronomically high GPU costs for gamers
| erodes the standing of cryptocurrencies in that demographic, it
| is very bad PR to just let GPU costs inflate -- people start to
| vehemently hate cryptocurrencies because of that effect).
| wpietri wrote:
| You realize you're making a moral argument against moral
| arguments, right?
|
| If you'd like to know how people are ok with this, it's been
| explained plenty already, right here in this discussion.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I think it's just an argument against a unilateral decision
| by NVIDIA under the facade of morals. Businesses aren't
| people and don't have morals, everything they do is strategic
| and profit motivated, even if the people that compose them
| have morals.
|
| My guess is that NVIDIA doesn't want one basket of demand
| dominating the majority of their demand while disenfranching
| all of their other demands in parallel computing (graphics,
| industrial/scientific, etc.). If they allow crypto to take
| the lionshare of their cards, consumers for the other demands
| will eventually seek out alternatives if they haven't
| already. That's all well and fine as long as crypto demand
| sustains whatever NVIDIA can supply indefinitely.
|
| It's not so great if crypto demand for GPUs drops
| drastically, then NVIDIA is sitting there looking to drum
| demand back up from all their previous customers and markets.
| Essentially, they're likely just trying to distribute risk
| for a future demand portfolio.
|
| I can't honestly believe any large investors or top level
| executives at NVIDIA are losing a second of sleep by having
| so much demand they have to turn people away. If they're
| losing any sleep it's all the lost profit they can't make
| because they can't meet full demand or because they're in a
| potentially risky situation.
| wpietri wrote:
| Did they do it under a facade of morals? Perhaps you can
| point me to where Nvidia makes a moral argument.
|
| As an aside, businesses don't act on their own. People do
| have morals, and they're the ones running things. Whether
| or not they use their morals is a different question, but
| we needn't preemptively excuse them from doing so just
| because money is involved.
| brianobush wrote:
| They are limiting mining of a single coin: Ethereum. Nothing is
| going to stop mining other coins, which are quite profitable.
| Also, Ethereum is going through two upcoming events which will
| change the landscape dramatically. July has EIP-1559 which will
| reduce ETH mining earnings by 30% and the eventual move to proof
| of stake in late 2021/early 2022. Both of these events will make
| other non-ETH coins more profitable.
| Tepix wrote:
| Ethereum mining is far more profitable than any other coin at
| the moment.
| joshspankit wrote:
| This is dumb.
|
| As if literally armies of highly skilled technical miners aren't
| going to quickly bypass whatever Nvidia has cooked up.
|
| They mess with the drivers? almost instant workaround. They mess
| with the hardware? That army will go through the GPU instructions
| one at a time until they find a way to change the mining
| software.
| ahD5zae7 wrote:
| Actually, is there a need to block anything? They're coming up
| with a mining-focused product line now. Just make them slightly
| cheaper per hash and voila - all miners will be buying the
| mining-focused products. They lack the video outputs so it makes
| sense, you can skip some of the BOM on the card, save a few
| bucks. As it has already been mentioned in the thread miners are
| super sensitive to squeezing every cent out of their setup. If
| they can save some bucks on cards, they will surely go for it.
|
| So either the mining cards will be cheaper than regular, which
| makes this block a moot point in near future, or they will be
| more expensive per hash than normal graphic cards. In which case
| the block makes sense but in my opinion is a bad move by Nvidia.
| Making the mining cards more expensive than regular cards is
| throwing a gauntlet to the whole world to break the drivers or
| workaround the hardware. It will be fascinating to watch the cat-
| and-mouse game of hackers and Nvidia developers, but it will not
| fix the horrible GPU market situation we're in now and that is a
| shame.
|
| Disclaimer: I want to buy a new GPU soon but for the MSRP and not
| the price equivalent of a small car. So I may be biased...
| zucker42 wrote:
| > Just make them slightly cheaper per hash and voila
|
| The problem is they want the mining cards to be more expensive
| per hash.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| My understanding is there is a concern that cryptocurrency
| miners are buying GPUs, using them for a few weeks to determine
| which ones they can overclock, and selling the ones they can't
| (and have probably limited the life of in the process) since
| you can probably sell a 30 series GPU for more than you got it
| for, even if you're upfront about it being used.
|
| All of that isn't possible with the mining-focused line, so
| Nvidia feels they need other tools to help convince the
| cryptocurrency miners to move over, hence the block.
| xur17 wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this before - do you have a link or
| something with more details?
| mrgordon wrote:
| The issue is the resale value for actual working GPUs is higher
| so the miners will often buy the normal cards anyway
| burnethtards wrote:
| You can customize mining algorithms to work on any hardware....
|
| Either way gpu mining was always a terrible idea since they have
| resale value and thus cost of attack was small vs ASICs that are
| rendered worthless when they attack their own chain effectively
| unable to break even on sunk costs.
| inetsee wrote:
| Didn't Nvidia try this on some different cards recently? And
| wasn't it only about a week before there was a patch that undid
| what Nvidia had done?
| ihuman wrote:
| They only tried it on a version of the 3060, and they
| accidentally released a driver without LHR.
| plttn wrote:
| My unfounded speculation is that the 3060Ti limiter (which was
| mostly bypassed due to an accidental leak of dev drivers) acted
| as a bit of a test balloon to see how it would be attacked
| before implementing it on the 3070/3080 silicon.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I wonder if the << accidental >> release was to avoid the
| motivation for a massive lawsuit.
|
| If apple can get sued for << excessive >> throttling when
| batteries lose peak cranking amps, nvidia would fare much
| worse.
| simion314 wrote:
| >If apple can get sued for << excessive >> throttling when
| batteries lose peak cranking amps
|
| You are missing the main part, "Apple downgraded your CPU
| behind your back" which is very different then "The iPhone
| box clearly mentions that when the battery is low the CPU
| will throttle and a notification is shown".
|
| It seems the fanboys managed to trick you in believing that
| Apple is the victim here.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Any antitrust should look at this and immediately open a process
| to fine Nvidia for market dominance, or split it, or whatever.
| The ability for a company to do such a thing is in itself enough
| to grant such an action.
| moogly wrote:
| Why only reduce them to half the performance? How about 0%.
|
| I predict this will do absolutely nothing for general
| availability of these cards.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Denting the performance that way makes them no longer cost
| effective for eth, but doesn't make them completely useless for
| any workloads (in games, or adobe premiere, etc) that happen to
| look like crypto mining - so they can avoid selling a
| completely broken card.
| kevincox wrote:
| Because halving the performance makes them unprofitable to run.
| If you buy one you can still try mining, and if it falsely
| detects mining your desktop won't crash, but professional
| miners won't be interested.
| moogly wrote:
| Considering they sell the cards afterwards, I remain
| unconvinced that they will (to miners appear to) be
| unprofitable at half the hashing performance.
|
| I fear these guys will just want the double amount of cards
| now :/
|
| So sorry, but I'll believe it when I see it.
| goodlinks wrote:
| I mine with my gpu when i dont use it for other things.. i am
| still using the heat it geterates, it genuinely allows me to have
| the central heating off for more months of the year and on for
| fewer hours when i do use it.
|
| I considerd selling my 3080 as i struggled to justify keeping it
| given the price they go for on ebay, but in the end kept it due
| to concerns over the chip shortage..
|
| Gamers are miners are scalpers..
|
| im not a fan of companies dictating what i do with things i
| bought from them..
|
| Level1techs did a video on using tesla gpus for graphics, so all
| of this seems like bullying really to me as a consumer.. if
| nvidia want to help make that easier!
| goodlinks wrote:
| I wonder what the carbon footprint of a new gpu is.. it would
| be great to see all the old mining and ai cards being used to
| game on. I bet they can all do a decent 1080p game no?
| mrkramer wrote:
| "GeForce Is Made for Gaming" Yea just like Microsoft Windows is
| made only for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. Piss off.
| rhema wrote:
| Why not the 3090? What's the logic?
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Cost is roughly 2x (at MSRP/inflated MSRP) over a 3080, so if
| you can buy a 3080 there's no reason to buy a 3090 for hashing.
| Hashrate is something like 20-30% more than a 3080.
| zokier wrote:
| 3090 availability is relatively good at the moment.
| gradys wrote:
| This has very much not been my experience in the US.
| irq wrote:
| Is it? I haven't seen one in stock in a long time. People are
| setting up sniping programs to auto-buy them.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Relative is a broad statement depending on where you live. In
| the US, Newegg has been going in-and-out of stock but mostly
| out.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| I'd love to see a few links. I haven't been able to purchase
| them, checked Amazon, Best Buy, and newegg.
| belltaco wrote:
| The extra cost over the 3080 is probably not worth the minor
| increase in the hash rate for mining.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Drive miners to the high priced cards while leaving the
| price/performance market for gamers.
| [deleted]
| Zenst wrote:
| I find the prospect of being able to add more overhead and
| potential bugs into a product to remove a niche functionality in
| a move that reeks of PR marketing driven solution, too be of bad
| taste. Whilst the overhead will be so small I doubt it will be
| measurable, it still is not zero and only adds the possibility
| that some workloads of non crypto currency origins fall foul of
| this in ways that may not be easy to discern.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| "Niche functionality" that is ballooning the price of their
| graphics cards for end users?
|
| > adds the possibility that some workloads of non crypto
| currency origins fall foul of this in ways that may not be easy
| to discern.
|
| So what? The proof is in the pudding. You buy things as they
| are sold, not with some kind of expectation that you can
| achieve 100% of the theoretical performance of some ideal
| version of the product. If I buy a car with a limiter that
| doesn't let me go over 100mph, I shouldn't be surprised or
| upset that I can't hit 105 mph.
| Quick2822 wrote:
| I'm not sure its niche.
|
| ETH is the 2nd most popular crypto with a $394,657,267,540
| market cap at $3,403.15 per as of the timestamp.
| Vespasian wrote:
| It's a niche for GPU usage when compared to gaming,
| rendering, video editing, machine learning.
|
| And it's most likely a really short lived niche
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > a niche functionality
|
| That's kind of a bullcrap, since this 'niche' functionality
| completely crippled graphic card sales, and negative effects
| will ripple through PC gaming markets for quite some time.
| Every gamer that didn't manage to snatch one before is pissed
| beyond funny.
|
| Imagine a gaming studio that is deciding to develop a next-gen
| game - why would they try hard to go for / optimize for PC
| version if there are very few actual owners of good cards?
| Produce either generic all-platform-compatible stuff or abandon
| PC market altogether.
| tristanj wrote:
| Context: Back in February, Nvidia also restricted cryptocurrency
| mining on their RTX 3060 cards. The restrictions were bypassed a
| month later https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26475596
|
| Related HN Discussions:
|
| _Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in
| half_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26180260 (461 points,
| 746 comments)
|
| _Nvidia Limits RTX 3060 Hash Rate_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192201 (280 points, 509
| comments)
|
| _AMD refuses to limit cryptocurrency mining: We will not be
| blocking any workload_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26524387 (68 points, 53
| comments)
| cerved wrote:
| huh, so this is why I've been seeing HDMI plugs that supposedly
| double the hashrate of 3060s
|
| How is this even implemented?
| DrNuke wrote:
| Folks, the GTX 1070s 8GB coming with 2017 laptops are still good
| enough for literally any semi-professional, non-mining
| application out there, from machine learning to gaming. With a
| few hacks and the right hardware setup, they can still do not-so-
| clever professionals happy. Therefore, this is a full supply-
| demand problem, with Nvidia facing its first, real catch-22
| maturity problem: how do they sell new GPUs to happy-with-1070
| regulars like me?
| fooey wrote:
| Nvidia is betting DLSS and Ray Tracing will be the killer
| features to get you to upgrade
| Dah00n wrote:
| This falls apart when you move to a 4k display. A 1070, a 4k
| display, hdr, and a new-ish game and you are lightyears from
| the 60fps that is a minimum for many gamers.
| freeflight wrote:
| This whole situation makes me wonder if the GPU market will just
| crash once the biggest coins move away from PoW?
|
| The market would be flooded with a ton of current and last gen
| GPUs with second-hand pricing, while AMDs and Nvidias newest
| offerings suddenly lost a major part of their demand.
|
| I guess another possibility is that miners will just transfer
| their efforts to coins still working on PoW, trying to make those
| relevant instead.
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