NVidia ends 'Turing' card production midst, making room for 'Ampere' cards midst the mining resurgence

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

Summary
As the release of the new 3000 series 'Ampere' lineup of cards from Nvidia is nearing, the production of the 'Turing' lineup of cards has been discontinued, in an attempt that is most likely to push customers toward the purchase of the new upcoming GPUs. Prices of Turing GPUs are going to hike, thanks to this, as well as the mining craze that is being revived, inflating the prices on the current cards available to purchase.

 

 

Quotes

Quote

 

As per the report, NVIDIA will be ending production of its high-end GeForce RTX 20 series lineup which includes the following graphics cards:

• GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
• GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
• GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
• GeForce RTX 2070

The report claims that not only would the production be halted on these four graphics cards but they will also be de-listed by major vendors including NVIDIA themselves in the coming months.

Quote

Those who are looking to get a Turing graphics card right now will be disappointed by the fact that a price hike on the GeForce RTX 20 series is being talked around by several retailers across the globe. That and with the resurgence of the mining craze is going to end up inflating prices on all existing high-end cards. The price hike is suggested to occur this month & 'My Drivers' report that even the mainstream GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER & the GeForce RTX 2060 will be affected. It is stated that NVIDIA has internally notified its AIB partners to adjust prices with the demand accordingly.

My thoughts

I don't really know how reliable this news is, but I had seen it pop-up a lot in the last few hours. Honestly, i think the mining craze will die down as quick as it is being brought back to life (hopefully, 'coz screw price hikes). Nvidia seems like they want their customers to only purchase the newer generation GPUs, and without knowing the expected pricing, PC builders now seem like they dont have any other option other than to wait (myself included). I just hope the prices aren't too harsh on the wallet. Do give your thoughts on this topic as well.

 

 

Sources

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-20-turing-production-end-geforce-rtx-30-ampere-gaming-graphics-card-launch-close/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsCgG7DvDOk

 

[Chris Pratt]

Not that I would it past people, because one should never underestimate the human potential for truly extraordinary levels of stupidity, but I just can't imagine a mining resurgence. It's not going to work out any better this time than the last time, and no one's getting rich off this unless you're stealing your neighbor's power. Then, you better hope to make enough to cover the legal fees when you get arrested.

 

I also don't see Nvidia unilaterally raising card prices. They already took the historic step of lowering their prices because AMD was eating their lunch. They're not going to cede ground now. Also, they can't reasonably sell their new hardware if the current gen is not only occupying the same price point as it was, but now even higher. You might have a few extreme enthusiasts willing to part with $2000 for a GPU, but it would seriously dent their sales, which is the exact opposite of what you want for a new hardware launch. Their shareholders would eat them alive. If they really were going to have to raise current gen prices, they put a complete hold on the next gen.

[D13H4RD]

The de-listing isn't much of a surprise. It means RTX 30 is pretty close now and they're making way for the first rounds of the cards that will occupy the bracket that these cards used to occupy, with the xx60 cards and lower coming later.

 

As for the price hike, it has kind of already happened, though not necessarily due to mining. The effect of the pandemic on global supply chains has already hiked prices on many graphics cards due to stock shortages caused by the halt to manufacturing earlier in the year, and difficulties getting them shipped out later in the year, as freight companies are understandably prioritizing PPEs and other essential items. Much of this year has not been a good time to build a new PC.

 

Pure speculation here, but if the crypto-craze is returning, assuming it holds on towards the timeframe where these cards are expected to go on sale, expect stocking issues to persist for a while. If you're planning to build a new PC in anticipation of new graphics cards, you may want to re-plan at least the GPU portion of the build when it comes to timing in anticipation of potential stocking issues.

[zeusthemoose]

This is the first I’m hearing about the mining craze coming back

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

10 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

The de-listing isn't much of a surprise. It means RTX 30 is pretty close now and they're making way for the first rounds of the cards that will occupy the bracket that these cards used to occupy, with the xx60 cards and lower coming later.

 

As for the price hike, it has kind of already happened, though not necessarily due to mining. The effect of the pandemic on global supply chains has already hiked prices on many graphics cards due to stock shortages caused by the halt to manufacturing earlier in the year, and difficulties getting them shipped out later in the year, as freight companies are understandably prioritizing PPEs and other essential items. Much of this year has not been a good time to build a new PC.

 

Pure speculation here, but if the crypto-craze is returning, assuming it holds on towards the timeframe where these cards are expected to go on sale, expect stocking issues to persist for a while. If you're planning to build a new PC in anticipation of new graphics cards, you may want to re-plan at least the GPU portion of the build when it comes to timing in anticipation of potential stocking issues.

but what i dont understand is the discontinuation of the 'Turing' series. why not continue production for them as well? their prices would drop, buyers have more options to choose from, ranging from different prices. customers neednt be forced to buy only the new and expensive hardware

[D13H4RD]

2 minutes ago, PoopThatTookAPee said:

but what i dont understand is the discontinuation of the 'Turing' series. why not continue production for them as well? their prices would drop, buyers have more options to choose from, ranging from different prices. customers neednt be forced to buy only the new and expensive hardware

Probably because NVIDIA did not want the old Turing cards to clash together with the newer Ampere-based ones especially in a similar price bracket.

 

Remember that NVIDIA's also a business. They will always want to sell you their shiniest, newest pieces of hardware even at a premium.

[Johnny-Boi]

@PoopThatTookAPee Especially if they want to compete with ps5, so tempting, so good, so clean, but no, i must join the pc master race, i must 

[zeusthemoose]

3 minutes ago, PoopThatTookAPee said:

but what i dont understand is the discontinuation of the 'Turing' series. why not continue production for them as well? their prices would drop, buyers have more options to choose from, ranging from different prices. customers neednt be forced to buy only the new and expensive hardware

But if you can buy a 2000 series gpu new, how will nvidia make money?!? Classic anti corporate overlord behavior... /s

 

Seriously though, I wish they would do that. But between wanting more money and im assuming needing twice as many manufacturing plants to make both series, that will never happen.

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

imo, they should release all the variants at first, ie, the 80, 70 and 60 cards, so buyers with any budget, be it low or high, have options to choose from. if not, they should release the product first and then decide on whether to stop production of the older generation

[SteveGrabowski0]

Fucking hell, mining is making a comeback? Can 2020 get any worse? Won't be able to even get a gpu for a decent price before the eventual death by cytokine storm? smh

[RejZoR]

9 minutes ago, PoopThatTookAPee said:

imo, they should release all the variants at first, ie, the 80, 70 and 60 cards, so buyers with any budget, be it low or high, have options to choose from. if not, they should release the product first and then decide on whether to stop production of the older generation

The thing is, they always release the top end to hype things up with MUH POWAH and the way lower end cards work, at least in the beginning of their life is that they are usually cut down versions of high end chips. Mostly those that don't qualify for the high end models. They cut the clusters of shaders (compute units) in most cases using laser or some other technique to make it less powerful, they "flash" chip identification for some lower model and smack it on a mid tier card. This way they are not throwing away chips that can be repurposed, technically increasing yields as they don't throw away chips that don't qualify for top end, but they end up in lower end model cards.

 

As chip production matures and yields increase, they begin dedicated production of cut down chips as they don't get enough of them from faulty top end chips and the hype train is over and time to ramp up the segment which brings in most money, which realistically is always the mid segment in the consumer space (lets ignore professional types for the moment that are used in thousands for compute cluster servers).

 

This is why they rarely just ramp up production of lower end models along with high end ones right from the beginning, they need to produce enough of high end models for those to end up unqualified in certain amount that is sufficient to produce lower end cards from them. Which is why there is usually a delay ranging from few weeks to few months.

[SADS]

3 hours ago, zeusthemoose said:

This is the first I’m hearing about the mining craze coming back

haha yeh, I thought that boat sailed ages ago now. I hope it stays gone.

[leadeater]

4 hours ago, PoopThatTookAPee said:

as well as the mining craze that is being revived

Is this actually a thing? Thought that was mostly dead now other than the big guys already heavily invested but they weren't buying in high volume anymore.

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

2 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Fucking hell, mining is making a comeback? Can 2020 get any worse? Won't be able to even get a gpu for a decent price before the eventual death by cytokine storm? smh

i hope we dont have a repeat in the insane price hikes in gpus like last mining season

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Is this actually a thing? Thought that was mostly dead now other than the big guys already heavily invested but

they weren't buying in high volume anymore.

 

hopefully it dies quick, that is, if it is actaully being revived

[CTR640]

How does mining craze comes back?! I thought we are done with that shit and now again if true?

 

When my current 1080Ti dies and no longer working anymore, I'll simply downgrade to GTX780 that I saved if the prices will still be absurd.

[Fasterthannothing]

 Something smells fishy! How is it right before Nvidia is set to release a new card that everyone thought would be cheaper than current gen and after Nvidia started cutting prices to compete they claim there is a mining craze that no one has heard about? Call me crazy but I think this is Nvidia just using the shortage of cards due to Covid to make it look like a mining craze. That way they can jack up prices and sell the rest of the old stock while setting it up to increase the price of new cards. Maybe im just ranting about nothing.

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

10 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

 Something smells fishy! How is it right before Nvidia is set to release a new card that everyone thought would be cheaper than current gen and after Nvidia started cutting prices to compete they claim there is a mining craze that no one has heard about? Call me crazy but I think this is Nvidia just using the shortage of cards due to Covid to make it look like a mining craze. That way they can jack up prices and sell the rest of the old stock while setting it up to increase the price of new cards. Maybe im just ranting about nothing.

its not nvidia who claims there is a mining craze in the coming. its the article writers

[descendency]

 

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Is this actually a thing? Thought that was mostly dead now other than the big guys already heavily invested but they weren't buying in high volume anymore.

I just went to eBay to look how much I could flip a 2080 TI for (sell the 2080TI, revert back to a backup card for a few months - buy a brand new 3080TI and pocket the extra cash...), but the prices looked normal to me. 

 

If I'm wrong, I'll gladly sell someone a 2080TI for 3x market value  

 

edit: I see. Someone is guessing there will be a resurgence of mining. That's stupid. There is a reason it is dead. 

[aisle9]

I'm a little surprised to hear they were still producing Turing at all.

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

Is this actually a thing? Thought that was mostly dead now other than the big guys already heavily invested but they weren't buying in high volume anymore.

I don't think it is unless there is yet-another-ICO in the works somewhere.

 

Most of the cryptocoin stuff just wastes energy, and cpu/gpu's just get used until someone invents an ASIC. Some of the crypto's are supposed to be "asic-proof" but they all just waste energy and create nothing.

[RejZoR]

On 7/13/2020 at 5:16 AM, zeusthemoose said:

This is the first I’m hearing about the mining craze coming back

Same. I think it's just NVIDIA's wet dream that won't happen. There's no crypto currency at the moment that would be "hot". Those that were have long been past the point of usability and you can't just keep making new one up coz that would be like just printing more money. I just hope that nonsense NEVER repeats. It was the dumbest period in computing I can remember in last 30 years. Grinding whole farms of millions of graphic cards to compute some useless noodle that is then converted into money. Everyone bitching over global warming and I was the only one calling that shit out on it. The amount of power all that shit consumed and the amount of heat it produced, for what? Money? It was literally like getting paid for burning as much wood/coal/gas as you can. Would that make sense? Anyway, that shit must never happen ever again.

[ColdPressCoconutOil]

14 hours ago, descendency said:

 

I just went to eBay to look how much I could flip a 2080 TI for (sell the 2080TI, revert back to a backup card for a few months - buy a brand new 3080TI and pocket the extra cash...), but the prices looked normal to me. 

 

If I'm wrong, I'll gladly sell someone a 2080TI for 3x market value

*laughs in nvidia marketing schemes*

[D13H4RD]

Never forget the suckers who actually went out and emptied most stores of their entire GPU stock only for them to become absolutely worthless not too long later...

[porina]

On 7/13/2020 at 4:33 AM, D13H4RD said:

They will always want to sell you their shiniest, newest pieces of hardware even at a premium.

A good business will compete with its competitors. A bad company competes with itself. No company gets it right every time. 

 

On 7/13/2020 at 3:22 PM, aisle9 said:

I'm a little surprised to hear they were still producing Turing at all.

We have less information than nvidia themselves have to go on, but they will have some idea of how much is selling, so they can adjust the tap so supplies run out around the time the new cards are available. Again, no company is perfect. They might run out before, they might have excess stock. 

 

Also don't underestimate the mass system builders. Their models often have a certain marketing life. Even if something newer comes along they'll still sell models containing older parts. They wont 100% switch over to newer parts on day 1.

 

2 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

Never forget the suckers who actually went out and emptied most stores of their entire GPU stock only for them to become absolutely worthless not too long later...

If we're talking about the original mining boom, like all bubbles how much you potentially made or loss depends on when you got in and out. Even after the bubble burst, I never did see the promised flood of GPUs on fire sale.

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, porina said:

We have less information than nvidia themselves have to go on, but they will have some idea of how much is selling, so they can adjust the tap so supplies run out around the time the new cards are available. Again, no company is perfect. They might run out before, they might have excess stock. 

 

Also don't underestimate the mass system builders. Their models often have a certain marketing life. Even if something newer comes along they'll still sell models containing older parts. They wont 100% switch over to newer parts on day 1.

All of that is correct. I was commenting more based on Pascal. I seem to recall those GPUs being discontinued a few months ahead of Turing, not ~1 month before launch.