Nvidia Sold $175 Million Worth of GeForce RTX 30 GPUs To Crypto Miners

[Brooksie359]

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Those are called “pronouns”. They may have grown less popular for conversation.  I once had a GURPS barbarian character with the quirk “doesn’t use pronouns” because it sounded so silly to talk like that.  It was a riff on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan character.  That character actually did us pronouns though. Had to stop using it.  Drove the other players nuts.  Bad quirk choice.

 Depends on the definition of “real”. Cash bills or coins? No.  One of the issues with fiat money (which is what I think everyone uses now) is that because it floats it can have near zero value.  West Germany used to imprint strips of metals into their bills to give them a minimum value in instances of hyper inflation.   Periodically the US has a problem where the metal value of their coinage exceeds the value of the coin.  People would create systems to separate out the more valuable coins.  They still pop up occasionally so they still exist.  Happened with silver dollars and quarters, then silver dimes, then nickels (which aren’t made of nickel anymore) then copper pennies.  Twice with those. 

The thing about currency is that it has value based on the products and services of the country of origin. If usd is guaranteed to be able to used to settle debts in the US it makes it have value corresponding to the good and services provided in the US. The same cannot be said about cryptocurrency. Sure there could be inflation but that does not mean the currency is worthless like it would with cryptocurrency if people decided to not trade anything for it. Granted this is based on the government still be in place. If the US collapsed then the currency could turn worthless overnight. Granted I it would be far more likely for a cryptocurrency to become worthless overnight than the US government collapsing overnight. If you really cared about inflation then might as well turn all of your money into precious metals as they have held their value over time quite well and regardless of what happens. 

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

The thing about currency is that it has value based on the products and services of the country of origin. If usd is guaranteed to be able to used to settle debts in the US it makes it have value corresponding to the good and services provided in the US. The same cannot be said about cryptocurrency. Sure there could be inflation but that does not mean the currency is worthless like it would with cryptocurrency if people decided to not trade anything for it. Granted this is based on the government still be in place. If the US collapsed then the currency could turn worthless overnight. Granted I it would be far more likely for a cryptocurrency to become worthless overnight than the US government collapsing overnight. If you really cared about inflation then might as well turn all of your money into precious metals as they have held their value over time quite well and regardless of what happens. 

So the argument is the value of crypto currency can outlast collapsing nations.  Could matter I suppose. The US is over 200 years old.  Most European countries have existed since Rome in some form or fashion. Cryptocurrency has a value based on the lifetime of the interest the public has in it.  I suspect that will be shorter in many instances. The stuff is so new that Bitcoin still has value even though almost no one (still looking for a good term) mines? Hashes for? It anymore.  It’s value has dropped how many hundred percent?

 

still not about the thread though.  I urge you to return to it or make another thread about this elsewhere. 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Mark Kaine]

kind of useless stat without knowing how many were sold to non cryptos... 

don't ya think! 

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Deli said:

After the launch event Jensen bragged about how great the "GAMING" performance of the new cards has. Then they sell all the cards to miners. Make sense.

There is currently 0 evidence that Nvidia are specifically choosing to sell the cards to miners.

The only "evidence" we have is that as GPU sales has increased, so has mining, and then you can assume that some portion of the cards sold are being used to mine on.

 

That's it. The situation isn't Nvidia going "we are going to be bad and sell cards to miners! Fuck gamers!", even though that's what some AMD fanboys are trying to push.

[StDragon]

26 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

So the argument is the value of crypto currency can outlast collapsing nations.  Could matter I suppose. The US is over 200 years old.  Most European countries have existed since Rome in some form or fashion. Cryptocurrency has a value based on the lifetime of the interest the public has in it.

Crypto is allowed until it isn't. The Gov has the final say-so through taxation.

 

It's how the Roman empire solidified the adoption of the denarius - all taxes must be paid, and it must be paid in official coinage.

[StDragon]

The fact GPUs are being slurped up for mining is because ACISs such as Antminers from Bitmain are a sold out.

 

Would be real interesting to know how many chip fabrication quotas are made up of ASIC crypto miners.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Crypto is allowed until it isn't. The Gov has the final say-so through taxation.

 

It's how the Roman empire solidified the adoption of the denarius - all taxes must be paid, and it must be paid in official coinage.

There’s an entire section with crypto in the title.  I suspect it is frequented by people who are versed in such things.  I personally have seen many “hinky as all get-out” indicators in crypto, and have yet to see anything that would ally those concerns.  Still not about GPUs

[StDragon]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s an entire section with crypto in the title.  I suspect it is frequented by people who are versed in such things.  I personally have seen many “hinky as all get-out” indicators in crypto, and have yet to see anything that would ally those concerns.  Still not about GPUs

I need to create a "gamer coin". Where coins can only be mined through gaming, and that requires a GPU. But hey, at least the gamers will have their card 

[Kisai]

12 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I wasn't aware being productive was a prerequisite for owning a graphics card?

 

Its kind of funny that you rant about miners producing nothing except heat and imaginary currency while simultaneously saying that the cards are meant for gamers. What exactly do gamers produce with their cards?

 

Getting annoyed because you couldn't get something is one thing, saying an entire group of people don't have the right to do the thing they choose to do because it doesn't meet your own expectations is something VERY different.

Because cryptocoins produce nothing, and waste energy, driving up the costs of energy for productive uses.

 

Gamers don't play games 24/7 without sleep. In many cases gamers use less than 5% of the capacity of their GPU 75% of the time, while that remaining 25% of the time (eg a 6 hour gaming session) doesn't guarantee the card is maxed out either. Plus if you're a streamer or some other productive user (eg video production, photoshop, etc) that GPU might also get some use in those GPU-assisted applications. If you were to try and utilize the card 100% of the time by having folding run when the machine is idle, you're still more productive than cryptocoins.

 

The problem, is cryptocoins are driven by profit-only, so if they can generate coins cheaply by burning coal, oil and gas, they will do that. The amount of energy being wasted on crypto, can power a small country. That's insanity for a speculative asset that's backed by nothing. 

 

[Bombastinator]

59 minutes ago, StDragon said:

I need to create a "gamer coin". Where coins can only be mined through gaming, and that requires a GPU. But hey, at least the gamers will have their card 

I actually like this.  It seems to be working for distributed science computing.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, RejZoR said:

 As much as we all hate this proprietary crap, it's the ecosystem NVIDIA created and hooked people on it. 

This is not something to blame nVidia for. It's something nVidia has a hand in perpetuating.

 

nVidia could have just stopped development on CUDA and had everyone work on OpenCL. That didn't happen, because OpenCL is not what CNN's are written to use.

 

Right now everyone is stuck with nVidia's CUDA stuff, which is supremely broken and fragile. Not only can a new card require a new driver, a new driver can break CUDA written to use older libraries for no reason. 

 

AMD and Intel need to implement their own CUDA drivers that work with the stuff already out there. That's how you steal that crown away from nVidia.

 

[dilpickle]

I'm confused. How exactly did Nvidia sell these to miners? Was there a secret website somewhere? Was this sold to one big organization?

[Bombastinator]

Just now, dilpickle said:

I'm confused. How exactly did Nvidia sell these to miners? Was there a secret website somewhere? Was this sold to one big organization?

This is a question I would also like to see answered but apparently a lot of various questions like that are proprietary info. 

[pythonmegapixel]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

This is a question I would also like to see answered but apparently a lot of various questions like that are proprietary info. 

Possibly because providing that information would not be helpful to the narrative that Nvidia have somehow denied thousands of gamers - who are, obviously, superior to anyone else /s - their entitlement (which they never had in the first place) to replace their perfectly good graphics card.

 

All these people complaining that mining is bad for the environment - you know what is also bad for the environment? Throwing away PC hardware after you upgrade (and even if you sell it on, it's still ultimately going to end up as e-waste at some point).

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

I'm confused. How exactly did Nvidia sell these to miners? Was there a secret website somewhere? Was this sold to one big organization?

would be directly to them, rumor is a few big places in china.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, pythonmegapixel said:

All these people complaining that mining is bad for the environment - you know what is also bad for the environment? Throwing away PC hardware after you upgrade (and even if you sell it on, it's still ultimately going to end up as e-waste at some point).

thats why I keep it all for myself. you've said maybe on of the most dumb things ever. at some point everything electric will die or no longer be useful, we do need to do better recycling. hell you know what will happen to everything that is mined on it will become ewaste too.
mining on the other hand is just burning power to do some BS calculations to make money.

[PriitM]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This is a question I would also like to see answered but apparently a lot of various questions like that are proprietary info. 

Miners just walk up to Jensen, hand over a bitcoin and say: "ayo...you got that good stuff for me?" 
 

All kidding aside we will never know what kind of procurement channels were used. Knowing most serious miners use specialist ASIC cards. Nvidia could have just shipped the die+memory packs to some specialist shops to make custom farm setups. By this time, large miners have the "coin" to pay for what ever. Would not surprise me if they have back room deals with AIBs too...

[pythonmegapixel]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

at some point everything electric will die or no longer be useful,

So we need to make less of them. And yes, that means less mining cards... but it also means less gaming cards.

 

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

mining on the other hand is just burning power to do some BS calculations to make money.

Gaming is just burning power to make some BS coloured pixels appear on a screen.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Possibly because providing that information would not be helpful to the narrative that Nvidia have somehow denied thousands of gamers - who are, obviously, superior to anyone else /s - their entitlement (which they never had in the first place) to replace their perfectly good graphics card.

 

All these people complaining that mining is bad for the environment - you know what is also bad for the environment? Throwing away PC hardware after you upgrade (and even if you sell it on, it's still ultimately going to end up as e-waste at some point).

This is why I dislike the word mining for this.  There is, say coal or metals mining and there is crypto”mining” and they are totally different in behavior.  If you are referring to electricity use, basically almost ALL electricity use is to one degree or another bad for the environment. It’s not something we can at all easily give up though and making electricity generation less bad has been a major world goal for a long time now.  As for throwing away PCs it’s actually illegal I think.  All those caps with weird juices in them. They’ve also got gold and copper and refined aluminum in them though which are worth money so this often happens. I’m a bit blessed in that one of the very few freegeeks left in the US is in my town.  My electronics go there. That’s just me though.  I’ve volunteered there a few times.  Got out of the habit, was thinking of going back and covid hit.  We’ll see what happens in April.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Bombastinator

[GDRRiley]

5 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Gaming is just burning power to make some BS coloured pixels appear on a screen.

its entertainment, we do much worst things that use maybe a KW/H a day for some fun

[Brooksie359]

55 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Possibly because providing that information would not be helpful to the narrative that Nvidia have somehow denied thousands of gamers - who are, obviously, superior to anyone else /s - their entitlement (which they never had in the first place) to replace their perfectly good graphics card.

 

All these people complaining that mining is bad for the environment - you know what is also bad for the environment? Throwing away PC hardware after you upgrade (and even if you sell it on, it's still ultimately going to end up as e-waste at some point).

If they sell in mass to miners then it is preferential treatment plain and simple. Honestly people should be only allowed to buy on card until everyone who wants one gets one that way nobody is getting special treatment. Regardless what nvidia did is going to make alot of gamers mad and feel like they don't give a damn about their customers if this information has any truth to it. I am uncertain if that is the case though. I still think a huge problem is people buying multiple cards regardless of the reason. 

[The Blackhat]

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

thats why I keep it all for myself. you've said maybe on of the most dumb things ever. at some point everything electric will die or no longer be useful, we do need to do better recycling. hell you know what will happen to everything that is mined on it will become ewaste too.
mining on the other hand is just burning power to do some BS calculations to make money.

Gaming is just burning power to do some BS calculations to render an image. Folding is just some BS calculations to cure a disease. Servers running 24/7 just run some BS calculations so you can access random info whenever you want.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

But I thought you said the AIBs were buying the completed cards from the GPU manufacturer after the GPU manufacturer designed a card and paid a different company to make the reference cards for distribution.

No, reference cards are under the control of AMD. AMD designs the entire thing, AIBs have no part in that process at all and are not allowed to change anything about them. AIBs either get the entire card completely assembled or the completed parts i.e. the board already assembled (GPU package in place and VRMs etc) plus the cooler and are just assembling the card. I'm not sure which it is, I would assume the second. I could probably find out but it doesn't matter as the costs are all fixed by AMD and there is very little to no risk to the AIB however they make next to zero margin on the reference cards and as such they don't want to actually sell them and AMD doesn't want to do the reference cards long term as it's not something they do and they don't want the long term supply cost risk.

 

AMD wants to manufacture and sell GPU packages and AIB want to buy GPU packages and make their own cards, the single largest cost for the AIB is those GPU packages and thus those largely dictate the custom card MSRP not the reference MSRP AMD (and Nvidia) give at the release press conferences. So if either AMD or Nvidia want to see custom variant cards at or near the reference MSRP it is up to them to work with AIBs to allow that to be possible, AIBs simply will not sell at a loss or even cost to appease AMD/Nvidia. However neither can AMD/Nvidia sell the GPU packages at a loss or cost either.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, The Blackhat said:

Gaming is just burning power to do some BS calculations to render an image.

True.  What it comes down to I guess is which is a more useless behavior.  It becomes a question of if gaming is nearly zero and cryptomining is zero or visa versa. I do have to admit that the two behaviors are more similar than I’d like.  Gaming is mostly wasting time. Arguably an evil thing.  Cryptomining is wasting other things.  Which is more evil?

Edited November 28, 2020 by Bombastinator

[Bombastinator]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

No, reference cards are under the control of AMD. AMD designs the entire thing, AIBs have no part in that process at all and are not allowed to change anything about them. AIBs either get the entire card completely assembled or the completed parts i.e. the board already assembled (GPU package in place and VRMs etc) plus the cooler and are just assembling the card. I'm not sure which it is, I would assume the second. I could probably find out but it doesn't matter as the costs are all fixed by AMD and there is very little to no risk to the AIB however they make next to zero margin on the reference cards and as such they don't want to actually sell them and AMD doesn't want to do the reference cards long term as it's not something they do and they don't want the long term supply cost risk.

 

AMD wants to manufacture and sell GPU packages and AIB want to buy GPU packages and make their own cards, the single largest cost for the AIB is those GPU packages and thus those largely dictate the custom card MSRP not the reference MSRP AMD (and Nvidia) give at the release press conferences. So if either AMD or Nvidia want to see custom variant cards at or near the reference MSRP it is up to them to work with AIBs to allow that to be possible, AIBs simply will not sell at a loss or even cost to appease AMD/Nvidia. However neither can AMD/Nvidia sell the GPU packages at a loss or cost either.

This seems to be a situation where there is a denial then a repetition of what I said.  The second such I have run into in close proximity.  In the last one the difference was very minimal but there. It seems likely the same is true here.  I don’t seem to be finding it.  Doesn’t mean it is t there, but it implies it is subtle.  The last one was anyway. One difference I see is that of the cooler origin.  I was under the impression AIBs do their own coolers.  It was implied so previously anyway. My intent was that since the gpu manufacturer, be it Nvidia or AMD, has to design a card and pay for its construction they would have to be familiar with the costs. Is it that there is a difference between the way AMD and Nvidia do things in this situation?

Edited November 28, 2020 by Bombastinator