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[WCCFTech] NVIDIA Asks Retailers To Stop Selling To Miners

28K views 405 replies 138 participants last post by  delerious 
#1 ·
#399 ·
Gamer here who also mines and therefore got a bit more GPUs than necessary. This is a pure PR bull****. One card per household is all retailers can really do and it is not really efficient because it just gives an incentive to cut the retailer and buy it in bulk elsewhere.
 
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by huzzug View Post

And how are they going to differentiate between a miner and a gamer who wants to mine ?
Block customers from buying more than 1 card a month, and only up to 2 at a time. There is a big difference between a guy who buys 5 cards every time a truck comes with new stock vs a guy who needs to upgrade once to play new games. But that in of itself would be a hard thing to keep track of fairly, but then again, this whole pricing for GPU's inst very fair in the first place.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAD9Y6RS4468&cm_re=1070ti-_-14-126-231-_-Product

1070ti is $899 marked down from $1050.......

I paid 475 for this card on Dec 19, 2017............

I could refund it for dbl my price.
 
#4 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by huzzug View Post

And how are they going to differentiate between a miner and a gamer who wants to mine ?
Don't sully this PR move with your practical questions, just accept it.

All praise Nvidia for their selfless, effective, and totally not fake efforts on this matter.

Hail, hail!
 
#5 ·
I was planning on building a new computer for my wife. With memory and graphics card prices going through the roof, that's not happening. I've already spent twice the price for just 4GB of RAM for my pfSence build. 2018 = no end in sight for regular PC builders. That's a shame that the PC industry is going to suffer greatly. Gamers are not happy about this at all. Maybe in 2019-20 things will look up. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chachi123 View Post

Block customers from buying more than 1 card a month, and only up to 2 at a time. There is a big difference between a guy who buys 5 cards every time a truck comes with new stock vs a guy who needs to upgrade once to play new games. But that in of itself would be a hard thing to keep track of fairly, but then again, this whole pricing for GPU's inst very fair in the first place.
The thing is, the big miners don't bother with the stores. They buy straight from the distributors.
Also, good luck with that. There are several ways around those restrictions.

Heck, I am debating on flipping my 1070 and 1080Ti for some cash. Take the profit and throw a bit into crypto and silver/gold.
 
#7 ·
I don't know why retailers aren't instituting a one card per person/address policy unless it's a GTX 1080 Ti. There's "creative" ways to skirt around it such as going into the store multiple times or asking family members and friends to purchase graphics cards but at least it will alleviate the problem somewhat.

Most people will just upgrade their card; the amount of people that will opt for GTX 1070 / GTX 1070 Ti / GTX 1080 SLI is low and GTX 1060 and lower has no SLI ability.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlphaC View Post

I don't know why retailers aren't instituting a one card per person/address policy unless it's a GTX 1080 Ti. There's "creative" ways to skirt around it such as going into the store multiple times or asking family members and friends to purchase graphics cards but at least it will alleviate the problem somewhat.

Most people will just upgrade their card; the amount of people that will opt for GTX 1070 / GTX 1070 Ti / GTX 1080 SLI is low and GTX 1060 and lower has no SLI ability.
Did you see that post on reddit about the couple buying every Nvidia card above a GTX1050ti in the NY area? They had a picture of a crap load of GPUs, they said they had friends and family help them get past the 1-2 card limit per customer.
 
#9 ·
I don't know, now the Microcenter policy is "BYO discount" if you build a whole system , aka GPU for MSRP.

It seems every GPU is double the price it is normally relative to MSRP.

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC = $1370 , so about $685?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC = $1020 , so about $510?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti SC = $920 , so about $460?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SuperClocked = $890 , so about $445?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 FTW 6GB = $630 , so about $315?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 SSC = $600 , so about $300?
Sapphire Technology Radeon NITRO+ RX 580 4GB = $650 , so about $325?
Sapphire Technology Radeon NITRO+ RX 570 4GB = $540 , so about $270?
 
#10 ·
A token gesture.

Yes, limits per customer can be a minor hurdle to mid-sized miners, but the big farms are purchased wholesale, and the small time miners are either indistinguishable from gamers (many of them are gamers), or can get others to buy a few cards here and there.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by huzzug View Post

And how are they going to differentiate between a miner and a gamer who wants to mine ?
They can't. But why won't they just make mining cards that have the GPU but no video out and aren't graphics cards? Is there no market for devices that are built like GPUs but only for mining? It would actually be cheap and smaller.

Apparently there's AntMiner, but most mining hardware is discontinued. Strange considering the potential. Maybe they're worried about Bitcoin crashing?

The good news is that about 18,000,000 out of a total 21,000,000 has been mined. That means there are only about 3 million bitcoins left to mine.
 
#163 ·
Quote:Originally Posted by huzzug 

And how are they going to differentiate between a miner and a gamer who wants to mine ?


They can't. But why won't they just make mining cards that have the GPU but no video out and aren't graphics cards? Is there no market for devices that are built like GPUs but only for mining? It would actually be cheap and smaller.

Apparently there's AntMiner, but most mining hardware is discontinued. Strange considering the potential. Maybe they're worried about Bitcoin crashing?

The good news is that about 18,000,000 out of a total 21,000,000 has been mined. That means there are only about 3 million bitcoins left to mine.
But they do make miner cards
https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/MINING-P106-6G/
And this one
https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-NP106D5-6G-rev-10#kf
And this one
https://www.asus.com/Graphics-Cards/MINING-RX470-4G/

But you never see them in stock anywhere or really listed so.... /shrug
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by aweir View Post

They can't. But why won't they just make mining cards that have the GPU but no video out and aren't graphics cards? Is there no market for devices that are built like GPUs but only for mining? It would actually be cheap and smaller. Apparently there's AntMiner, but most mining hardware is discontinued. Strange considering the potential. Maybe they're worried about Bitcoin crashing?
Cuz the same thing would happen. The bottleneck is that they can't manufacture the chips fast enough. The mining specific cards would sell out, and miners would be back to buying gaming gpus.
 
#14 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by aweir View Post

They can't. But why won't they just make mining cards that have the GPU but no video out and aren't graphics cards? Is there no market for devices that are built like GPUs but only for mining? It would actually be cheap and smaller.

Apparently there's AntMiner, but most mining hardware is discontinued. Strange considering the potential. Maybe they're worried about Bitcoin crashing?
Mining cards simply will not be successful. The reason for buying a gaming or production card for mining is resale value, there is no value to mining specific card with no display outputs. I will not buy mining card for mining, but instead I will by a gaming card. Unless mining cards are significantly cheaper, which will not happen. I may as well buy an asic instead of mining card.

Market for specialized mining hardware such as an asic is now bigger than consumer gpu market, but its just not a good investment unless you have thousands to throw around.
 
#264 ·
I don't believe that this will happen to the scale that people think. There will be some that look to sell their heavily used cards as a form of their business model but most miners will keep a profitable rig going until it dies. Mathematically, this achieves highest ROI. People are not mass selling their mining cards. Miners are replacing as they go, investing profits into better rigs debt free.
 
#16 ·
If nVidia really wanted to stop mining they could lock down the hardware to prevent mining, like if the graphics driver detects mining it could throttle down the GPU to near idle. nVidia wants retailers to stop selling to miners, then they need to do something about it.
 
#19 ·
It's not like NV have to do much, nobody really wants their GPUs for mining anyway. Miners are buying them because they can't buy any of the good cards, and when more AMD cards enter the market the natural outcome will be that nobody will be buying NV for mining. But NV's bottom of the barrel marketing squad will be able to take credit even though they did nothing.
 
#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by huzzug View Post

And how are they going to differentiate between a miner and a gamer who wants to mine ?
Hi,
I imagine they will ask if they can pay with bitcoin
smile.gif

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlphaC View Post

I don't know, now the Microcenter policy is "BYO discount" if you build a whole system , aka GPU for MSRP.

It seems every GPU is double the price it is normally relative to MSRP.

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SC = $1370 , so about $685?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC = $1020 , so about $510?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti SC = $920 , so about $460?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SuperClocked = $890 , so about $445?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 FTW 6GB = $630 , so about $315?
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 SSC = $600 , so about $300?
Sapphire Technology Radeon NITRO+ RX 580 4GB = $650 , so about $325?
Sapphire Technology Radeon NITRO+ RX 570 4GB = $540 , so about $270?
Hi,
Titan xp is still sitting at 1200.us been that way for a while
smile.gif


Mod edit: Please use the edit button instead of double posting.
 
#22 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mookster View Post

Don't sully this PR move with your practical questions, just accept it.

All praise Nvidia for their selfless, effective, and totally not fake efforts on this matter.

Hail, hail!
While this is a PR move, actually selling to miners is bad for both nvidia and AMD.
It drives prices up to customers, and makes desktop users less likely to upgrade, or most likely upgrade to a smaller GPU in order to save money.
If you can and will buy a 1070 at 700$ which is the msrp of the 1080 TI, nvidia don't earn from the difference, as the one who makes the more profit is the retailer, not nvidia.

Miners also later drop a lot of GPUs on the 2nd hand market for relatively cheap, which also reduce sales of new cards.
Lets say someone wants to buy a GPU for 100$. He can buy a 560, or, he can grab a second hand 470 from a miner for cheaper.

This also hurts manufacturers. Cards doing 24/7 work will tend to break down more. So more replacements, meaning it might cost more to nvidia, if manufacturers also get rebates from nvidia on broken cards in some cases.

So yeah, PR, but also makes sense.
 
#24 ·
It isn't the retailers selling all the cards to miners (other than a few places with no limits). It's the distributors or manufacturers shipping straight to the big farms - the cards never make it to retail. If Nvidia really wanted to do something, they could sell them themselves.

What really upsets me is these big farms are paying MSRP (or less) while gamers and system builders are paying these inflated prices. I lucked out with the cards I managed to buy (MSRP or less - massdrop).
 
#26 ·
Its really the "mid range" miners who use those tactics. Guys who are dedicated a room to their house or building a few rigs, but not doing it full time. Those who mine seriously are not purchasing GPUs 1-2 at a time from places like Best Buy. It is easier, cheaper, and less of a pain to order bulk units direct from a distributor. While it still reduces cards available to retailers for gamers to purchase(which does suck), I do not feel as bad as getting boxes of GPUs sent straight to me from the manufacturer vs snatching up a few at a time from local shops and getting dirty looks.

If the manufacturers stepped up production of the no video output mining specific cards, everyone would be happy. Miners would have much easier time getting their cards, they won't have to pay the insanely marked up prices, and games and builders can still get their hands on cards for their personal use without waiting two generations for the flood of dirt cheap used mining cards.
 
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