Good to See Hash Rate Limiter on New GPUs Helping to Finally Lower Prices Across The Board

• 

  mitt on 11/06/2021 - 01:39

  Prices will remain high until crypto crashes hard or a new generation of ASIC pushes card mining's profitability down. Then we will see a huge flood of ex mining cards flooding the market.

  Everything else, LHR, MSRP, everything, is just noise.

• 

  p1 ama on 11/06/2021 - 02:19

  +22

  Except it's just not about crypto - seems to just be a convenient scapegoat.

  https://2miners.com/eth-network-hashrate

  The ETH hashrate has not materially changed since May, yet cards are still not in stock and nowhere to be found. Even those who think that an ETH crash will lead to lower GPU prices - look at 2018 crash - the hash rate only dropped by around 25%, so approximately only 1/4 GPUs that were being used for mining were sold and taken off the hashing network.

  If you're lurking around waiting for some "crypto crash" that will leave the market flooded with cheap GPUs, that's just not going to happen.

  The shortage of GPUs is part of a bigger problem - dies are getting larger, we're putting more and more powerful SoCs into all sorts of consumer electronics devices and supply of silicon is very dry at the moment. FWIW, if you want to understand the problem, look at the 3080 Ti. It's not a souped-up 3080, it's a 3090 with 50% the VRAM. Don't get confused by the name, look at the core configuration and SM count.

  Why do you think this is happening? Samsung's yields on the GA102 have improved and more GA102's are making the 3090 spec. Nvidia would love to sell them all as 3090s, but they are simply constrained by GDDR6X supply - hence, they halve the VRAM.

  Beyond any mining-related grievances, GPUs have become much more useful as general purpose computational tools. What are the booming fields right now? Data analytics, AI, neural networks, natural language processing…etc. - all of these fields have become increasingly dependent on GPUs. Tools such as TensorFlow have made GPU usage in computation mainstream. Ray tracing might sound new and flash in games, but this sort of technology to map out complex structures and simulate paths of physical objects is quite mainstream.

  The point is, there are three things contributing to the GPU "shortage" and ever increasing prices:

  (i) There is a genuine silicon shortage.

  (ii) The use of GPUs has broadened drastically. Yes, mining plays a role, but so too does computation, beyond just the traditional fields of video rendering or graphics - general purpose GPU usage is just going to become more widespread.

  (iii) Increasing levels of disposable income and everyone's desire to purchase increasingly expensive stuff. Most people buying GPUs these days seem to be new to the game. I still remember cutting my teeth on the Voodoo Banshee and dreaming about the 6800 Ultra like it was yesterday. The ~$400 USD pricetag of the 6800 Ultra at the time felt like it was nuts, and everyone was happy getting the 6600 GT. Similarly, I remember when the original GTX Titan broke the $1000 USD barrier - anyone who bought that must have been nucking futs. Yet today, it seems mainstream to just go out and buy these ridiculous cards. Seems like everyone just has too much money to spend and are working longer hours, harder jobs to be able to buy more expensive toys.

  At the end of the day, moral arguments around this are silly - you don't need a 3080 to play games. There's this unhealthy obsession with maxing out all the settings, turning everything up to Ultra, running everything at 144 Hz. You're perfectly fine on a good old 1060. Turn the settings down to medium and enjoy the game.

  There was something fun about gaming once upon a time that I really miss these days. It's the same thing with cars, everyone seems to drive fancy Euros these days, I still remember my first banger car where the aircon didn't work and the radio sometimes wouldn't turn on. I think it's just all result of a cultural shift.

  • 

    netjock on 11/06/2021 - 12:31

    +1

    Simply put: it isn't crypto. It is just demand due to stay at home as result of COVID. If you had money you couldn't spend you would spend gambling or around the house (Bunnings running out of wood is one example) including electronics.

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  sordidanalogy on 11/06/2021 - 08:40

  +2

  Actually it's inflation. Too much government sourced money from COVID relief chasing too few goods.

  Same as house price inflation.

  Shortages can only occur at a particular price level, the price will rise until demand is reduced (market cleared).

  Don't hold your breath for lower prices.

  • 

    carlJack on 11/06/2021 - 11:57

    Cash is cheap these days.

  • 

    netjock on 11/06/2021 - 12:35

    +1

    Too much government sourced money from COVID relief chasing too few goods.

    1. Those who have jobs will be making same money
    2. Those without were on JobKeeper which could be more, same or less but $3k a month is minimum wage
    3. JobSeeker just above poverty line

    It is really all the can't travel international money being kept at home.

• 

  Bid Sniper on 11/06/2021 - 08:40

  +6

  I blame silicon shortage and scalpers more than miners. PS5 and Xboxs not used for mining and those have massive shortages and are sold for crazy prices too.

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  carlJack on 11/06/2021 - 11:59

  +2

  Crypto is not gonna crash. There is a genuine shortage of chips worldwide. Crypto mining is just a convenient scapegoat.