Three million add-in boards (AIBs) were sold to cryptocurrency miners

Well yeah, a company has to have a future-proof plan, but they will grab any chance to make a good quarter in revenue. They also know that the gaming industry is pretty much like a football (european) league, there are A LOT of fanboys which wouldn't switch team even with a gun pointing at their head. Without mentioning that with a bit of good PR, people tend to forget all about the bad decisions of a company.

Yeah, I've been a miner for a couple of months. Problem? Suck it up. I am also a gamer, and what is gaming exactly? Interacting with a machine to have fun. Big deal. You wrote this why exactly? The cryptocurrency is actually a very interesting concept, even if it's overly saturated and everybody-and-their-dog is trying to make money. This will eventually fade like the WWW bubble in 2000 and only the useful part of crypto will remain.

Yeah, I did have a R9 280x which started to act weird after 2.5 years, the waranty had expired and it's laying on a shelf somewhere as a paperweight...
Got a 275 laying somewhere which is way too old to do anything with it, but I like it on my desk
I do have a gt710 (I think? passive cooled piece of crap) which works as my GPU for a music recording pc I have.

But again, I use my pc like a console. I am okay with 1080p on high settings and 45-50 frames and only change the components when I see they don't cut it anymore.

 

the most important thing about crypto$:
-the carbon footprint of Crypto$ is now at same level than car polution...
-those who have start earlier have most of the cake... those who have started recentely (with mining craze) have what is left (some dust).
-it is considerated illegal to use it in more country each years (despite the flow is on survey in USA and EU)
-more and more people (sadly not the richest) have started to loose everything due to the instability of the crypto$ (never ever convert all your saved money into those crypto$... if it fall from -25% you will have your economy divided by 4).

 

Like 4 years ago i bought an R9 290 sapphire tri-x which was used for mining for like 6 months or so, i was skeptical like everybody about buying a mining gpu, but it was half the price at that time even lower if i remember right, and after 4 years of gaming, it still rocks, i had 0 problems with it, maybe i was the lucky one and won the silicon lottery on it.

 

Sadly I don't think either AMD or Nvidia will implement measures to avoid mining on their cards. They are, after all, after the selling profits and miners are costumers. I even bet that after this mining craze that prices will stay up because AMD can't touch Nvidia. Our only hope would be that Intel would make a decent GPU but as greedy as they are, I don't believe they'd make a price war.

Bottom end: we're all screwed, it's the fall of PC gaming (at least for low to mid budget people).

 

You are very correct. Look at your post again and tell me, do you see an opportunity there or not? I'll tell you this much - margin trading pays off more than mining if you invest enough money. Buy low, sell high. Buy lower, sell a bit higher. What does this reminds me of....hmm.. Oh yes! Regular stock market, Currency exchange, money exchange, etc.

PS. There will always be a new coin to mine. Block Chain isn't going anywhere, and with crypto going wildly up-down, neither are margin traders.

PPS. If nVidia wasn't as greedy and gave normal warranty conditions on their mining cards (which are mainly the same as gaming counterpart), maybe miners wouldn't be buying all of the gaming cards. Small miners don't want to risk it with no warranty or 3 months warranty on product that has almost no resale value out of the box.
So the problem could be solved relatively easy, on expense of the super rich companies instead of on gamers/users pockets.

 

I didn't know Nvidia had any special mining cards yet. And some warranty is legally ensured, at least in some countries. Here in the EU basically it doesn't matter what you buy the card for... the issue is under which terms the manufacturer (not the chipmaker!) can tell you GTFO with your mining card, but this too needs a form of control to see what happened, which right now is not there. So... not really seeing how that relates to NV, or NV and not AMD in particular. Also, neither NV nor AMD produce any cards, decide on any warranty terms and durations, or decide to allow or deny any RMA. Please educate me if I missed the meaning there.

Of course the miners don't want to risk their cards without any warranty (in the situation you described), because they're just opportunists... making money without any risk? Who doesn't go for that?

 

gx-x
Precisely that, which makes it an even more speculative market.
There is always opportunity when it comes to speculation, however, in order to make money on it you need some prediction and calculation, but when it fluctuates like this - personally I wouldn't risk it.

In case of crypto/block chain staying, of course, it will. However, when even 1 of the major coins pop's and people loose money I think we will see a slow and steady decline over the board. It will send shockwaves. Too many will get "burned", and too few will want to risk it again.
p.s. block-chain is a great tech, used for all the wrong purposes and reasons.

 

Although I personally would like to see the crypto currency scheme disappear, let's not forget it has some positive aspects as well, aside from boosting video card sales:

1) Criminals absolutely love it. Great for all kinds of shady transactions that legal shops and sellers don't offer.
2) Power companies love it. Miners in the world already consume as much energy as a small country.
3) If you live in cold climate, the mining machine doubles as a super high tech electric heater.
3.5) You can make your family and friends laugh till they collapse by having a mining machine and AC in the same room.

 

I agree with you but if the card is sold out I think the miners will still buy any GPU they can get there hands on

 

Thats why it's in GPU manufacturers best interest to have sufficient supply for them.

 

@fantaskarsef
They have P104 (1070) and P106 (1060) series. In my country they import them as spare parts and are only in obligation of 6 months warranty (compared to 2 years for normal parts). In USA, I think most you will get out is 3 months. Those cards still get sold out now.
There is a difference between a big miner (20+ rigs (120+ cards)) and a small miner with one or two rig (6-16 cards). Small miner is reluctant to take such a product. If all goes to hell, he can sell cards and be ok. Big miner doesn't really care. He probably made ROI already so everything on top of that is just more profit.

@cryohellinc :

The thing is, you can (example) buy ETH for 820 in the morning, and sell it at 850 in the evening. that's 30 bucks per day on 820 invested. You don't really care if the "coin" is at 1000$, or 100$, you are fast trading every single day. You can't do that with blue chip stocks or any other. Crypto is opportunity for everyone to make some money (or loose, not everyone can make a smart move every time). Biggest loss is suffered by long term speculators. Invest today, hope the "coin" will go up by 1000% in a year. That's just insane in crypto world, but hey, some guys earned Lambos and now some suckers are....sucked into that crap. That's not how you make money trading crypto

 

Remember that PC gamers almost exclusively in percentage number of 70%-80% use Nvidia cards , i don't think that anybody have the right to complain to the fact that AMD is selling theirs GPU's to customers that want them ; miners

 

Weren't the Lambos earned by the guys who founded a crypto exchange, allowed it to accumulate millions, and then it suddenly and mysteriously got hacked and all the coins disappeared, never to be found again (and the founders naturally had no idea what could have possibly happened, goodness gracious).

 

Most of trading sites shave off part of sales and purchases. Some shady are taking as crazy part as 10%.

 

Am I the only one here who thinks 3 million sounds way too low, even for AIB partners? In most years, AMD sells that many units (sometimes twice that) just in 1 quarter, and didn't have such supply issues. This point is exacerbated when you consider AMD's relatively small marketshare. In 2015, there were 44 million total GPUs sold. Even accounting for the 4.8% decrease in year-to-year units sold, 3 million is still a relatively small amount.

It just doesn't add up - how could only 3 million units be sold to crypto miners for the entire year accounting for both AMD's and Nvidia's sales? Am I not understanding something here?

 

The issue is... how would one even begin estimating the number of graphic cards bought for mining.

There is simply no accurate way of doing that. Because there is no way of knowing how GPU shipped is being used, whether gaming or mining, or BOTH.
This 3M figure is most likely the result of some extrapolation/trend model. And it's inaccurate by its very nature.

For example you could look at the increase of crypto-network hashrates and estimate the amount of GPUs needed for that increase. But no matter how you attempt to model this, there are too many estimates and unknowns involved, so the margin of error will be huge.

 

I agree - I've thought the same thing. But, it's easy to assume someone is a miner when they buy every GPU in stock or buy in bulk of hundreds at a time.
It's one thing for a trend model to be inaccurate, but to claim GPUs make up ~10% of sales when all evidence suggests miners account for the S&D issues, inaccurate is no longer the correct word; it is just plain incorrect.

If a margin of error ends up being more than 50% wrong (which in this case I'm sure it is), the data is worthless.

 

Hmmm ... intented use , now a lot of this is thrown around , i am a firm believer that is your right when you own something you can use it any way you like hell use 1080ti's for firewood or rather give me one and i will give you my 770 to burn jokes aside i do not think crypto will burst not like 2014 it will stabilise over time and i want to believe gpu sales will normalise eventually. And people loose money on traditional stocks too... 2008 crash anyone? Anyway i do not mine neither plan too , and i am so tired reading the same things over and over and over.

 

Well said!
Its a spit in our collective faces for a company to say "there going to limit sales to miners" Crypto is nothing but a scheme plain n simple. Hell its inventor isn't even known, its being propped up by these fly by night companies who want to get rich quick and nothing more...........

 

A few thoughts:-

1) Regarding ''3 million cards being too low a number''
Yes, it is true that Nvidia/AMD has sold many more in the past and 3 million is a relatively small number. But these 3 million cards are almost all 'high end cards' (which are what gamers are going after). This is why it is significant.

2) Regarding how one can determine the cards are sold to miners
First, as said above, miners only go for top end cards. Secondly, big miners do bypass normal retail channels and buy directly from Asus, Gigabyte...etc When an individual with an industrial building address orders a few hundreds or even a thousand GTX1080 cards from Asus, Asus would take note. I think, this is how the number '3 million' is determined, adding up all these orders among all AIBs.

3) Regarding 'revenue'
It is true that companies do not care if the buyer is a miner or gamer as it is still revenue, but receiving revenue is not the only factor. Equally or more important is the steadiness of the revenue. Companies generally do not want a huge swing of revenue up and down. Most (especially those are publicly traded) would prefer a steady growth as most fund managers or stock analysts do not like volatile stocks. This is why Nvidia should be concerned if 'volatile' miners become a main source of revenue as this might put off many conservative investors or major share holding fund managers.
So, I think it is wise for Nvidia to release Ampere (for gamers) and Turing (for miners). Separating the 2 sources of revenue and not allowing 'volatile' miners to eat into 'steady' gamers' share is a good move, IMHO.