Nvidia's 3000 Series RTX GPU [3090s with different memory capacity]

[dskneo]

Genuinely curious. What would you do in Nvidia or AMD’s current position to get more cards into gamers’ hands?

Online selling only, requiring a valid Steam\Origin\Battlenet account containing purchased games. Prevent accounts that have already purchased a new GPU the last 3 months from purchasing another.

It requires cross data between them but I'm sure Nvidia and AMD have the grunt to pull it off. But its not really in their interest to do so. They are selling all they have already and these companies are not our friends.

 

[pcchen]

Online selling only, requiring a valid Steam\Origin\Battlenet account containing purchased games. Prevent accounts that have already purchased a new GPU the last 3 months from purchasing another.

It requires cross data between them but I'm sure Nvidia and AMD have the grunt to pull it off. But its not really in their interest to do so. They are selling all they have already and these companies are not our friends.

It's not that simple. They have contracts and deals with retailers. It's really not up to them (the OEM) to decide who the goods should be sold to. Retailers have the final call.
Also OEM tend to not dip too much into selling things by themselves as they don't want to antagonize retailers. Apple being the notable exception.

 

[trinibwoy]

Online selling only, requiring a valid Steam\Origin\Battlenet account containing purchased games. Prevent accounts that have already purchased a new GPU the last 3 months from purchasing another.

It requires cross data between them but I'm sure Nvidia and AMD have the grunt to pull it off. But its not really in their interest to do so. They are selling all they have already and these companies are not our friends.

Do you mean Nvidia and AMD should sell online directly to consumers and bypass their board partners and distributors? There is a reason those board partners and distributors exist. The IHVs simply don’t have the logistics operations to move that kind of volume globally.

This would also exclude many genuine gamers and is easily circumvented. Scalpers would just create dummy accounts. Remember people are willing to camp out for hours (days?) in the cold to get a card so they’re certainly willing to do something as easy as creating an account online. You also can’t go brick and mortar only because that would exclude a massive chunk of your target market.

The only effective solution I can think of would require massive global retailer co-ordination but that’s simply not practical. Also retailers don’t care at all about who is buying these cards or for what reason. Microcenter took my info when I got my card but I’ve heard that this didn’t stop them from selling multiple cards to the same person.

 

[PSman1700]

The only solution besides a crash of the bitcoin is if these (gaming) gpus aint sufficient to mine anymore.

 

[trinibwoy]

The only solution besides a crash of the bitcoin is if these (gaming) gpus aint sufficient to mine anymore.

Mining is a factor but a bit of a scapegoat. Can’t blame mining for console shortages. People seem to conveniently assume that real gamers aren’t the ones buying up these cards. It’s certainly not miners paying scalpers $3000 for a 3090. The economics don’t make sense.

 

[PSman1700]

Mining is a factor but a bit of a scapegoat. Can’t blame mining for console shortages. People seem to conveniently assume that real gamers aren’t the ones buying up these cards. It’s certainly not miners paying scalpers $3000 for a 3090. The economics don’t make sense.

Yes true, there have been stampedes to get ahold of RTX3080Ti's yesterday, assume not all of those where miners.

 

[pcchen]

The only solution besides a crash of the bitcoin is if these (gaming) gpus aint sufficient to mine anymore.

I think that ETH going PoS is likely to be a big disruption to the GPU mining scene.
However, 2 years ago when the GPU mining was starting to get popular (and caused the first "GPU price bubble"), ETH mining was not even the most popular nor most profitable. There were many auto-switching mining pools supporting mining for many alt-coins and auto convert these mined coins to BTC for convenience. NiceHash was also became popular at that time.
These days ETH is the most profitable GPU mining coin. Due to the huge price increase of ETH, hashrate is also at or neat the all-time-high. So once ETH is out of the picture, the altcoins are probably not going to be able to sustain this much hashrates. Note that most big altcoins (those with highest market cap) are not GPU minable. Other than ETH, ETC (Ethereum Classic) is probably the largest GPU minable coin.
So I expect after ETH 2.0 is online, the GPU mining scene is going to crash.

 

[DegustatoR]

Mining is a factor but a bit of a scapegoat. Can’t blame mining for console shortages. People seem to conveniently assume that real gamers aren’t the ones buying up these cards. It’s certainly not miners paying scalpers $3000 for a 3090. The economics don’t make sense.

Console prices aren't 3X of their MSRP though and I haven't seen any new gen console being completely out of stock here since launch - which was a pretty typical thing for new GPUs up until about recently.
Mining is the only reason anyone would be willing to pay $3000 for a GPU IMO. Other sales are there of course but they are likely some single digit percents of what they would've been at normal prices and thus I can't see how they can be driving the demand.

 

[PSman1700]

GPU mining scene is going to crash.

Opens up for some cheap used market GPUs for the gamers.

Console prices aren't 3X of their MSRP

Here you can be ready to pay over 1200$ for a PS5 if you manage to get one second hand/scalpers. Theres almost no one thats able to get one at msrp/store since launch.

 

[DegustatoR]

Here you can be ready to pay over 1200$ for a PS5 if you manage to get one second hand/scalpers. Theres almost no one thats able to get one at msrp/store since launch.

Yeah but there are consoles on sale even if only at inflated prices. And with Xbox the prices aren't even that inflated tbf. When it comes to the likes of 3080 there were about zero cards available even at $3000 here from Jan to Jun.

 

[Seanspeed]

It’s certainly not miners paying scalpers $3000 for a 3090. The economics don’t make sense.

Of course it is. You think gamers have all suddenly lost their minds and are the ones paying 3x the price for all levels of GPU's and have driven the prices up like this?

For miners it definitely makes sense once you factor in the ability to sell the GPU along later on, and the fact that they are gambling on value increases, along with the fact that with PoS, the more coin you have, the more stake you have. The people with the most will stand to make the most, so I think the motivation to get as much as you can now will be pretty high.

 

[trinibwoy]

Of course it is. You think gamers have all suddenly lost their minds and are the ones paying 3x the price for all levels of GPU's and have driven the prices up like this?

Gamers are paying 2x for consoles so why not? And you can't really blame lack of supply because Sony sold more PS5s than PS4s in the same period.

For miners it definitely makes sense once you factor in the ability to sell the GPU along later on, and the fact that they are gambling on value increases, along with the fact that with PoS, the more coin you have, the more stake you have. The people with the most will stand to make the most, so I think the motivation to get as much as you can now will be pretty high.

Miners aren't helping for sure but I also think there's a genuine increase in demand from the gamer population .

 

[Albuquerque]

I think everyone is overpaying, gamers and miners alike, because they want the cards.

The silicon shortage is ultimately a function of sudden and unplanned reduction in supply against an equally sudden and unplanned enormous uptick in demand. Everyone who was able to work from home was near-ubuquitously doing so as enabled by technology. Those who didn't already have it, needed to acquire it.

Even if supply chain was completely unaffected, the huge swing in people needing a computer, needing a webcam, needing upgraded network equipment to bring high speed internet into their house to facilitate remote work... Then combined with the huge swing in organizations having to buy compute and bandwidth capacity to handle all these always-online people. That massive upswing was going to cause problems with existing supply plans.

Then we combine it with factories and fabs shutting down because of the same pandemic driving the increased demand.

And then it turns out hundreds of millions of people still had jobs but were also being incentivized by their government to go out and spend money where they can - COVID payments as it were. I work in the automotive aftermarket repair sector, and our business has been off-the-top-of-the-charts insanity for the past nine months. Our own supply chains are stretched to the limit, we've had entire quarters where certain key automotive replacement parts would sell just as soon as we could get them and there was no remainig stock after.

It's not just GPU's, it's everything. There is a LOT of "available" pent up cash out there and people who want to spend it. Simiply assigning the demand to miners is woefully myopic.

 

[Seanspeed]

Gamers are paying 2x for consoles so why not? And you can't really blame lack of supply because Sony sold more PS5s than PS4s in the same period.

Very few people are paying such extreme scalper prices for consoles. You're ignoring that it's very possible to buy a PS5 or Xbox Series S/X at the normal(or fairly reasonable) price if you're persistent. They are not ALL being scalped. And of the scalped offerings online, it's usually not 2x the cost. I just took a look at eBay for the PS5, and most PS5's are being offered and sold at somewhere between £100-200 above normal price. That's not anywhere near 2x.

GPU's are being sold by retailers at 2-3x the cost. You straight up cannot buy a GPU at normal prices, cuz the retailers have started cutting out the scalpers by charging scalper prices to begin with. This extreme rise in prices is not driven by gamer demand. Gamers are not paying these insane prices. If this was the case, Nvidia and AMD have been lowballing prices for years and should just charge double what they were. But we all know they couldn't get away with this, because gamers aren't the ones buying at crazy high prices. It's miners. Miners are the ones who can justify it because they can reason a ROI for it. Gamers cannot. And the extra problem with this is that there is infinite demand from miners. That creates an extreme situation.

If the mining craze were to go away, things wouldn't go to 100% MSRP pricing, but they would definitely trend way, way down more towards standard markup for a high demand product. Something closer to what we're seeing with consoles. Not 2-3x.

 

[Albuquerque]

You straight up cannot buy a GPU at normal prices

<snip>

Gamers are not paying these insane prices.

Whether you realize it or not, you disagreed with yourself in these two statements. It's not rocket science or advanced statistics in play here; demand is high, supply is low, prices increase.

I can 100% unequivocally tell you gamers are absolutely paying those prices every day. There are PC build threads in dozens of forums and subreddits every day where people talk about the lengths they had to go to finish their newest PC build, complete with pictures. If they don't already have a dGPU or are simply unwilling to use their old one, the only possible way to purchase a different dGPU is to pay inflated prices - on the used market or new market, it doesn't matter.

No, assigning this to miners only is fallacious and ignores basic economics of the worldwide shortage of fab space along with the immense purchasing demand which has built up.

 

[Malo]

GPU's are being sold by retailers at 2-3x the cost. You straight up cannot buy a GPU at normal prices, cuz the retailers have started cutting out the scalpers by charging scalper prices to begin with.

Note that Bestbuy is selling all their FE GPUs at MSRP. It's extremely difficult to get one of course but there is no markup. It doesn't help however that now in the case of the 3080ti, that MSRP is already the stupid price.

 

[Seanspeed]

Whether you realize it or not, you disagreed with yourself in these two statements. It's not rocket science or advanced statistics in play here; demand is high, supply is low, prices increase.

I can 100% unequivocally tell you gamers are absolutely paying those prices every day. There are PC build threads in dozens of forums and subreddits every day where people talk about the lengths they had to go to finish their newest PC build, complete with pictures. If they don't already have a dGPU or are simply unwilling to use their old one, the only possible way to purchase a different dGPU is to pay inflated prices - on the used market or new market, it doesn't matter.

No, assigning this to miners only is fallacious and ignores basic economics of the worldwide shortage of fab space along with the immense purchasing demand which has built up.

No I did not disagree with myself. You're just trying for a poor 'gotcha' argument, without taking in the full nuances of my comments. Purposefully, it seems, given how much I specifically talk about these nuances in my post.

Obviously high demand pushes up prices. The *degree* to which the prices have gone up is the difference here. It's not a binary thing. Specific levels of demand can push prices up to varying different levels. The situation with GPU's right now is quite extreme. Far, far greater than what we're seeing with consoles which are also highly in demand. I went over all this. And this extreme demand is coming from mining, which is literally in insatiable demand. That's what is creating the extreme buying craze and price hikes.

As for gamers not buying at these high prices, it's largely true. Obviously if you want argue technicalities, yes, obviously there are *some* gamers out there in the world who are buying at such ridiculous prices. But gamers are not the main ones buying at these high prices. We know what gamers are willing to pay for GPU's generally. It is not 2-3x the MSRP. Gamers have not all lost their minds, as I said.

It is the miners primarily buying up everything and supporting such a high selling point. Because they figure they can make something from it ultimately. It is justifiable for them. Plus I should mention that I've seen many 'gamers' that have bought at like double the price say they are going to mine to make some of that back. At which point it's still the same thing, isn't it? They're a miner at that point. That's still my point.

I'm really surprised I'm having to argue this.

 

[Albuquerque]

No I did not disagree with myself. .

Yes, you did. Full stop, there is no retort and there is no "gotcha." If you do not understand those two are directly linked and are also directly in contradiction to eachother, it's on you.

It isn't miners runing the GPU economy, it's the entire supply chain combined with the entire demand curve. Gamers are absolutely paying those prices, it's provable and it's undeniable. Your thesis is broken, try something else.

If you want to talk about nuance, then talk about the nuances which have already been brought up: a pandemic forcing tens and hundreds of millions of people to work 100% remote, needing compute gear for their homes, in addition to huge enterprises and globally-sized cloud service providers needing the extra gear to support them, combined with closed fabrication plants, combined with a similar hundreds of millions number who still have paying jobs and nothing to spend it on during lockdown (no eating out, no travelling, no commute to an office) so they decide to play video games.

The nuance is well understood; stop trying to pin it on single variable algebra (miners!!!) when it's multivariabe calculus. Your attempt to say "pay attention to my nuances!!" is lost when you say it's miners running the pricing.

 

[neckthrough]

@Albuquerque and @Seanspeed -- your debate is unresolvable.

Of course the pandemic has hit supply and fueled entertainment demand, which shifts the market equilibrium price upwards. Miners have *added* to that demand, shifting it even further. @Albuquerque's point is that we don't have any data to decouple the shifts caused by entertainment vs. mining demand. I.e., given a hypothetical equilibrium price based on gaming demand (and the supply constraints) alone, we don't know if the mining-induced shift is an additional 1%, 10% or 100%. I think @Seanspeed's hypothesis is that it's closer to 100%. That's not unreasonable (to me), but I don't have any data to support or disprove this hypothesis and I doubt anyone else does.

Therefore this is an opinion-based debate and I don't see either of you changing each other's minds.

 

[Albuquerque]

If miners drove the entire GPU economy then we could trace it back to the equivalent, direct increase in ETH hash runrate. You can try to make an argument for altcoin, but ETH is where it's at. The hash increase doesn't support a "closer to 100%" hypothesis to stand; it might be closer to 20-30 percent at best.

Further, miners aren't buying cards that aren't profitable for mining. Paying $2000 for a 3080? Maybe. Paying $3000 for a 3090? Not even in the slightest.