Good idea? inspired by VAG program.

[OCNewbee]

I've been wanting to buy an AORUS 3080/ 6800XT for the last six month. Obviously, we can't get one at a reasonable price because of scalpers and miners. I wonder if it would be possible for all distributors to have buyers take a quiz like how Linus has implemented on his gamer's gauntlet or VAG or whatever he calls it.

 

If GPU manufacturers and distributors continue to supply their GPUs to miners and scalpers, this would destroy the gaming industry. When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards. To prevent the gaming industry from falling, I think we should start a petition to all major retailers to implement this quiz for everyone that sells GPUs!!! 

 

I think the quiz was wonderful idea although it is a bit annoying.  

[gloop]

6 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

If GPU manufacturers and distributors continue to supply their GPUs to miners and scalpers, this would destroy the gaming industry. When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards. To prevent the gaming industry from falling, I think we should start a petition to all major retailers to implement this quiz for everyone that sells GPUs!!! 

Why should GPU manufacturers cater specifically to gamers who provide little-to-no value to the world?

[Arika]

2 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

If GPU manufacturers and distributors continue to supply their GPUs to miners and scalpers, this would destroy the gaming industry.

How fragile do you think the gaming industry is?

The GPU supply issues will NOT destroy the gaming industry, you seem to think that miners and scalpers are buying 100% of all GPUs released, this is not the case at all.

You're also assuming that once a new generation of GPUs are released that all previous GPUs are immediately thrown out. The most used GPU on steam's HW survey is STILL the 1060

 

4 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

I think we should start a petition to all major retailers to implement this quiz for everyone that sells GPUs!!! 

would never happen. Much like how people have been saying for years since the last time this happened, that all they needed to do was to implement buying limits based on IP or Hardware ID, shipping address, customer name etc.

But it will never happen, and sorry, but i don't think i've ever seen an internet petition actually enact a change.

[pythonmegapixel]

1 minute ago, gloop said:

Why should GPU manufacturers cater specifically to gamers who provide little-to-no value to the world?

To be fair, if you went by that logic then the only people 'worthy' of GPUs would be people who need them for CAD software to produce products aimed at the betterment of society, and that's obviously not how anything works.

 

That said I don't think quizzes on purchase pages is realistic to implement for mainstream retailers.

[gloop]

Just now, pythonmegapixel said:

To be fair, if you went by that logic then the only people 'worthy' of GPUs would be people who need them for CAD software to produce products aimed at the betterment of society, and that's obviously not how anything works.

 

That said I don't think quizzes on purchase pages is realistic to implement for mainstream retailers.

Yes, I will admit that would be the way it would be if we fully committed to that style of thinking. 
 

I however think that people need to realize that at the end of the day miners & scalpers as just as entitled to buy GPUs as they are. I’d bet what they do with their purchases contributes to the world more than gaming, which is essentially a giant waste of electricity for entertainment. 
 

At the very least, with mining and crypto it’s showing that blockchain (or similar) is applicable to use in the wider world, although it certainly doesn’t have a use in everything. 

[Kilrah]

18 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

I wonder if it would be possible for all distributors to have buyers take a quiz like how Linus has implemented on his gamer's gauntlet or VAG or whatever he calls it.

They have nothing to gain from it, quite the opposite, so it obviously won't happen.

[tikker]

10 minutes ago, gloop said:

Why should GPU manufacturers cater specifically to gamers who provide little-to-no value to the world?

This might be the first comment I've seen on this subject simply admitting that gaming also has "no value".

 

19 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

If GPU manufacturers and distributors continue to supply their GPUs to miners and scalpers, this would destroy the gaming industry. When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards.

Flooding the market with GPUs, allowing gamers to get them, would destroy the gaming industry? People may be apprehensive about buying them, but if prices are reasonable I think many will happily take one as an upgrade depending on the future situation.

[Ulysses499]

I think funding fear campaigns etc. would be quicker lol , if the crypto market crashed we would be in GPU wonder land

EDIT : another Idea I had was to invent another "crypto" currency that would serve as a p2p network for video streaming in that case it would make more sense to buy old phones/rasberry pies and use them , because while GPU decoding is nice , the most relevant resource would be bandwidth 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Ulysses499

[mariushm]

52 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

 

 

If GPU manufacturers and distributors continue to supply their GPUs to miners and scalpers, this would destroy the gaming industry. When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards. To prevent the gaming industry from falling, I think we should start a petition to all major retailers to implement this quiz for everyone that sells GPUs!!! 

 

Another thread started with poor reasoning.

 

It's either miners and scalpers OR gaming industry .... what about rendering farms that render the next animated movie, what about special effects studios, what about people using video cards for physics and fluid dynamics and other crap (architects, physics people etc) ... gaming is a thing, but it's just a small set of uses of video cards.

What about people that use video cards in their spare time (or during nights) in programs like Folding at home, Boinc, whatever .... basically contributing to help discover medicines or cures or other things?

 

When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards.  It doesn't have to "fall again" or fall at all.

 

By design, crypto coin mining increases in difficulty the more processing power (more miners) are mining that particular coin. So the more people mine, the harder it is to mine, less profit it is.  At some point, some ASIC or some other way of mining is discovered or some new graphics card will pop up that mines at much higher efficiency, making these older video cards no longer worth using (too much energy consumption for the amount of coin they generate) so they'll be sold ... and gamers with small budgets will buy them and they'll enjoy the games released 1-2-n years ago. 

 

It's also possible for the difficulty to increase so much as to require some minimum hardware making some cards not worth using (ex 1060 3GB cards weren't good for Ethereum because it required 3.5 GB of RAM or something like that, now in 2021 ETH needs more than 4 GB of ram to work so 4 GB cards are not used for mining ETH anymore)

 

I'd argue that it's good for gaming, maybe it makes studios polish their games better, maybe it makes them spend a bit more time optimizing their games for older video cards instead, and maybe gamers will also discover some games that they previously skipped or ignored or didn't even hear about because they were too stuck on overwatch or whatever the latest multiplayer craze was.

 

[Ulysses499]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

Another thread started with poor reasoning.

 

It's either miners and scalpers OR gaming industry .... what about rendering farms that render the next animated movie, what about special effects studios, what about people using video cards for physics and fluid dynamics and other crap (architects, physics people etc) ... gaming is a thing, but it's just a small set of uses of video cards.

 

When cryptocurrencies fall again, the market will be flooded with these graphics cards.  It doesn't have to "fall again" or fall at all.

 

By design, crypto coin mining increases in difficulty the more processing power (more miners) are mining that particular coin. So the more people mine, the harder it is to mine, less profit it is.  At some point, some ASIC or some other way of mining is discovered or some new graphics card will pop up that mines at much higher efficiency, making these older video cards no longer worth using (too much energy consumption for the amount of coin they generate) so they'll be sold ... and gamers with small budgets will buy them and they'll enjoy the games released 1-2-n years ago. 

 

It's also possible for the difficulty to increase so much as to require some minimum hardware making some cards not worth using (ex 1060 3GB cards weren't good for Ethereum because it required 3.5 GB of RAM or something like that, now in 2021 ETH needs more than 4 GB of ram to work so 4 GB cards are not used for mining ETH anymore)

 

I'd argue that it's good for gaming, maybe it makes studios polish their games better, maybe it makes them spend a bit more time optimizing their games for older video cards instead, and maybe gamers will also discover some games that they previously skipped or ignored or didn't even hear about because they were too stuck on overwatch or whatever the latest multiplayer craze was.

 

"makes studios polish their games more" - I mean for those studios that care yes, but I bet most just use a ported console version and then maybe release some higher res resources

[OCNewbee]

6 hours ago, gloop said:

Why should GPU manufacturers cater specifically to gamers who provide little-to-no value to the world?

Because gamers are they main staple clients. We basically built their company. It does not matter if we don't add any value to the world.

 

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

You're also assuming that once a new generation of GPUs are released that all previous GPUs are immediately thrown out. The most used GPU on steam's HW survey is STILL the 1060

I wonder why it is still 1060? Maybe it is because we can't get 3060. gamers are a smart bunch. We understand about the tick tock cycle. Many gamer did not buy the 2060 because of marginal improvements.

 

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

would never happen. Much like how people have been saying for years since the last time this happened, that all they needed to do was to implement buying limits based on IP or Hardware ID, shipping address, customer name etc.

But it will never happen, and sorry, but i don't think i've ever seen an internet petition actually enact a change.

Yeah, I think you are right. The distributors do not have enough incentive. But if we were to forecast what kind of negative consequences the GPU shortage would have on the gaming industry in the long run, perhaps they could change their minds. It never hurts to try. 

 

6 hours ago, gloop said:

I however think that people need to realize that at the end of the day miners & scalpers as just as entitled to buy GPUs as they are. I’d bet what they do with their purchases contributes to the world more than gaming, which is essentially a giant waste of electricity for entertainment. 
 

At the very least, with mining and crypto it’s showing that blockchain (or similar) is applicable to use in the wider world, although it certainly doesn’t have a use in everything. 

This is very philosophical. So you are saying that under a capitalistic system, anything goes? We have to think about sustainability and growth. The pc gaming industry has always been one of the primary sources of income for these companies. If we want sustained growth in pc gaming, we need to prioritize gamers. When mining does fail, there will be a deluge of cheap gpus and that would also hurt the GPU companies as well. 

 

If miners and scalpers continue this trend, this hurts game developers and gamers. This cannot be good for the pc gaming industry.

 

How does mining contribute to humanity? I mean it is not even a value producing asset. So from this perspective, mining is equally as useless as gaming. At least when you support gamers, GPU manufacturers are giving gamers their due respect. You can't be that ungrateful.  

 

 

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, OCNewbee said:

This is very philosophical. So you are saying that under a capitalistic system, anything goes? We have to think about sustainability and growth. The pc gaming industry has always been one of the primary sources of income for these companies. If we want sustained growth in pc gaming, we need to prioritize gamers. When mining does fail, there will be a deluge of cheap gpus and that would also hurt the GPU companies as well. 

 

If miners and scalpers continue this trend, this hurts game developers and gamers. This cannot be good for the pc gaming industry.

You seem to be conflating the PC gaming industry with society as a whole.

 

Sustained growth in PC gaming doesn't really impact society that much in the grand scheme of things.

 

Just now, OCNewbee said:

How does mining contribute to humanity? I mean it is not even a value producing asset. So from this perspective, mining is equally as useless as gaming. At least when you support gamers, GPU manufacturers are giving gamers their due respect. You can't be that ungrateful.  

Oh god, not this again.

 

Look through some old threads about GPU scalping on this forum. Pretty much every argument for and against this point of view has been made already.

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

Because gamers are they main staple clients. We basically built their company. It does not matter if we don't add any value to the world.

So what? It may have started with gaming, then people realised the tasks GPUs are good at appear in many more scenarios and as such the domain of GPUs expanded. They don't owe us anything.

10 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

I wonder why it is still 1060? Maybe it is because we can't get 3060. gamers are a smart bunch. We understand about the tick tock cycle. Many gamer did not buy the 2060 because of marginal improvements.

My guess is because probably the majority is fine with casual gaming, just being able to play the game and not needing 144 FPS @ ultra settings, or play esports.

10 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

But if we were to forecast what kind of negative consequences the GPU shortage would have on the gaming industry in the long run, perhaps they could change their minds. It never hurts to try.

And what about other industries that suffer because of the shortage? You should introduce separate quizzes for entertainment industry, rendering industry, compute industry etc. then, which will lead to the 10 GPUs that are now available to split to just 1 per group.

2 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

How does mining contribute to humanity? I mean it is not even a value producing asset. So from this perspective, mining is equally as useless as gaming. At least when you support gamers, GPU manufacturers are giving gamers their due respect. You can't be that ungrateful.  

Not this again. Gaming contributes nothing to humanity. Plenty of threads have now discussed this.

2 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

If miners and scalpers continue this trend, this hurts game developers and gamers. This cannot be good for the pc gaming industry.

 

It's not good for any industry. There is a global semiconductor shortage a lot of markets are affected by it, GPUs is just one segment.

[Arika]

1 minute ago, OCNewbee said:

I wonder why it is still 1060? Maybe it is because we can't get 3060.

Or maybe it's because people don't feel the need to upgrade every generation and that the MSRP keeps going up every generation making ANY upgrades less beneficial overall. the 1060 is still a very capable card.

 

If your current hardware is meeting your needs, why waste money on something better if you're not going to be utilising the addtiional power?

 

3 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

gamers are a smart bunch.

I dispute this. Based on the posts on this forum, on reddit, news articles etc, I would same Gamers are actually pretty stupid. They get tunnel vision to such an extreme that they lose all critical thinking and speak based on purely emotion when things don't go their way.

 

7 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

Many gamer did not buy the 2060 because of marginal improvements.

the 1060 to 2060 was a bigger leap in performance than the 2060 to 3060

[OCNewbee]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

Flooding the market with GPUs, allowing gamers to get them, would destroy the gaming industry? People may be apprehensive about buying them, but if prices are reasonable I think many will happily take one as an upgrade depending on the future situation.

When miners dump these GPUs, this hurts the GPU manufacturers. They will be forced to sell their GPUs at a lower price or forced to spend more money on R&D. I don't want AMD, Nvidia and gamers to suffer because of some non-value producing digital ponzi scheme.  

[pythonmegapixel]

2 hours ago, OCNewbee said:

When miners dump these GPUs, this hurts the GPU manufacturers. They will be forced to sell their GPUs at a lower price or forced to spend more money on R&D. I don't want AMD, Nvidia and gamers to suffer because of some non-value producing digital ponzi scheme.  

If AMD and nVidia suffer then it's their loss, they made the bad business decisions.

 

As for gamers suffering - lower priced GPUs and more spending on R&D are positive things, no?

[OCNewbee]

2 hours ago, mariushm said:

It's either miners and scalpers OR gaming industry .... what about rendering farms that render the next animated movie, what about special effects studios, what about people using video cards for physics and fluid dynamics and other crap (architects, physics people etc) ... gaming is a thing, but it's just a small set of uses of video cards.

What about people that use video cards in their spare time (or during nights) in programs like Folding at home, Boinc, whatever .... basically contributing to help discover medicines or cures or other things?

you know, for professional graphic work, they use other graphics cards like quadro.

 

2 hours ago, mariushm said:

so they'll be sold ... and gamers with small budgets will buy them and they'll enjoy the games released 1-2-n years ago. 

Flooding GPU market with GPUs is not a good idea for the GPU companies. Why hold up gaming for 1~2 years because of some ephemeral mining craze?

[OCNewbee]

6 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

You seem to be conflating the PC gaming industry with society as a whole.

 

Sustained growth in PC gaming doesn't really impact society that much in the grand scheme of things.

then mining does??? At least with PC gaming, we provide real jobs to people. I argue that sustained growth in pc gaming is healthier for us economically then growth in mining.

 

7 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Oh god, not this again.

 

Look through some old threads about GPU scalping on this forum. Pretty much every argument for and against this point of view has been made already.

ummm..so what if someone mentioned this before? If even if the argument is cliche, it is still valid. 

[AlexP11223]

5 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

you know, for professional graphic work, they use other graphics cards like quadro.

It depends on the work. For rendering farms yes, but in many other cases consumer cards are enough and much more affordable.

[tikker]

13 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

When miners dump these GPUs, this hurts the GPU manufacturers. They will be forced to sell their GPUs at a lower price or forced to spend more money on R&D. I don't want AMD, Nvidia and gamers to suffer because of some non-value producing digital ponzi scheme.  

  Have you seen what the MSRP of the 3000 series is, what Nvidia sold them at and what they are currently being sold at? Manufacturers already have made their profit multiple times over by selling at twice or thrice the MSRP in some cases. By the time these cards come to market the 3000 series is end of life and old news already, so they would be (presumably) cheaper on the second hand market anyway, and manufacturers can go back to selling at or near MSRP.

10 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

you know, for professional graphic work, they use other graphics cards like quadro.

Probably, but not always. Scientists, for example, use your good old everyday Geforce cards however. Our clusters happily rock 2080 Tis and don't benefit from quadros. Datacenters potentially use quadros because Nvidia prohibits Geforce in datacenter context.

10 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

Flooding GPU market with GPUs is not a good idea for the GPU companies. Why hold up gaming for 1~2 years because of some ephemeral mining craze?

Why not let people decide what they want to do with their hardware that they bought?

6 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

then mining does??? At least with PC gaming, we provide real jobs to people. I argue that sustained growth in pc gaming is healthier for us economically then growth in mining

Same arugment: At least mining provides a bit of passive income and frontiers exploration of new concepts for digital finance or assets.

You'll never reach common ground on this, because just as you don't care about crypto, there are people that don't care about gaming.

[pythonmegapixel]

Quote

ummm..so what if someone mentioned this before? If even if the argument is cliche, it is still valid. 

It's more than just a bit cliche - I'm saying that I've literally seen dozens of threads about this in the last few months, and they almost always devolve into a petty miners-vs-gamers flamewar, and achieve absolutely nothing.

You are of course entitled to voice your opinion, but I think you'll find that many members are becoming somewhat fed up of this kind of discussion.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Because manufacturers dont give a fuck.

 

They move units. That's what they care about. And they are moving fast.

[OCNewbee]

11 minutes ago, tikker said:

Why not let people decide what they want to do with their hardware that they bought?

Its not about letting people do what they want with their hardware. You are crafty dude, twisting arguments like that. This is about intentions. I would not mind if a gamer bought a GPU and decided to mine on the side. But I do think it is messed up for one person, a miner, to horde hundreds of GPUs using bots. 

 

When companies made these GPUs, it was intended for each gamers to perhaps possess 1~2 GPUs. Miners are buying in dozens and thousands. Even their procurement process is unethical such as using bots to flood the servers.  

[Blademaster91]

42 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

When miners dump these GPUs, this hurts the GPU manufacturers. They will be forced to sell their GPUs at a lower price or forced to spend more money on R&D. I don't want AMD, Nvidia and gamers to suffer because of some non-value producing digital ponzi scheme.  

Well GPU manufacturers didn't lower prices after the last crypto crash, there were tons of GTX 10 series cards being sold for much less than the RTX 2000 series cards, and yet prices of new GPU's went up.

I agree there isn't any more value in mining than gaming, and mining doesn't benefit everyone either unless they invest in crypto, and because you can't go buy groceries or pay the bills with crypto unless you first cash it out and convert it.

38 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

you know, for professional graphic work, they use other graphics cards like quadro.

 

Flooding GPU market with GPUs is not a good idea for the GPU companies. Why hold up gaming for 1~2 years because of some ephemeral mining craze?

The GPU manufacturers don't care at all, even if used GPU's completely flood the market people will still buy new cards. Nvidia and AMD selling cards to miners might be a short term profit but they still win as they can increase prices as miners are willing to pay 2X the MSRP for a GPU, which I think could set a precedent for companies to just price their products higher because they can.

[tikker]

3 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

Its not about letting people do what they want with their hardware. You are crafty dude, twisting arguments like that. This is about intentions. I would not mind if a gamer bought a GPU and decided to mine on the side. But I do think it is messed up for one person, a miner, to horde hundreds of GPUs using bots.

While I do not agree with bot behaviour, I also blame manufacturers for this. Nvidia's website is notorious for not having any bot protection in the slightest. No captchas, no tickboxes anywhere. As people mention, manufacturers are businesses in the end and all they care about is selling GPUs. Sell your entire stock in 1 day versus 1 month? Perfect. Being able to sell for 2x MSRP? Even better.

6 minutes ago, OCNewbee said:

When companies made these GPUs, it was intended for each gamers to perhaps possess 1~2 GPUs. Miners are buying in dozens and thousands. Even their procurement process is unethical such as using bots to flood the servers.

This is where I think you are wrong. To transliterate LTT's video: the manufacturer doesn't care about you. It was never "intended for each gamers to perhaps possess 1~2 GPUs". Sure the main aim of the Geforce series is gaming, but in the end it's just dollars in the bank for the manufacturer.

 

Is it unethical to buy 1000 GPUs? Maybe, I can see the argument for that, but a) that is not Nvidia's problem and b) people only disagree with it now because it affects them. Nobody was complaining about miners buying tons of GPU when supply was plenty. Now it's scarce and people want someone to blame.