Solution to GPU shortage

[ToneStar]

If Nvidia and AMD just made gaming cards so they require a certain amount of PCI-E lanes in order to work then the problem would be solved, then they could sell mining cards that don't require as many lanes.  This would make it impossible for the miners to use more than 2 or 3 cards at once.  They are killing quad and triple SLI anyways and that is a niche thing so not seeing how that would hurt anyone for gaming.

[Lurick]

The x16 adapters appear to the card as an x16 slot as far as I know so that wouldn't work. They are just limited in the bandwidth available which you can't check unless you push more than a single lane can handle and see the drops.

[ToneStar]

I'm sure they could put something on the card to detect if it had a certain amount of bandwidth available to it.

[Lurick]

10 minutes ago, ToneStar said:

I'm sure they could put something on the card to detect if it had a certain amount of bandwidth available to it.

And who is to decide how much bandwidth is enough? Why should one company tell someone what they can and can't do with their hardware? Put a BIOS or software restriction in it and they'll mod it away in an instant. Unless you're suggesting they mandate some sort of hardware card that can't be removed, because that won't cause any problems and they'll be completely open and honest about the code inside of it.

 

How many lanes of bandwidth do they demand? 4x? 8x? 16x per card? Then you have to ask what gen PCIe lanes? 3.0, 2.0? Force users of older hardware to upgrade if they want a newer but low end card because they don't have the latest and greatest PCIe revision?

 

How do you check that someone hasn't modded something in there to make it appear to have X amount of bandwidth available to it? Do you force an application to run every X interval to peg bandwidth and make sure it can communicate to the CPU at a set rate or greater?

[ToneStar]

They aren't deciding what you can use it for. You could still mine with it, it would just be harder to put more than 2 cards in a computer to mine with. 

 

Tons of companies do things to restrict how their customers can use things for a variety of reasons.  For example Intel locks non K cpu's.  Car companies void warranties if you modify your car and they put restrictions on how fast most cars can go.  It would be to protect consumers and the board makers from getting ripped off on RMAs.

[TortoiseFlash]

On 3/18/2018 at 12:58 PM, ToneStar said:

I'm sure they could put something on the card to detect if it had a certain amount of bandwidth available to it.

The miners would flash the cards there are no good solutions. Im staying away form crypto and not adding to the problem im giving my old evga 970 ssc to a friend 

[Mick Naughty]

Don’t see what sli has to do with miners. Also there isn’t a shortage. If I to micro center a few times a week. Shelves are completed stocked. 3 isles of all region brands. Same with all the online sites.