NVIDIA Asks Retailers To Stop Selling To Miners & Sell To Gamers Instead,(wccf)

[VirtualLarry]

I don't think putting mining specific enhancements will work as a fix. Miners want the cheapest card that can mine a currency and new currencies can be made that work better on any type of card you came out with. Nvidia and AMD would have to dump R&D resources into developing a product that will likely be obsolete before its even released that the more resilient gaming market wouldn't even care about in the first place.

That's a good point too. Crypto is so fickle and volatile, the GPU companies might not even make any type of ROI on their R&D, even if they were to "enhance mining" for a certain sub-set of their card / GPU
line-up.

 

[scannall]

Puttering around on the Ibuypower builder. If you cheap out on all the computer components, but have a 1080ti you end up with not only your 1080ti, but a computer and about $100 less than just the video card.

 

[Elixer]

How do you order from aib? I want to order like 600 cards? If you can hook me up with how to order from them I’ll send you a free card for your effort. Thanks!

Wow, a whole one card? Give me 300, and we will talk.

Oh they care, they need to keep up with demand, they're not making as much as vendors that hikes prices are. Plus most miners RMAs their cards before selling them as second hand (at high prices), RMA being handled this way ruins the card market.

No, Nvidia & AMD don't care about RMAs, they just care about not flooding the market with cards that could end up in some warehouse with no buyers if this cyrptocrap crashes.
The AIBs care about RMAs though, that is what cuts into their profits.
That is the main reason AIBs have "mining" cards out now, with basically a very short warranty period to stop miners from doing exactly what you said.

These are pretty bare bones, no extra display circuitry or anything else is needed for mining, and it saves them $5-$10 per card, along with the reduced warranty.

However, they don't want to be stuck with a warehouse of these cards either, so it is all a huge bubble being created and nobody wants to end up holding the bag, hence the short supply to retailers.
Bulk purchases are just fine for them though, they know exactly how much to make.

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, I think that the way to fix this issue would be to have special "mining edition" video cards that cost more, but are built for 24/7 operation at 90% GPU usage.

For regular cards, they should probably add something to the firmware that throttles mining activity. Shouldn't be too hard... if you see the CPU cranking OpenCL or CUDA instructions for more than say... 3 hours straight, throttle the card to 50% and tell the user to pony up for a mining edition or a Titan series card.

 

[sao123]

Yeah, I think that the way to fix this issue would be to have special "mining edition" video cards that cost more, but are built for 24/7 operation at 90% GPU usage.

For regular cards, they should probably add something to the firmware that throttles mining activity. Shouldn't be too hard... if you see the CPU cranking OpenCL or CUDA instructions for more than say... 3 hours straight, throttle the card to 50% and tell the user to pony up for a mining edition or a Titan series card.

That should be easy to accomplish, since hashing is not a calculation repeatedly done in graphics operations.

 

[PingSpike]

I've noticed mining farms usually use PCI-e 16x to 1x slot convertor risers because the mining doesn't require any pci express bandwidth to be effective. There's a lot of mining motherboards available now that use the cheapest chipset available and have tons of 1x slots to most efficiently make this setup work.

Perhaps a better idea would be to key off of this. If the link width is to low the card could throttle making it ineffective for mining. It would suck for some esoteric custom setups that weren't mining and you'd have to consider some boards use a 4x slot of crossfire but this would require more motherboards and cpus, more space and more power usage to use these cards for mining while effectively not mattering at all to gamers who would take to large of a performance hit running at that low of a link speed anyway.

This seems a lot simpler and more targeted than my other idea, and it won't screw people who play games for 20 hours in a row.

 

[traderjay]

this is just a feel good PR by nvidia but internally they wish this problem becomes "perpetual". Its too good of a problem to have and the dream of every single manufacturer.

 

[Elixer]

Another idea that should work, they could sell the video cards at MSRP + $1000-$1500), then have a rebate for that amount, limited to 1 per address, and address much match shipping location, and this information will be in a centralized database that all retailers must use, so you can't place multiple orders from different retailers, and still get more than one rebate.
The bad part here is A)paying that much up front, and B)waiting for that huge rebate, however, it would make stock come back, and gamers can finally get their cards at MSRP again.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Another idea that should work, they could sell the video cards at MSRP + $1000-$1500), then have a rebate for that amount, limited to 1 per address, and address much match shipping location, and this information will be in a centralized database that all retailers must use, so you can't place multiple orders from different retailers, and still get more than one rebate.
The bad part here is A)paying that much up front, and B)waiting for that huge rebate, however, it would make stock come back, and gamers can finally get their cards at MSRP again.

Now THAT'S a brilliant idea, I like it. It would allow individual gamers and small-scale personal miners to get cards fairly cheap, but would charge these larger-scale miners quite a bit more. Win-win, if you ask me.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Another idea that should work, they could sell the video cards at MSRP + $1000-$1500), then have a rebate for that amount, limited to 1 per address, and address much match shipping location, and this information will be in a centralized database that all retailers must use, so you can't place multiple orders from different retailers, and still get more than one rebate.
The bad part here is A)paying that much up front, and B)waiting for that huge rebate, however, it would make stock come back, and gamers can finally get their cards at MSRP again.

Interesting idea. I hate the idea of large rebates because they screw it up way to often for my tastes, but it is a solution.

I like the current idea of giving big discounts on the card if bought with other hardware like how New Egg and MicroCenter is starting to do. It has got me thinking about upgrading my entire system instead of just a GPU upgrade.

I wonder if that trend is going to end up with a bunch of that hardware resold on ebay? If so that should depress the resell value of the secondary market. In a few months we might be able to pick up a cheap CPU and MB from this.

 

[bystander36]

this is just a feel good PR by nvidia but internally they wish this problem becomes "perpetual". Its too good of a problem to have and the dream of every single manufacturer.

On the surface, that might seem true, but what happens when miners kill the gaming market, and then the mining market crashes? They really want to keep both markets going strong as long as possible.

 

[traderjay]

On the surface, that might seem true, but what happens when miners kill the gaming market, and then the mining market crashes? They really want to keep both markets going strong as long as possible.

Yes, it is a valid concern because lets say the mining craziness keeps going, PC gamers will get fed up and maybe switch to consoles but it will be the minority. The true high-end PC gamers will always remain loyal to the PC platform. But GPU supply is constraint by wafer production and yield and this two is beyond the control of nvidia and AMD, so the only way is to slowly ramp up supply but it is also a very risky proposition because of the volatile market that is impossible to forecast.

I spent close to a decade in the ATI GPU business and have first hand account into the planning, engineering, foundry, sales and marketing side and before the onset of mining, our worst nightmare is excessive channel inventory. I personally think it is a good thing because this mining craziness further raised the awareness of discrete GPUs. Both nvidia and ATI spent the last 15 years trying to educate the masses on the benefit of GPUs without much luck.

 

[Magee_MC]

Now THAT'S a brilliant idea, I like it. It would allow individual gamers and small-scale personal miners to get cards fairly cheap, but would charge these larger-scale miners quite a bit more. Win-win, if you ask me.

There are a bunch of problems with that idea that I can see right off the bat. Start with college students that often live 3 or more to an apartment and often move each year. With just one card to an address they will end up alienating a large number of the key gaming demographic. Not to mention what happens if your card just up and dies, or you want to upgrade? That also applies to families with more that one person who games.

Even if you got around those problems, all you would be doing is creating a gray market for cards that would drive prices up even more. The only way to mitigate this problem is to make mining cards more attractive than gaming cards.

As it stands now, a part of the problem is that if a miner buys a mining specific card, there is no resale market for the cards if the mining bubble bursts. Gaming cards can still be sold after being used for mining to help recoup some of the investment in the cards if mining becomes unprofitable. If mining is unprofitable then those mining specific cards would pretty much be worthless.

The only way that I can see mining cards being more attractive is if they cost significantly less than gaming cards for the same hash rates. The obvious problem with that is that the manufacturers would make less money on them, and they would have to ramp up production and take the risk that they could sell enough to mitigate the potential to have a ton of stock when/if the mining bubble pops.

Unfortunately, I don't see a realistic way out of this mess anytime in the future. I also wonder what will happen to NV when the bubble bursts and a ton of their cards come flooding back onto the used markets this time. When that happened to AMD they couldn't sell new cards because the used ones were so cheap. If NV releases their next generation of cards and the market is flooded with used NV/AMD cards that cost a lot less than people would have to pay for the same performance from new NV cards, what will they do then?

As far as I can see, it's an ugly situation that is only going to get uglier.

 

[BFG10K]

Another idea that should work, they could sell the video cards at MSRP + $1000-$1500), then have a rebate for that amount, limited to 1 per address, and address much match shipping location, and this information will be in a centralized database that all retailers must use, so you can't place multiple orders from different retailers, and still get more than one rebate.

Um, this is a terrible idea. The last thing we need is nVidia gathering even more telemetry than they are now.

 

[PeterScott]

Interesting idea. I hate the idea of large rebates because they screw it up way to often for my tastes, but it is a solution.

I like the current idea of giving big discounts on the card if bought with other hardware like how New Egg and MicroCenter is starting to do. It has got me thinking about upgrading my entire system instead of just a GPU upgrade.

I wonder if that trend is going to end up with a bunch of that hardware resold on ebay? If so that should depress the resell value of the secondary market. In a few months we might be able to pick up a cheap CPU and MB from this.

I really don't think any schemes will work that try to only/preferentially sell cards to gamers.

They need to bite the bullet and increase production.

Sure they probably don't want to do it now when they are producing two year old cards, if the bubble burst and the end of product cycle and they are stuck with old cards, they are really stuck. Which might be another factor contributing to the problem right now.

But when the next generation launches they should increase initial production by a LOT, even if the bubble bursts they will have a lot of time to clear new generation cards.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I really don't think any schemes will work that try to only/preferentially sell cards to gamers.

They need to bite the bullet and increase production.

Sure they probably don't want to do it now when they are producing two year old cards, if the bubble burst and the end of product cycle and they are stuck with old cards, they are really stuck. Which might be another factor contributing to the problem right now.

But when the next generation launches they should increase initial production by a LOT, even if the bubble bursts they will have a lot of time to clear new generation cards.

Increasing production enough to make a difference is a very risky venture, I doubt either NVidia or AMD is going to do so, and if they did they would do so by pushing back the next generation of GPUs, which puts them in the even more risky place that their competitor might not do so, and then on top of all this all those cards they make will probably end up on the secondary market when their next generation comes out eroding their primary sales channel.

The executive management of GPU makers must be pulling their hair out over this. This is a terrible problem to have. A huge demand for a product that might not still be there by the time you are able to produce the supply. If you take the risk of meeting the demand it might bankrupt you and if you don't you are leaving money on the table, something your shareholders might not forgive you for.

 

[PeterScott]

Increasing production enough to make a difference is a very risky venture, I doubt either NVidia or AMD is going to do so, and if they did they would do so by pushing back the next generation of GPUs, .

That doesn't follow. As I said, they should do it at the beginning of a new generation, so they aren't pushing back anything. If the bubble bursts they have a long time to clear new generation product, so some overproduction can be dealt with long before the next generation comes out (2 years later these days).

It will certainly work better than PR statements about valuing gamers, suggesting retailers should value gamers as well.

And if they are too scared to increase production because the bubble might burst, then they certainly aren't going to waste R&D on Mining only cards/features.

 

[SMOGZINN]

That doesn't follow. As I said, they should do at the beginning of new generation, so they aren't pushing back anything. If the bubble bursts they have a long time to clear new generation product, so some overproduction can be dealt with long before the next generation comes out (2 years later these days).

At the beginning of a new generation supply is low because production yields are low. It takes a while for the production to ramp up, that is why we almost always have shortages at the beginning of a new product cycle. The current generation is at or near the peak of cost to efficiency of production. That means that if they want to significantly increase supply they have to do it with this generation of product. So, while it would be nice to be able to just jump into a new product cycle, it is probably not realistic to do so.

 

[PeterScott]

At the beginning of a new generation supply is low because production yields are low. It takes a while for the production to ramp up, that is why we almost always have shortages at the beginning of a new product cycle. The current generation is at or near the peak of cost to efficiency of production. That means that if they want to significantly increase supply they have to do it with this generation of product. So, while it would be nice to be able to just jump into a new product cycle, it is probably not realistic to do so.

Yields are low when jumping to a new process. This time it will likely just be a well tweaked process, yields should be fine.

 

[LightningZ71]

Given the strong demand for their current products, there is no incentive to rush new products out. Nvidia has less incentive since they are the market leader. This will give them PLENTY of time to be able to work on their processes and yields on engineering sample products to make the transition much smoother. I would expect that NVidia will do as they are currently doing, pushing their newest architecture in limited volumes at the very top end of the market (engineering and rendering and specialty products) to iron out any production issues that they may have. They can afford this because almost their entire product stack is selling at volume at or above MSRP. When they get yields to target levels, and drivers where they want them to be, they'll do the switch and fill the channels, winding down old products as they stop selling at MSRP.

AMD doesn't have the technical lead, so they are likely constrained by their R&D as well as their production limitations. Given how low their past volumes were, their production capabilities are likely tuned to lower volumes than Nvidia. This makes capacity increases harder and more expensive for them. They do have a significant chance to catch up a bit with R&D here as Nvidia has been conservative with their Volta rollout, though, given how big the gap is, its likely that they won't be able to gain any significant ground.

The true kicker here is that, hashing algorithms are quite well defined. It is easy for both AMD and NVIDIA to profile how the various hashing algorithms behave with their GPUs and make very minor tweaks to the bios or micro-code of a portion of their cards that will make them perform significantly worse for hashing while not adversley harming their gaming performance. This would allow them to sell "premium" mining cards while still selling "gaming" cards at reasonable MSRPs. This would also allow them more control over channel volume. They could sell gaming specific cards at levels that make sense for the market, and then push as many mining card out the door at a premium price as the market will bear. This would be no different than how both AMD and NVidia have made Quadro/FirePro cards for the professional market as separate products based on the very same chips in many cases from the gaming cards in the past. Yes, it will harm their resale values, but, if configured to be optimized for hashing from the factory, the extra performance would be worth it.

 

[traderjay]

Given the strong demand for their current products, there is no incentive to rush new products out. Nvidia has less incentive since they are the market leader. This will give them PLENTY of time to be able to work on their processes and yields on engineering sample products to make the transition much smoother. I would expect that NVidia will do as they are currently doing, pushing their newest architecture in limited volumes at the very top end of the market (engineering and rendering and specialty products) to iron out any production issues that they may have. They can afford this because almost their entire product stack is selling at volume at or above MSRP. When they get yields to target levels, and drivers where they want them to be, they'll do the switch and fill the channels, winding down old products as they stop selling at MSRP.

AMD doesn't have the technical lead, so they are likely constrained by their R&D as well as their production limitations. Given how low their past volumes were, their production capabilities are likely tuned to lower volumes than Nvidia. This makes capacity increases harder and more expensive for them. They do have a significant chance to catch up a bit with R&D here as Nvidia has been conservative with their Volta rollout, though, given how big the gap is, its likely that they won't be able to gain any significant ground.

The true kicker here is that, hashing algorithms are quite well defined. It is easy for both AMD and NVIDIA to profile how the various hashing algorithms behave with their GPUs and make very minor tweaks to the bios or micro-code of a portion of their cards that will make them perform significantly worse for hashing while not adversley harming their gaming performance. This would allow them to sell "premium" mining cards while still selling "gaming" cards at reasonable MSRPs. This would also allow them more control over channel volume. They could sell gaming specific cards at levels that make sense for the market, and then push as many mining card out the door at a premium price as the market will bear. This would be no different than how both AMD and NVidia have made Quadro/FirePro cards for the professional market as separate products based on the very same chips in many cases from the gaming cards in the past. Yes, it will harm their resale values, but, if configured to be optimized for hashing from the factory, the extra performance would be worth it.

Yes indeed - it is always MUCH cheaper and less risky to make GPUs on existing nodes vs a redesign or a newer node, where the capital outlay is massive. In the past, this is not possible to delay the release of a new architecture due to competitive reasons and nvidia doesn't face the same threat today. In addition, the massive demand due to crypto means they are enjoying margins that was only a pipe dream a few months/years ago.

As for the bios hack, it is possible but Quadro and Firepro have some hardware difference vs their desktop counterparts on a silicon level. If its solely a bios/driver change, people will figure out a way to mod them.

 

[Carfax83]

Just checked NVidia's website, and ALL the GPUs are currently unavailable, including even the Titan Xp

So it looks like even the ultra high end has fallen victim to the mining craze. This is pure insanity. PC gaming is going to be seriously damaged by this crap if nothing is done by the IHVs to limit mining.

 

[Samwell]

Just checked NVidia's website, and ALL the GPUs are currently unavailable, including even the Titan Xp

So it looks like even the ultra high end has fallen victim to the mining craze. This is pure insanity. PC gaming is going to be seriously damaged by this crap if nothing is done by the IHVs to limit mining.

Few min ago the non-Star Wars TXP was in stock. But the Titan V is out of stock

 

[Dribble]

Given the strong demand for their current products, there is no incentive to rush new products out. Nvidia has less incentive since they are the market leader.

The problem they have is all the miners will offload on mass if the cards they are selling right now become un-competitive. So that means a Pascal/polaris tsunami is going to hit at some point - the moment that happens Pascal is dead for new sales. This means is they need to have something better that everyone will buy over a cheap used mining gpu when that happens. It has to be faster, have more features and be more power efficient then Pascal. If they do that they are fine, if not there will be problems.

 

[richaron]

Meh. GPU mining and crypto's are still in their infancy, they will both settle down and equilibrate eventually. Whether mining dives or manufacturing increases or whatever. Now is obviously not at a point of equilibrium so suck it up and just don't by, or if you have to buy now then suck it up and pay (as I did with DDR4 this year).

I've been building my own boxes for ~20yrs now and I've literally waited years for the right product or price on monitors, SSDs, HDDs, CPUs, and GPUs for one reason or another. It happens. That's how the market works.

In this situation I think the constant supply and relatively short product update cycle on GPUs should help gamers over the next year or so.