It was, which is why as much as I hate doge now, I have to applaud dogecoin's creator for having the cunning foresight to take advantage of all the people just finding about RE: RE: Re: epic funny dog maymay.
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Nvidia's Maxwell perfect candidate for Bitcoin miners, bad times ahead for PC gamers?
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It was, which is why as much as I hate doge now, I have to applaud dogecoin's creator for having the cunning foresight to take advantage of all the people just finding about RE: RE: Re: epic funny dog maymay.
Vigilant Gambit
Member
It wasn't intended to be a joke. It was intended to be an easy introduction to the concept of cryptocurrency. The fact of it going viral was not planned by its creator.
You do realize that majority of the miners are not gamers, atleast at the moment ..Disgusting attitude by some people hoping that crypto mining crashes just because they can't get the GPU they want, wah wah me me me...
Yeah I'm pretty sad, I utilised my gaming PC hardware when I'm not using it and made nearly £1000 from £50 worth of electricity.
Do gamers have some inalienable right as the sole consumers of video cards?
Video cards are a consumer product. A new use has been found for that consumer product. Prices tend to go up when that occurs. I don't understand why this is a problem. It's a good thing; multi-use markets are healthier and more robust in the long run that specialty markets.
Gamer entitlement and gamer business analysis 101 going on in this thread. The fact that anything is increasing the demand for desktop GPus is a good thing, especially with all of the focus on mobile recently.
750 Ti doesn't support SLI.
ElectricKaibutsu
Member
People are just upset that their hobby suddenly became a lot more expensive. That is completely understandable.
Iced_Eagle
Member
You don't run mining rigs in SLI or Crossfire. He can get multiple 750 Ti's and it would work.
Hell, you can mix/match AMD/Nvidia cards in the same rig.
They don't have to coordinate to render a single frame like a game which is what SLI/Crossfire does. They just need to be able to crunch numbers and can do that independently.
Lilalaunebaer
Member
And you don´t need to for mining. You can run amd and nvidia cards in the same pc if you want.
Edit: beaten like a dead horse.
No?
I'm only upset at the notion of increased prices for (PC) gamers. I dont know if the market overall will be healthier at the macro-level.
KillerDark
Member
That is hilarious Hahaha. Yea I can see the price being marked up for this, just like AMD cards right now. I don't like bit coins because of what it does to GPU prices.
Frustrated_Grunt
Member
I'm glad I bought my PC parts a month before the prices started to skyrocket. The prices are getting ridiculous.
That I understand, but you have to think this through. Think past this immediate moment.
Viewing the video card market as the sole territory of gamers and viewing any other consumer group who finds a use for graphics cards as evil intruders is not a healthy consumer approach. If you try to keep a market to yourself and lash out at anyone who finds other value in the market, it's a bad thing long term.
So why not insist on more aggressive production lines for NVidia? Urging increased supply seems like a far healthier directive than urging decreased demand. Assuming you want the high end GPU market to thrive, that is.
threetri333
Banned
I got the GTX 750 ti before last night before they were sold out when I checked out their page the next morning. 
$150 + tax
$150 + tax
Great!I got the GTX 750 ti before last night before they were sold out when I checked out their page the next morning.
$150 + tax
You know what to do with it, right?
If you wanna do it it's actually quite easy despite looking insanely complicated.
ElectricKaibutsu
Member
Nice! That card is such a deal at $150.I got the GTX 750 ti before last night before they were sold out when I checked out their page the next morning.
$150 + tax
There are only a couple of major foundries, Nvidia can only order and wait.
Garrus Vakarian
Member
Just when I thought I was ready to spend some money on a new GPU. Guess I can just put it towards saving for a rift.
What? Theres actually a Dogecoin? Wtf lol
thunder_snail
Member
High-end consumer cards is the territory of gamers. There's another market designed for compute occupied by Tesla and FirePro cards. Game devs partner up with AMD/Nvidia to bring new features and make their games work better. If miners raise the price, less gamers will be able to afford the cards and in the end, will hurt the gaming community and the devs.
Also it's not easy to increase production. Fabs cost years and billions of dollars to build and if a new one do end up getting built, the chances are, it's going to be used to manufacture mobile chips.
Tarin02543
Member
Hm, my recent GTX760 purchase seems a bit foolish now.
Oh well, BF4@60fps is hypersweet.
Oh well, BF4@60fps is hypersweet.
Reallink
Member
I don't know what kind of systems miners build, but I presume the hobbyist variety typically buys the cheapest SLI/CF mobo, the shittiest CPU, minimal memory, no case, no drives, no peripherals, then stuffs 3, 6, or however many GPU's in it. If you've got a finite number of GPU's, logically, there is no way this is healthier for the industry as a whole (short run, long run, or otherwise). Those 3 GPU's likely would have been single cards for 3 individuals. Those individuals in turn would have built 3 separate systems using 3 separate high end CPU's, more expensive mobo's, fast and/or high capacity drives, overkill RAM, several peripherals, high end displays, ect... You'd effectively be substituting what could have potentially been 4 or 5+ grand in industry revenue down for less than a grand. That's not even getting into the software side of it, which would be similarly affected.
dragonelite
Member
This would have been intel moment to shine with larabee
I still think it's a while until we have dedicated scypt miners. By nature they need a ton of fast memory and that shit ain't cheap.
Some cards are also constantly out of stock which is also annoying. Production yield issues on the new processes on top of that.
Mining alone might make the market large enough to convince nVidia/AMD to move to the next process after 20/22nm sooner though. I have no numbers, but the price inflation in the US is pretty substantial.
On production lines, there's only 1 or 2 places that can make this stuff (20nm/22nm/28nm) in these GIANT die sizes without too many failures. GPUs are gargantuan compared to everything else we use and already they have supply issues. Normally you will see the high end come out first to get all that enthusiast money and make the best use of the low yields of the new process/architecture while production slowly ramps up as they then fill out the releases of the popular midrange cards.
Is it possible for them to ramp up production? Possibly, but in the past there have been large amounts of time where GPUs are not in stock, even without the miner boom. Unless there is direct competition at a price point, they just sell their old models and don't sweat it.
I already got mobile stuff killing speed progression, now there's this too man :[
Some cards are also constantly out of stock which is also annoying. Production yield issues on the new processes on top of that.
Mining alone might make the market large enough to convince nVidia/AMD to move to the next process after 20/22nm sooner though. I have no numbers, but the price inflation in the US is pretty substantial.
Large scale operations only care about Performance/Watt per machine setup, often GPU SKUs scale almost linearly so it doesn't really matter to them. Casual miners usually just buy the best single or dual card setup they can afford/power, under those are people who mine with what they have or what fits their budget.
On production lines, there's only 1 or 2 places that can make this stuff (20nm/22nm/28nm) in these GIANT die sizes without too many failures. GPUs are gargantuan compared to everything else we use and already they have supply issues. Normally you will see the high end come out first to get all that enthusiast money and make the best use of the low yields of the new process/architecture while production slowly ramps up as they then fill out the releases of the popular midrange cards.
Is it possible for them to ramp up production? Possibly, but in the past there have been large amounts of time where GPUs are not in stock, even without the miner boom. Unless there is direct competition at a price point, they just sell their old models and don't sweat it.
This has a danger of coming close to what they sell to Workstations which would devalue that. Titan was a weird test card for compute. Something like a workstation Tesla / whatever the old workstation name is ~2x consumer GPU price.
DemonCleaner
Member
giant waste of energy
So what are the chances, in the future, that they put out a card or at least diversify their lineup so that there is an affordable gaming card that is not well suited to bitcoin mining, and another, similar card that has the advantages for bitcoin mining and is more susceptible to inflation?
I don't know jack shit about graphics cards, I'm just entertaining the idea of replacing mine down the line when I decide to build a new PC.
I don't know jack shit about graphics cards, I'm just entertaining the idea of replacing mine down the line when I decide to build a new PC.
GPU crypto-currency mining is a temporary thing regardless of what AMD or Nvidia do. People don't mine Bitcoins with GPUs, they use dedicated and highly optimized ASIC processors. Litecoins and other currencies can't use them yet, so people make do with GPUs, but as they increase in popularity people will develop dedicated chips and people will ditch GPUs for them like with Bitcoin. Apparently Q2-Q3 of this year will be the first Litecoin specific ASIC chip, and if that works as promised people won't give a shit about GPUs for this stuff anymore.
Vigilant Gambit
Member
The thing is, Litecoin was designed to use scrypt specifically because the algorithm is ASIC-resistant. There are already scrypt ASICs, but even though the power/hash rate ratio is better than most video cards, GPUs are still cheaper per hashrate per second (and I think the 750 Ti is still a better value than current/upcoming ASICs).
I believe this this is a puerile and myopic point of view. Claiming some product as "the territory of gamers" and being hostile to anyone else who shows interest in the market is not a good approach.
You're right, it isn't easy to increase supply. It also isn't easy to decrease demand.Given that neither is easy, I'd push for the former rather than the latter.