What is meant by mining???

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by Pigchild, Mar 15, 2018.

  1. Pigchild

    Pigchild Guest

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    In a past thread about the now insane prices of GPU that's going on (Prices WAY above MSRP) Someone said it's because of "mining." I guess I have become a bit tech stupid, but what is this mining thing and in what ways has it increased and effected cost in the GPU market? Good Ram also seems to be higher than MSRP. Although CPU prices seem to be remaining stable.
     
  2. jbscotchman

    jbscotchman Guest

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    Yeah I don't get it either.
     
  3. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    Mining is the process of creating new crypto coins by validating blocks on a cryptocurrency network. Basically, you use computer hardware to validate and secure transactions, and get coins as a reward for that work. The reason this affects GPU prices is because GPUs are effective at mining coins like Ethereum, and miners buy up GPUs by the dozen to maximize their profits, leading to shortages and high prices. High memory prices are largely due to increased demand for smartphones and GPUs.
     
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  4. cryohellinc

    cryohellinc Ancient Guru

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    Just google cryptocurrency.

    Mining is the process of generating those currencies. Scum uses consumer grade GPU's in Bulk hence the price rise as pretty much everything they can lay their hands on, they buy.
     

  5. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    It has been found that graphics cards make very good shovels/spades now because they are larger in size and easy to grip so they get bought up to dig for bitcoins
     
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  6. TheDeeGee

    TheDeeGee Ancient Guru

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    Mining is what selfish people do, and don't care about pumping up the coal factories to produce more energy for them. So they can get the "free" money at the cost of our planets life.
     
  7. Pigchild

    Pigchild Guest

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    I see, but there is only one part that makes no sense... So Mining has caused a huge demand for consumer video cards? OK. Although from a business perspective Nvidia should be capitalizing on this by simply ramping up production by double. That means Manufacturers of GPU's can feel free to grow and expand relatively fast to meet and even exceed this new demand. This would mean more company growth for them while they easily meet demand and prices would still remain very affordable. For example: I work for a massive fork lift company owned by Toyota. If we had an overwhelming demand requiring 3 times the current sales and service of electric counterbalance lift trucks, then we would immediately respond by expanding production. The price for private companies that want to buy new all electric forklifts would remain the same and our company would reap the rewards of expanding to meet that demand with no price hike on any of our heavy equipment units. That's the part I don't understand.
     
  8. jaggerwild

    jaggerwild Master Guru

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    ATI works better for mining on, as apposed to Nvidia(not as good)not sure why as I have never mined. But miners like ATI cards better(maybe cause the prices were right at first).
     
  9. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    It takes time for companies to ramp up production, plus cryptocurrencies are fickle. Neither Nvidia nor AMD want to increase production since the risks are too great - if crypto prices crash (as they are doing now) then they wouldn't be able to sell the additional cards that they produce. The last time this happened, AMD had to take a multimillion dollar loss due to unsold inventory.

    Actually, Nvidia cards are just as good for mining. The idea that AMD cards are better is a myth.
     
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  10. cryohellinc

    cryohellinc Ancient Guru

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    While yes this makes sense in a normal market, Nvidia is most likely considering that Crypto craze it is a short-time hence ramping up production significantly will cause long-term issues when demand drops. Besides as far as I know Nvidia is highly dependant on partners which are part of its manufacturing cycle, which will require them to boost their manufactured rates as well. Example - memory manufacturers, which already have a crazy of Demand on their products and build several new factories as of right now.
     

  11. Pigchild

    Pigchild Guest

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    Yea I see what you mean. If all the companies involved with GPU ramp up and get greedy to meet current demand and then that demand falls off fast they might go bankrupt. Sort of like the housing Boom back in 2005. Houses being built and sold like crazy, then in 2008 the housing market crashed and home builders were left screwed. Although the banks got a bail out, GPU manufacturers would not get any such government bail out after they open up several new production facilities. So then remains the big question??? When is it speculated that this mining craze will fall off a cliff?
     
  12. HeavyHemi

    HeavyHemi Guest

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    I'm just mining my own business...;)
     
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  13. cryohellinc

    cryohellinc Ancient Guru

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    Billion dollar question. My prediction is Crypto bubble will grow all the way to $100k eventually per coin. This value will be purely speculative, while actual value will be FAR less.

    However then again the way it fluctuates, we may never see it rise even that high.
     
  14. Mundosold

    Mundosold Master Guru

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    Mining is even more embarassing once you understand what mining actually is. Essentially you are looking for numbers (called a nonce), that when hashed together with the last block, produce a hash under a certain value, put another way, hashes with a certain number of leading zeros. It is literally a guessing game. Whoever guesses the correct nonce, gets the block reward (the 'coins'), which currently have a profitable fiat value.

    So to increase your chances of guessing the right nonce, you need a lot of computation power to perform more guesses/second. Since this is a problem that can be massively parallized, GPUs (with their thousands of cores and extremely fast RAM) happen to be very good at it.

    Also none of this increases the security of transactions. Transaction security is already provided by encrypted signatures and Merkle hash tables. Instead, this work is only used to fight consolidated control of which transactions are processed by betraying attackers. It is an incredibly flawed system, a quick and dirty form of Byzantine fault tolerance, that is still incredibly vulnerable if anyone (or any pool..) amasses a large percent of network hashpower, and becomes completely owned if anyone has access to >50% of hash rate. It is just a great war of arms but with computational power, people stepping on each other because THEY want the coins as opposed to somone else, and costs the planet a lot of wasted energy and resources. And it is all for what is a glorified ponzi scam.
     
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  15. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    Well, that's the thing. The chances of someone managing to gain >50% hashing power is extremely remote ("hacking Bitcoin is so easy, all you need is to outperform all the other mining computers combined!" :p). Also, a ponzi scheme works by paying old investors with money from new investors, which is nothing like Bitcoin (it's more akin to the dotcom bubble more than anything else).
     

  16. MaxBlade

    MaxBlade Master Guru

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    Lol... just really search on this before you take the bait.
     
  17. Mundosold

    Mundosold Master Guru

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    It's not as remote as you think, all it would take is a pool operator (whose miners mindlessly follow the instructions of) to decide to corrupt the stratum and perform an attack. Bitcoin itself is less vulnerable than others due to the extremely high network hash rate, but in the past some pools have come close to 50%. Other altcoins that use Proof of Waste are MUCH more susceptible to attack, many altcoins have single pools that hold 70%+ network hashrate. And with on-demand GPU power (through Nicehash or Amazon EC2 Compute), a single attacker could theoretically rent enough hashpower to attack the network.

    And Bitcoin is entirely Ponzi. Bubbles are Ponzi in nature. It is a negative sum game. Any dollar made off Bitcoin has to come from someone else, if no one more suckers are buying the price will plummet, and the network itself costs a shitload of money to operate (electricity and producing ASICs aren't free). No one accepts Bitcoin as a currency, other than criminals and the worsts of humanity, nor does Bitcoin generate any revenue/profits by itself. People are only speculating on it's fiat value. Which is funny, since Coiners deride fiat all the time even though the inflated price is entirely due to Bitfinex/Tether (which is completely fake version of USD), and all they care about is the ratio they can trade their dumb coins in for fiat dollars. Scam all the way through. The only value it has is its use as a medium for transport of fiat value for criminals - drug dealers, money launderers, and pedophiles.

    Also, the autocorrect for H-A-S-H-R-A-T-E is hilarious. Good to see Guru3D has the sense to see crypto for what it is.
     
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  18. D3M1G0D

    D3M1G0D Guest

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    No, it's not. A Ponzi scheme refers to a specific type of scam where old investors are paid off using money from new investors. A bubble is a separate thing entirely - that's where the value of an asset or security rises far above any reasonable valuation because of frenzied buying activity. The former is an outright scam, the latter is not. Please learn the difference.
     
  19. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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  20. FatBoyNL

    FatBoyNL Ancient Guru

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    Thread necro :p
     

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