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

[Lord Vile]

Thought mining had moved over to ASIC. 

[Blademaster91]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Because selling them to miners sets no loyalty, creates no ecosystem, creates a very short term infusion of cash with zero long term income. Miners just buy whatever brings them best mining ratio. Gamers on the other hand, if ecosystem is good and NVIDIA generally does that well creates loyalty, people return to them even if prices may not be the lowest, gaming as such is a perpetual thing and people buy again and again. Mining craze only lasts short time and then no one gives a fuck about it.

Miners are probably a quicker sale than consumers are, Nvidia doesn't care about any buyer loyalty because a sale is a sale. Nvidia didn't stop the bots and scalpers either, why would they care if mining companies bought up most of the available stock?

 

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

NVIDIA is in no dire need for quick bucks. But building a reliable and steady stream of graphic card sales is something you want. It's the steady reliable and predictable increase in income that every company wants. Making quick buck is when you only have a company to milk it and sink it. It would be stupid of NVIDIA going this approach because we know they are really for along term mission here.

A supply to consumers that will come back to buy again would be more ideal, but Nvidia has prioritized miners before and it made them a huge profit, of course they'd do it again. Some consumers may go to consoles, but the quick buck Nvidia is making is way more than they'd lose to people getting tired of not being able to build a gaming PC and switching to console.

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

that's what people have been saying since 2013, and yet here we are

 

it's more like miners are more willing to use bots to buy up cards for their use

even if nvidia dont sell it to them directly, they could've just bought it from legit sources

 

"bots isnt fair" well, welcome to the real world, kiddo

I didn't say it's not fair. I said it's dumb. Instead of buying RTX 3080, I'm still sitting on GTX 1080Ti and if this garbage continues, I'll continue sitting on it. It still has plenty of horsepower to keep me going. I usually flip cards every 2 generations or so if they have anything interesting to offer. How often miners do that? And when they flood the aftermarket with fucked up cards that were grinding 24/7 on the cheap, they are undercutting sales of new generations of cards. Why buy RTX 4060/4070 when you can get used RTX 3070 for peanuts then with probably just slight performance disadvantage as you can be assured we won't see such a performance jump anymore. So, yeah, bad strategy. And with no gamer to actually have RTX card, why would developers bother with RTX or DLSS? Miners don't need that. And when games don't have that, I'll be less inclined to buy an RTX card. And that's the part where I was talking about the ecosystem. Miners don't care. Gamers do. And it's a close relation between game devs, graphic card makers and gamers. It's called long term business strategy. Selling it to miners is basically just a short adrenaline shot. You're amazed how much cash you make until you realize it doesn't last and is actually hurting you in the end.

[Moonzy]

13 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I didn't say it's not fair. I said it's dumb. Instead of buying RTX 3080, I'm still sitting on GTX 1080Ti and if this garbage continues, I'll continue sitting on it. It still has plenty of horsepower to keep me going. I usually flip cards every 2 generations or so if they have anything interesting to offer. How often miners do that? And when they flood the aftermarket with fucked up cards that were grinding 24/7 on the cheap, they are undercutting sales of new generations of cards. Why buy RTX 4060/4070 when you can get used RTX 3070 for peanuts then with probably just slight performance disadvantage as you can be assured we won't see such a performance jump anymore. So, yeah, bad strategy. And with no gamer to actually have RTX card, why would developers bother with RTX or DLSS? Miners don't need that. And when games don't have that, I'll be less inclined to buy an RTX card. And that's the part where I was talking about the ecosystem. Miners don't care. Gamers do. And it's a close relation between game devs, graphic card makers and gamers. It's called long term business strategy. Selling it to miners is basically just a short adrenaline shot. You're amazed how much cash you make until you realize it doesn't last and is actually hurting you in the end.

you're assuming that gamers will never get the card

they will, just at a later date

[RejZoR]

7 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

you're assuming that gamers will never get the card

they will, just at a later date

What "later" date? Early 2021? Spring 2021? Summer 2021? When? I want to buy the damn thing now so I can play Cyberpunk 2077 in all its glory. If I can't get the card I won't get the game. It's been years if not decades when I purposely bought a graphic card for 1 game. Playing it now on my current card and then doing it again with full graphics just won't be the same anymore. Meaning I won't be buying Cyberpunk 2077 until I have the card first...

[Moonzy]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

When? I want to buy the damn thing now

this sounds like a spoiled brat to me, even though you probably didnt intended it to sound that way

 

use bots to buy it, unless it's not worth the effort for you

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Why does it even matter? Nvidia could have sold every card they had ready for the launch directly to miners (I have my suspicion that AMD did) and there would be nothing any of us could do about it other than start a Twitter brigade.

 

Their business, their product.

They can. Just like Nestle can buy up water resources in Africa and sell the water for fat profit to the locals.

 

You can play the game of maximizing your profits for however far you seem fit. The question is when you draw the line between having legit business interests and simply maximizing your cash on immoral grounds.

 

As others have already mentioned: If you go down this path as a GPU company, simply do not publicly announce them and stress how they are made primarily for gaming and how everything is done to get them in the hands of gamers. That is just straight out lying.

 

In the end, getting the most cash out of your bussiness is not an excuse for every kind of behavior. The same could've been said about the MSI ebay-scalping thing. People went bazonkas over that, rightfully so. The same could be said about every scalper. They are just maximizing their profit as a small company.

[Dracarris]

56 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Miners are probably a quicker sale than consumers are, Nvidia doesn't care about any buyer loyalty because a sale is a sale. Nvidia didn't stop the bots and scalpers either, why would they care if mining companies bought up most of the available stock?

That is an ultra-short sighted strategy for a usually very clever company like Nvidia. And they did stop scalpers and bots, as soon as they noticed what is going on they stopped selling cards directly as they recognized that they don't have the tools to stop this behavior.

 

Check here for further reading: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-3080-qa/

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

I'm assuming you're refering to a statement in January 2018 (almost exactly 2 years ago) made by Boris Bohles, PR manager in Germany during the last crypto-currency boom. with the exception of a severely outdated and empty linked-in profile, i can find no evidence that he still works for NVidia.

 

So unless we're holding companies to statements made by former employees from 2 years ago, companies are allowed to change.

Lets see if Nvidia said anything about this matter in, lets say, more recent times:

Quote

Our philosophy has always been to get the latest technology into the hands of gamers as fast as possible.

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-3080-qa/

 

Statement from Sept. 21st, 2020

 

I think this is all that needs to be said.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Why does it even matter?

I was curious about the numbers since many on the forum parrot stuff about bad yields yet I've yet to see even a sliver of anything to confirm that. 

 

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

MLID was saying that Nvidia is just wholesale selling GA102 and GA104 dies to Mining companies and that they produce their own coolers, bios, drivers etc.

I'd prefer a credible source, but these must be some large mining organisations to design and build their own cards, or they outsource it to existing AIBs or similar.

 

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

if it was just dies, the unit count should be much higher, unless it's $600 per chip, that'd be quite insane

I was assuming retail value since that's about the only figure we have. Chances are any large scale buyer would not be paying retail rates in some way or other.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

Thought mining had moved over to ASIC. 

Depends on the specific crypto. During the original boom, Ethereum was meant to be ASIC resistant, and as the boom tailed off I heard some had managed to implement it economically in ASIC. I haven't kept up to date with crypto since then, but if you wanted to be ASIC resistant, you can simply change the crypto mechanism now and then and essentially turn them into junk, or at best, run on some split on the old blockchain.

[Lord Vile]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

Depends on the specific crypto. During the original boom, Ethereum was meant to be ASIC resistant, and as the boom tailed off I heard some had managed to implement it economically in ASIC. I haven't kept up to date with crypto since then, but if you wanted to be ASIC resistant, you can simply change the crypto mechanism now and then and essentially turn them into junk, or at best, run on some split on the old blockchain.

If it were say etherium though that's memory based so the Vega cards would be more desirable for HBM2

[Amias]

Nvidia when they realise all their chips have sold to scalpers and miners.

 

AMD's realising all their chips are sold to scalpers too.

 

Sony when realising all the PS5's have been sold to scalpers.

 

Microsoft when realising all their Xbox's have sold to scalpers.

 

 

[Master Disaster]

29 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

They can. Just like Nestle can buy up water resources in Africa and sell the water for fat profit to the locals.

 

You can play the game of maximizing your profits for however far you seem fit. The question is when you draw the line between having legit business interests and simply maximizing your cash on immoral grounds.

 

As others have already mentioned: If you go down this path as a GPU company, simply do not publicly announce them and stress how they are made primarily for gaming and how everything is done to get them in the hands of gamers. That is just straight out lying.

 

In the end, getting the most cash out of your bussiness is not an excuse for every kind of behavior. The same could've been said about the MSI ebay-scalping thing. People went bazonkas over that, rightfully so. The same could be said about every scalper. They are just maximizing their profit as a small company.

And also mentioned is that, at least to my knowledge, Nvidia never said that. When they talked about getting cards into the hands of gamers they were talking in the context of bots. I'm happy to be proved wrong on this however.

 

Miners are every bit as legitimate customers as gamers, they don't need an excuse, they did nothing wrong. The saw an opportunity to make guaranteed money and they took it. Any business would have done the same.

[bit]

you know you're supposed to lick nvidia boots, not deepthroat them right?

 

 

it's in the best interest of a corporation to do what brings them profit, they have to. it is also super shitty for them to do this. the two aren't mutually exclusive.

 

 

the fact that the cards are there doing essentially nothing but using power is stupid as all shit. at least with gaming someone is getting enjoyment out of the card. even with folding it's being used for something good. but mining??????????? fuck mining and miners.

[Blademaster91]

55 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

That is an ultra-short sighted strategy for a usually very clever company like Nvidia. And they did stop scalpers and bots, as soon as they noticed what is going on they stopped selling cards directly as they recognized that they don't have the tools to stop this behavior.

 

Check here for further reading: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-3080-qa/

It's short sighted but effective enough Nvidia can brag they made record profits from their consumer GPU's and their shareholders will be satisfied.

And Nvidia taking stuff off their store isn't stopping the scalpers and bots, I don't know what Nvidia did in the EU, but in the US they just had BestBuy handle the sales of FE cards. All Nvidia had to do is set up a queue system like EVGA is doing with cards on their store.

34 minutes ago, porina said:

I was curious about the numbers since many on the forum parrot stuff about bad yields yet I've yet to see even a sliver of anything to confirm that. 

All there is to go on are supplies being low,and the 3080's drawing more power than the previous RTX 20 series. But I doubt there would be any evidence of yields being bad, Nvidia wouldn't admit they're selling directly to miners either.

[Maticks]

If I was NVIDIA is rather sell to miners. A  gamer will buy one card. A miner might but 12 cards. Who is NVIDIA making the most money out of? There is low stock for cards. They are being made in China and probably most of the stock is staying there for mining and gaming. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

really? they made so much money on mining cards, why would they ever do that?

I don't know whether they did it, but if they did: most likely to direct miner demand towards other products. Sometimes the optimal strategy is to segment the market in two, sometimes the optimal strategy is selling everyone the same product.

[SupaKomputa]

4 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I don't know whether they did it, but if they did: most likely to direct miner demand towards other products. Sometimes the optimal strategy is to segment the market in two, sometimes the optimal strategy is selling everyone the same product.

Yes, it's reasonable. But miners will probably stay away from mining only gpu.

Lesson learned, When crypto crashed, some miners can get away selling their non mining gpu, but for mining ones no one wants them.

[Master Delta Chief]

I always find it funny there's still miners around these days while the appeal for it has declined a lot afaik. Regardless, it's pretty shitty that most of the cryptominers bought a bunch of em, creating a shortage for the rest of the people out there that actually make proper use of it rather than accelerating the wearing down of the cards by mining. 

[SupaKomputa]

12 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

accelerating the wearing down of the cards by mining. 

wearing down, that's not really accurate, miners usually downclock the gpu for less power consumption.

resulting less heat, which mean longer lifetime. the fans probably gonna go out first than the card itself.

and put it in a stable environment for continuously is probably healthier than using it up and down like gaming.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Moonzy said:

this sounds like a spoiled brat to me, even though you probably didnt intended it to sound that way

 

use bots to buy it, unless it's not worth the effort for you

Use bots on what? RTX 3080 that's listed for 950€ or 1150€? Fuck that. Bot is of no use when "pre-order" price is ridiculous.

[Dracarris]

23 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

I always find it funny there's still miners around these days while the appeal for it has declined a lot afaik.

(Crypto-)Mining is such an utter waste of resources, especially energy. So much for "selling to them is legit to get more MoneyZ".

[BuckGup]

4 hours ago, Moonzy said:

wh... what?

since when can people tell me what im allowed to do on my hardware?

The issue is Nvidia is lying about mining. When it became big two years ago Nvidia lied to its investors saying the strong revenue wasn’t from miners. It was and they got slapped with a law suit. Aside from that I see nothing wrong with selling to whoever wants a GPU. Mining is more essential than gaming these days.

[Master Delta Chief]

11 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

wearing down, that's not really accurate, miners usually downclock the gpu for less power consumption.

resulting less heat, which mean longer lifetime. the fans probably gonna go out first than the card itself.

and put it in a stable environment for continuously is probably healthier than using it up and down like gaming.

I assume GPU utilization during mining is still at a 100% so with that continuously running, that's still gonna accelerate the wear down than just playing games from now and then. Besides, as someone else just pointed out in the thread, mining wastes a lot of energy that just sets a large ecological footprint that is unnecessary. 

[Blademaster91]

17 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

wearing down, that's not really accurate, miners usually downclock the gpu for less power consumption.

resulting less heat, which mean longer lifetime. the fans probably gonna go out first than the card itself.

and put it in a stable environment for continuously is probably healthier than using it up and down like gaming.

The card is still being constantly utilized, so wearing out capacitors,and VRAM, consumer cards aren't designed for a constant load. And miners sell off their cards after the card isnt profitable, ruining the GPU market even more, and some gamers end up with cards with worn out fans and a GPU that has a higher chance of failing.