AMD Worries Cryptomining GPU Demand Could Fall

[dizmo]

23 minutes ago, Energycore said:

$50 per month per 580 means a 6 month ROI if you pay $300, I think that's pretty great if you ask me.

 

Eth going proof-of-stake will definitely mean a decline in GPU mining. There are other coins of course, but none like ETH when it comes to its profitability.

 

There's a chance that people will still be able to mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) after the PoS launch though. I'm also concerned that the PoS launch has been put off multiple times now.

 

If GDDR6 cards have great performance mining ethereum or any other ethash coin, the expected outcome is for older cards to become less profitable as the network hash rate rockets up - and so does difficulty.

*None like ETH yet.

People thought the same same thing when Bitcoin dropped. Then another coin popped up. Now ETH popped up. It's simply going to repeat, and now that there are so many people mining, it will repeat at a greater pace. Mining isn't going anywhere, and the only thing that will really stabilize the market is increased supply; so we're basically going to have to wait for increased NAND production to kick in.

[dizmo]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

That's why I think we're making too big a deal about this. Obviously companies are aware of the risks they're in if they've got any savvy at all. But here we are discussing this as though it's something completely unexpected

Haha, yeah. "Wait...you mean if people stop mining and buying as many cards, then we're going to LOSE revenue?! WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!" Oy. That's why I'm not hugely concerned with mining. I mean yeah, it sucks for now, but if it means a much stronger AMD comes out from it then I'm all for it. Gamers aren't going to suddenly drop gaming all together. And frankly if they do, we'll have healthier people

 

It's a small bump in the road that will hopefully lead to a much brighter future.

[porina]

2 hours ago, Energycore said:

Except for some reason R9 280s and 280Xs, you can find those for very cheap used. I'll see sometimes an auction for a working R9 280 closing below $100 on ebay.

The 280X is really power guzzling for the performance it gives. About its only compute niche today is it has amongst the highest FP64 performance, since it was significantly nerfed on pretty much everything since.

2 hours ago, Energycore said:

Nvidia didn't care about that because people will buy a rusty toaster for $500 if it's got the Geforce branding on it.

I'm going to hold out for Rusty Toaster Ti. I don't just want a Rusty Toaster, but the best high end Rusty Toaster without paying Titan Rusty Toaster money.

24 minutes ago, Energycore said:

There are other coins of course, but none like ETH when it comes to its profitability.

For nvidia cards other coins are already better, so it would be more an AMD thing.

[Mooshi]

F miners who cause this mess over fake bytes of data with no actual value and F this "warning" by the companies. Short term profits don't mean much when the miners flood eBay with abused cards as they always do when things sink.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, MoonSpot said:

Damn right AMD is worried, and they should be.  AMD has already experienced massive writedowns, which if they repeat would wipeout all the headways they've made profit wise.  Apparently AMD has committed to increasing GPU supply, so their ass could easily be left hanging in the wind if the timing for next crypto bust doesn't line up in AMDs favour.https://techreport.com/news/33189/amd-signals-that-itll-make-more-gpus-to-alleviate-demand

Outside of crypto AMD doesn't have an edge against nvidia, so if they have to primarily rely on gaming and the sciences/engineering again it quickly doesn't look good for them again on the GPU front.

IMO,AMD doesn't need to have an edge on Nvidia,AMD only needs supply out there for their regular consumer to buy. I get that crypto can be unstable but I don't see it going anywhere soon,though AMD should have learned to not rely on the crypto boom alone when they had to write off 2xx cards after the last mining decline.

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

I don't think giving competition to Nvidia is a realistic, or sensible, business decision. For one, right now AMD does not have anywhere near enough R&D money to match them. And more importantly, back when AMD did match them or was even ahead, people still bought Nvidia anyway. That's not going to change if AMD starts being competitive in the gaming market again. At best, they'll increase their marketshare by a small amount as enthusiasts start buying their stuff again. But your average joe is still going to buy Nvidia.

So the fact that "gamers are going to buy something else" was already true for the most part, even when AMD had a fighting chance at the performance crown. It's only fitting that knowing this, AMD turns to some other market niche.

AMD has competed with Nvidia before,they should have plenty of R&D to get ahead since they put all their stake in riding the crypto hype train.  Though you're only seeing it as a miner. AMD is losing that fighting chance by choosing the short term again. While AMD is turning away gamers to either buy Nvidia or say f*ck it all and buy a console,AMD is going to have to make a really compelling product to get gamers returning to gain back the loyal market share of enthusiasts they had before. AMD doesn't have to match them,all they need to do is stop sitting idle with the 2xx series refreshes and cater to something besides miners with compute cards. You can assume I'm biased towards team greed green but I would have chosen Vega & a freesync panel if the cards were available to normal people.

21 minutes ago, porina said:

I'm going to hold out for Rusty Toaster Ti. I don't just want a Rusty Toaster, but the best high end Rusty Toaster without paying Titan Rusty Toaster money.

At the rate gpu prices are going,and if GDDR6 is amazing for crypto all I could afford is the plastic toaster.

[Energycore]

Just now, Blademaster91 said:

AMD has competed with Nvidia before,they should have plenty of R&D to get ahead since they put all their stake in riding the crypto hype train.  Though you're only seeing it as a miner. AMD is losing that fighting chance by choosing the short term again. While AMD is turning away gamers to either buy Nvidia or say f*ck it all and buy a console,AMD is going to have to make a really compelling product to get gamers returning to gain back the loyal market share of enthusiasts they had before. AMD doesn't have to match them,all they need to do is stop sitting idle with the 2xx series refreshes and cater to something besides miners with compute cards. You can assume I'm biased towards team greed green but I would have chosen Vega & a freesync panel if the cards were available to normal people.

Ad hominem attack aside. I bought my RX 480 for gaming, and still game on it while mining overnight. I'm not one of the "miners" that people talk about.

 

AMD has never had anywhere near close to 50% market share, even when they were objectively ahead in performance. Consumers of grahics cards have a bias, and AMD was and is fighting a losing battle trying to compete with Nvidia while turning in 2-3 times less profit or worse.

 

I didn't think I'd cite this infamous video again, but here it is.

 

It's a long video (32:58, long in millenial terms ), but it's worth watching. The bottom line is: when AMD had the performance crown, Nvidia still earned 2-3 times in GPU sales, or more.

 

I'm also surprised that you keep citing 200 series refreshes, considering that they aren't selling any anymore?!? They are now manufacturing only Polaris and later. And no, Polaris is not a refresh.

 

And I don't assume that you're team green biased. If anything your opinions come off as pro-AMD for the most part. I feel you, I too was for a long time on the AMD side because it's clear to me that they're more about the consumer than Nvidia. Since the release of Vega I've been on the sidelines. I can't find it in myself to advocate for Nvidia, but being realistic is first priority for me.

[Misanthrope]

2 hours ago, Energycore said:

Wait, which card has AMD made that's specifically made for miners? As far as I know, Vega was marketed to gamers first. Then gamers didn't buy it, but miners did, to the point where they're now very hard to buy.

Like what? Turn completely away from other profit sources? That's not smart business. If you feel angry that AMD's marketing to miners, you can switch but that's on you, not on AMD. They have no obligation toward you.

 

Just imagine this argument in any other context "we've got a bunch of new clients coming in, but since our old clients are upset that we're selling their product (that they haven't bought yet), we won't market to these new clients". You know what that's called? I call it pandering.

You're implying that miners are good customers. If the value of Ethereum was to keep growing indefinitely without an increase in difficulty that would be the case.

 

But we know that 1) That's just not possible because if difficulty never goes up the value goes down for being too much supply of people mining. 2) If it difficulty does go up eventually GPU mining won't be as viable as ASIC devices and such. 3) External factors that negatively impact cryptos wouldn't happen and we already know there's serious treats of regulation and taxation on the horizon so eventually all cryptos will be stumped into control

 

This is why gaming companies say (at least publicly) that they're better off with Gamers as long time customers where the conditions are far less volatile. AMD is just lucky the miner craze hit when it did because otherwise they'd be far worst off and would need to face the reality that they can't compete with Nvidia when it comes to gaming.

 

To me this is just a fair warning internally that investor panic probably will happen as a crypto crash would probably really hurt AMD badly, to the point of maybe even pushing them out of the GPU space.

[Energycore]

12 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

You're implying that miners are good customers. If the value of Ethereum was to keep growing indefinitely without an increase in difficulty that would be the case.

 

But we know that 1) That's just not possible because if difficulty never goes up the value goes down for being too much supply of people mining. 2) If it difficulty does go up eventually GPU mining won't be as viable as ASIC devices and such. 3) External factors that negatively impact cryptos wouldn't happen and we already know there's serious treats of regulation and taxation on the horizon so eventually all cryptos will be stumped into control

 

This is why gaming companies say (at least publicly) that they're better off with Gamers as long time customers where the conditions are far less volatile. AMD is just lucky the miner craze hit when it did because otherwise they'd be far worst off and would need to face the reality that they can't compete with Nvidia when it comes to gaming.

 

To me this is just a fair warning internally that investor panic probably will happen as a crypto crash would probably really hurt AMD badly, to the point of maybe even pushing them out of the GPU space.

Yeah, it seems that the warning is fair.

 

Miners are certainly a different kind of bear, compared to gamers. They're essentially people who want to make free money. So of course they're not reliable as they don't build brand loyalty.

 

I think AMD's sort of in a rock and a hard place, especially if 2018 is a bear year for crypto. It'll be an interesting year to follow.

[Techstorm970]

3 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

...lower demand for GPUs from cryptominers...

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

Ad hominem attack aside. I bought my RX 480 for gaming, and still game on it while mining overnight. I'm not one of the "miners" that people talk about.

AMD has never had anywhere near close to 50% market share, even when they were objectively ahead in performance. Consumers of grahics cards have a bias, and AMD was and is fighting a losing battle trying to compete with Nvidia while turning in 2-3 times less profit or worse.

I didn't think I'd cite this infamous video again, but here it is.

It's a long video (32:58, long in millenial terms ), but it's worth watching. The bottom line is: when AMD had the performance crown, Nvidia still earned 2-3 times in GPU sales, or more.

I'm also surprised that you keep citing 200 series refreshes, considering that they aren't selling any anymore?!? They are now manufacturing only Polaris and later. And no, Polaris is not a refresh.

Well I apologize for the attack,I realize it came out that way now. I blame people that have enough to heat the house,mining at night is a wise way to get a few dollars off a card you'd just have sitting idle,wishing I got on that sooner cause it's not that worth it now.

Vega is very innovative for how little market share Radeon group has,if they were closer to 40-50% we would have some true competition and force Nvidia to have some more fair prices. Right now they're at  33.7% https://www.anandtech.com/show/12499/q4-2017-discrete-graphics-card-shipment-report

Maybe AMD knows where the market is headed,or panicking like everyone else is. I think they're better off with gamers than miners because GDDR6 could cause a spike in crypto difficulty. It seems like AMD could really make a profit if they can increase manufacturing and mining stays on the rise as they're taking share away from Nvidia. But true, everyone is still buying Nvidia even for mining when AMD are tons better for specialized crypto. Kind of makes sense on the other hand with Pascal efficiency. I don't always agree with their videos but it's an interesting watch,32mins is fine I have enough youtube channels followed to replace tv lol. AMD needs better marketing/branding but I got confused 2xx with 4xx and 5xx since 5xx is refreshed 4xx not counting vega,while 4xx isn't a huge upgrade imo if you have a 290x or 390x.

 

 

[AresKrieger]

2 hours ago, Energycore said:

That's why I think we're making too big a deal about this. Obviously companies are aware of the risks they're in if they've got any savvy at all. But here we are discussing this as though it's something completely unexpected

Well tbf AMD's business and marketing departments are not savvy at all, that is why they managed to get into this situation in the first place. Additionally they can't currently compete with Nvidia so they almost have to rely on mining and will boom or bust with it.

 

(as for the info mentioned in relation to adored video)

 

Honestly I never considered buying amd when purchasing things when making my current rig, but at the time they could not compete and I had bad experiences with their CPUs so they were on my blacklist, additionally most people I know barely (if at all) know what amd even is they don't understand marketing and never have as for their financial situation when they were selling well they tried to undercut their competition's price more so than making an overwhelming winning product, that isn't an profitable strategy unless you already have the branding especially given that they weren't making very good margins per gpu due to this strategy.

 

I think part of their issue is their timing, they manage to be in wining situations during downturns, or after their launch is shaky they'll manage to claw ahead thus losing initial sales due to it being weaker when it mattered. Again this comes back to poor business planning, add in some bad luck and Nvidia's marketing prowess and they became trapped. Even currently they manage to win pretty well in some dx12 scenarios but dx12 is mostly irrelevant and bye the time it is relevant Nvidia will have adapted.

[Energycore]

14 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well I apologize for the attack,I realize it came out that way now. I blame people that have enough to heat the house,mining at night is a wise way to get a few dollars off a card you'd just have sitting idle,wishing I got on that sooner cause it's not that worth it now.

Vega is very innovative for how little market share Radeon group has,if they were closer to 40-50% we would have some true competition and force Nvidia to have some more fair prices. Right now they're at  33.7% https://www.anandtech.com/show/12499/q4-2017-discrete-graphics-card-shipment-report

Maybe AMD knows where the market is headed,or panicking like everyone else is. I think they're better off with gamers than miners because GDDR6 could cause a spike in crypto difficulty. It seems like AMD could really make a profit if they can increase manufacturing and mining stays on the rise as they're taking share away from Nvidia. But true, everyone is still buying Nvidia even for mining when AMD are tons better for specialized crypto. Kind of makes sense on the other hand with Pascal efficiency. I don't always agree with their videos but it's an interesting watch,32mins is fine I have enough youtube channels followed to replace tv lol. AMD needs better marketing/branding but I got confused 2xx with 4xx and 5xx since 5xx is refreshed 4xx not counting vega,while 4xx isn't a huge upgrade imo if you have a 290x or 390x.

 

 

33.7% is really not that bad, all things considered. Their stake in consoles definitely helps and so will their collaboration with Intel.

 

I sort of hope that GDDR6 spikes the difficulty of the network, but I'm doubtful because HBM cards like the R9 Fury aren't amazing ethereum miners (the Fury does better in zcash, last I checked). If the difficulty spike does come however, the used market's gonna be flooded with RX 480s, 580s and similar cards as miners "upgrade" their hardware.

[Donut417]

7 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Well if AMD would provide actual competition in the gaming scene then relying on mining wouldnt be an issue for them. 

They can do a nice CPU or a nice GPU, not both. They been poor for too long. My thing is they need to focus on one or the other. For now its seems they are focused on CPUs. 

[straight_stewie]

7 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

AMD has claimed that lower demand for GPUs from cryptominers could adversely affect the company.

The net result will be extremely low prices. Supply will be left high and demand will be left low. Whenever the cryptocurrency bubble bursts would probably be a good time to plan a new build.

That's most likely when I will build a new folding rig, hopefully it happens sometime late this year.

[cj09beira]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

They can do a nice CPU or a nice GPU, not both. They been poor for too long. My thing is they need to focus on one or the other. For now its seems they are focused on CPUs. 

Now that they have a good cpu architecture made improving it isn't as expensive, and they have been increasing Rtg's budget every quarter by a good margin (around 12% if I am not mistaken).

[cj09beira]

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

*None like ETH yet.

People thought the same same thing when Bitcoin dropped. Then another coin popped up. Now ETH popped up. It's simply going to repeat, and now that there are so many people mining, it will repeat at a greater pace. Mining isn't going anywhere, and the only thing that will really stabilize the market is increased supply; so we're basically going to have to wait for increased NAND production to kick in.

not exactly, as newer coins have a bigger probability of implementing more efficient ways to keep trust, things like pos, pos and pow hibrid, things like that, as the devs know that for crypto to be the future it needs to be more energy efficient.

i also think that very soon there will be a new coin where the work is used for something useful for like cancer research or something similar 

[LAwLz]

I think it's funny that people still have this mentality that "Nvidia is a shitty, greedy company and AMD is the cool guy that just wants to be your friend" when it's clearly wrong.

AMD is a scummy, backstabbing company. They pretend to be friendly when they need pity from consumers, but as soon as an opportunity arise to make a quick buck they completely abandon their core fanbase, and chase after miners. They are even advertising their CPUs as good for mining now.

 

Miners are buying cards in droves, creating unhappy gamers?

Nvidia - "Hey retailers, can you please do something about this? Lots of people are unable to buy cards for gaming."

AMD - "Hell yeah! Let's market to miners as hard as we can! Fuck our core audience, there are profits to be made here!"

 

 

You'd have to be blind to still believe AMD are the good guys. Both companies are assholes but I'd even go as far as to say Nvidia are slightly less asshole-ish to their audience.

[AlTech]

13 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Makes sense, miners particularly love the RX 480/580.

And so do regular legitimate gaming customers .

 

I wish this mining and crypto craze could go away so I could actually buy the GPU I really want.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

AMD has competed with Nvidia before,they should have plenty of R&D to get ahead since they put all their stake in riding the crypto hype train

In all the history of ATI, now AMD RTG, only once have they had anywhere near 50% market share. They simply do not have the R&D, and never have. Nvidia makes more profit per quarter than AMD RTG makes over 2-3 years. You can check that using the public financial reports AMD and Nvidia have to release.

[leadeater]

41 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think it's funny that people still have this mentality that "Nvidia is a shitty, greedy company and AMD is the cool guy that just wants to be your friend" when it's clearly wrong.

AMD is a scummy, backstabbing company. They pretend to be friendly when they need pity from consumers, but as soon as an opportunity arise to make a quick buck they completely abandon their core fanbase, and chase after miners. They are even advertising their CPUs as good for mining now.

 

Miners are buying cards in droves, creating unhappy gamers?

Nvidia - "Hey retailers, can you please do something about this? Lots of people are unable to buy cards for gaming."

AMD - "Hell yeah! Let's market to miners as hard as we can! Fuck our core audience, there are profits to be made here!"

 

 

You'd have to be blind to still believe AMD are the good guys. Both companies are assholes but I'd even go as far as to say Nvidia are slightly less asshole-ish to their audience.

Playing nice with consumers who don't actually buy your products is a doomed business discussion though, as much as we can hate it going after profit is the correct thing to do. If you like AMD for some reason then supporting them making more money is something you should do, because you support them as a company right?

 

P.S. Collective you

 

AMD is just playing a card game and has been dealt a losing had, it's still possible to tie or win if you play your cards right.

[asus killer]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

In all the history of ATI, now AMD RTG, only once have they had anywhere near 50% market share. They simply do not have the R&D, and never have. Nvidia makes more profit per quarter than AMD RTG makes over 2-3 years. You can check that using the public financial reports AMD and Nvidia have to release.

 

 

 

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, asus killer said:

 

 

 

Those are not correct at all and when talking about GPU market share that precludes the exclusion of Intel, Intel makes integrated products not graphics cards.

 

 

Edit:

Also

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

AMD is just playing a card game and has been dealt a losing had, it's still possible to tie or win if you play your cards right.

AMD have been playing open mizare for a few years now.  It's amazing they didn't go under.

[asus killer]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Those are not correct at all and when talking about GPU market share that precludes the exclusion of Intel, Intel makes integrated products not graphics cards.

 

that's not market share, it's R&D expenses, just wanting to show they may lack in R&D but they sure spent a lot in it.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, mr moose said:

AMD have been playing open mizare for a few years now.  It's amazing they didn't go under.

Consoles and low end OEM PCs and laptops keep them going rather well, nothing to the extent to really allow them to grow but they won't go under unless they do something self inflicted like a massive failed project.