AMD denies prioritizing mining graphics cards over gaming

[Daniel Sims]

In context: Last week AMD denied the suggestion that its graphics card business may be prioritizing selling cards to crypto miners over customers using the cards to play games. The denial comes in light of the continually constrained supply of the latest GPUs, as well as recent sightings of AMD mining cards.

At Deutsche Bank's 2021 Technology Conference, the company interviewed the CFO of AMD over a range of topics concerning AMD's revenue growth. Deutsche Bank's Ross Seymore asked AMD what was driving its growth in graphics—whether it was client-side, data centers, or if crypto mining contributed.

"Crypto, negligible. That's not a priority for us," said AMD CFO Devinder Kumar. "We do not prioritize our product or make them for the crypto folks is not for the gamers and that's a high priority from that standpoint.[sic]"

Kumar pointed out last year's release of AMD's latest generation of graphics cards, the Radeon 6000 series, as a driver of the growth.

Some customers may be suspicious because, late last month, photos leaked from Vietnam showing what appeared to be a mining card using AMD's Navi 12 GPU. As of last month, GPUs are still difficult to get and are going for well above MSRP. Those buying the cards to mine cryptocurrencies like Ethereum are simply one factor alongside silicon shortages and logistics problems stemming from the global pandemic.

The 6000 series seems particularly uncommon in gaming right now, however, with none of its GPUs charting in Steam's latest hardware survey for DirectX systems. Nvidia's latest competing graphics cards, the RTX 3000 series, are similarly hard to get but have progressed up Steam's charts.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/91277-amd-denies-prioritizes-mining-cards-over-gaming.html

 

[gigantor21]

...it's not like they have to. Same with NVIDIA.

They can just put the cards out and let the market do the rest. A sale is a sale to them.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Considering how far they are behind Nvidia, they might as well.

In fact, it's too bad they don't make superior mining cards where the miners go after the upper end AMD cards RATHER than the Nvidia cards.

 

[psycros]

Make cards with no video-out connectors, price them a little less than normal GPUs. Problem solved. Science and crypto cards are such a no-brainer here I can't fathom what's holding up production.

 

[NightAntilli]

Make cards with no video-out connectors, price them a little less than normal GPUs. Problem solved. Science and crypto cards are such a no-brainer here I can't fathom what's holding up production.

That would still be a lower priority for miners. They would still buy the more expensive ones first, because the ones with a display output are more easily resold later, and the little price difference would easily be made up with mining. It's not for nothing that cards are selling for 3x their MSRP or more.

 

[Dimitriid]

See, the beauty of this is that as long as AMD relies on distributors they can make this statements with enough plausible deniability.

Has AMD (or for that matter, Nvidia) really bothered to request an audit of all sales to their distributors? For tax purposes the distributors would need to list the buyers so it's not like they can honestly hide they're selling direct to miner operations: just look at the distributors and if most of their sales stop going to the usual big retailers and suddenly show up on known scalpers, private individuals that are not even registered as retailers or paper-only retailers that are *registered* as retailers but never made a single sale well, that's a mining operation.

It really is not hard to find if AMD's most trusted distributors and AIB partners are selling direct to miners, which they are. So this is as empty a posture as Nvidia's cute attempts to include a hash limiter they "accidentally" cracked themselves before it was even out for the public.

No AMD, we're not stupid: We know what our partners are doing, stop lying by omission.

 

[phenomx8]

They are probably not, but their manufacturer is. I remember seeing news from Zotac or AsRock that cite their biggest revenue was bulk sales for Crypto Miners, and its going downturn after chinese govt crackdown some mining site.

 

[The Tech Gen]

Why does it even matter?

The fact that anyone would get upset over this is ridiculous

See, the beauty of this is that as long as AMD relies on distributors they can make this statements with enough plausible deniability.

Has AMD (or for that matter, Nvidia) really bothered to request an audit of all sales to their distributors? For tax purposes the distributors would need to list the buyers so it's not like they can honestly hide they're selling direct to miner operations: just look at the distributors and if most of their sales stop going to the usual big retailers and suddenly show up on known scalpers, private individuals that are not even registered as retailers or paper-only retailers that are *registered* as retailers but never made a single sale well, that's a mining operation.

It really is not hard to find if AMD's most trusted distributors and AIB partners are selling direct to miners, which they are. So this is as empty a posture as Nvidia's cute attempts to include a hash limiter they "accidentally" cracked themselves before it was even out for the public.

No AMD, we're not stupid: We know what our partners are doing, stop lying by omission.

Seriously who cares. The whole up-in-arms over nothing situation is stupid because there are multiple reasons why gamers should be for this and not against it. As a miner & gamer, you do not want miners gunning for gaming GPUs.

A retailer will prioritize bulk orders and you know who buys in bulk, Miners. The one per customer garbage is cute PR, but its not legit.

It is hilarious that gamers are up in arms about a company trying to make money.
Company Makes $
Company Spends $ on a larger R&D budget (unless your intel then you just spend it on bonuses & stock buybacks)
Company makes better GPUs

This isn't rocket science. Yes, it sucks that GPUs are hard to come by, but by separating mining GPUs from Gaming GPUs will actually help facilitate supply and demand.
Clearly AMD is damned if they do and damnit if they don't and they shouldn't of wasted their time even responding. I am amazed they did at all.

 

[yRaz]

Why does everyone blame GPU manufacturers on miners buying their cards? The mining algorithms were designed to run on how a graphics card works fundamentally. Also, why don't you guys want to mine to offset some of the cost of your graphics card? My 1070ti was essentially free even after including the price of electricity.

The GPU shortage isn't due to lack of product, it's that production can't keep up with demand. They've produced more GPUs than any other generation and still can't keep up with demand. All the fabs in the world are running at maximum capacity, what do you guys expect? You don't just go out and buy a new fab. I've been involved in the commercial construction surrounding such buildings, the structure alone takes years to complete. That's not even considering the time it takes to set up all the equipment once it's built.

 

[captaincranky]

AMD more than likely doesn't really care who buys their cards, as long as as many as they can supply, get bought.

As for the gamer soothing patter coming from some ivory tower, it's bullsh!t, count on it.

 

[Watzupken]

AMD don't need to prioritise miners here to be honest. They can hardly make enough CPUs and GPUs, in the first place. And considering they probably make a lot more money selling CPUs (and not just consumer grade CPUs, but also enterprise/DC grade CPUs), I am pretty sure they are prioritising CPUs over GPUs. Which unfortunately means stock of popular AMD RDNA2 cards like RX 6800 series will always be priced very high or short supply.

 

[Sausagemeat]

The 6600XT only has an 8X interface and this gives users on PCIe3.0 a slight performance penalty. And considering AMD released their APUs on PCIe3.0 around the same time they clearly dont think PCIe3.0 is out of date.

However miners would not notice this as they don’t need anywhere near as much bandwidth for their cards. It looks like a cost saving measure that affects gamers but not miners.

 

[FWZ Studio]

AMD. You are too cute to be a liar. Just admit it.

 

[punctualturn]

To me and I could be completely wrong, if amd really had plans for mining only cards, they should be GCN based, since they have proven to be a lot better than rdna based gpus.

About selling to gamers first, lets be realistic, amd, nvidia and soon intel only care about selling them, period. Saying that they care about gamers first is simply lip service.

The entitlement of gamers is simply too much.

About steam, I have steam, I also have a 6900xt and many others here in this site have expressed they are on the same boat, yet not one of us have received a survey. At this point, we have more proof than ever as to how unreliable it is

Funny enough, that same subject has a long history and still happening today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ahe3h

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-steam-doesnt-accurately-measure-market-share

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/258913-what-the-hell-happened-to-the-steam-hardware-survey

 

[Irata]

AMD more than likely doesn't really care who buys their cards, as long as as many as they can supply, get bought.

As for the gamer soothing patter coming from some ivory tower, it's bullsh!t, count on it.

I think both AMD and nVidia should care - looking at the last mining boom and bust cycle back in 2018, that did serious damage to them.
In addition, they had a good product with Polaris but due to it being the mining king few gamers could get their hand on one - prices were crazy high. This does not help if you want game devs to optimize for your arch.

AMD. You are too cute to be a liar. Just admit it.

There is one company whose current gen is a good bit worse at mining than their previous gen (AMD) and another whose current gen is far better at mining than their previous gen (nVidia). Kinda shows priorities.

Sure, desperate miners do buy RDNA2 cards just like some bought Pascal back when Polaris was the mining champ.

 

[captaincranky]

I think both AMD and nVidia should care - looking at the last mining boom and bust cycle back in 2018, that did serious damage to them.
In addition, they had a good product with Polaris but due to it being the mining king few gamers could get their hand on one - prices were crazy high. This does not help if you want game devs to optimize for your arch.

Because after,all, the world revolves around the gaming community, or so you seem to believe. And in case you haven't noticed, prices are crazy at this very moment.

I keep telling you over and over, but nobody seems to listen, there are so many of you dumb enough to pay scalper's prices for video cards, there's no reason on earth, why manufacturers wouldn't jump on that bandwagon.

Ask yourself a fundamental question, as a company who spent billions of dollars for a fab, "why should I content myself with a 25% margin, while some a**hole with a home computer and a couple of bots, can make 100% markup from MSRP, on every one of my cards they sell"?

 

[Xex360]

IMO AMD wastes silicon on the gameless PS5/Series consoles rather than their CPUs and GPUs.

Considering how far they are behind Nvidia, they might as well.

In fact, it's too bad they don't make superior mining cards where the miners go after the upper end AMD cards RATHER than the Nvidia cards.

The main reason miners don't use them is simple they don't exist. AMD cards are way more efficient than nVidia's, but now with the useless LHR models that still cost a leg, AMD destroys nVidia.

 

[Puiu]

Make cards with no video-out connectors, price them a little less than normal GPUs. Problem solved. Science and crypto cards are such a no-brainer here I can't fathom what's holding up production.

This doesn't solve the problem, it actually makes it worse.

 

[theruck]

What a BS. but only until some internal docs leak...

 

[Watzupken]

IMO AMD wastes silicon on the gameless PS5/Series consoles rather than their CPUs and GPUs.

The main reason miners don't use them is simple they don't exist. AMD cards are way more efficient than nVidia's, but now with the useless LHR models that still cost a leg, AMD destroys nVidia.

The decision to make SOC for MS and Sony was made way before the supply issue/ COVID started. I don't think these companies anticipated that supply will get so badly disrupted. Considering the millions of units of PS5 and Xbox sold, it was a risk free staple for AMD under normal circumstances.

 

[Kosmoz]

1. Like Irata said, RDNA2 is worse at mining than RDNA1, so that is a good indication on how they did prioritize gaming, not mining. For nvidia is the opposite, it's clear Ampere is much better at mining than anything before it... deliberate or not, it is what it is.

2. AMD's priority is in this order: Server > Consoles > Laptops > desktop CPUs > and lastly GPUs. And if you understand that and the fact that all are made on TSMC 7nm, there is no enigma about why they sell so few RDNA2 compared to nvidia Ampere (because they do sell more than RDNA1).

 

[Achaios]

I am pretty sure Kumar (AMD) is lying here and I am also pretty sure that AMD are doing everything they can, even going above and beyond, to deliver as many GPUs they can to big miners.

This is why AMD 6K GPUs are nowhere to be found on Steam.

Stop lying, AMD.

 

[Irata]

I am pretty sure Kumar (AMD) is lying here and I am also pretty sure that AMD are doing everything they can, even going above and beyond, to deliver as many GPUs they can to big miners.

This is why AMD 6K GPUs are nowhere to be found on Steam.

Stop lying, AMD.

Sounds reasonable - make a GPU that‘s a lot less good at mining vs previous gen, ignore how badly burned you got during the last mining boom and crash in 2018, prioritize large GPU dies for miners that generate a lot less revenue than server, mobile and even desktop CPU.

 

[Irata]

Because after,all, the world revolves around the gaming community, or so you seem to believe. And in case you haven't noticed, prices are crazy at this very moment.

I keep telling you over and over, but nobody seems to listen, there are so many of you dumb enough to pay scalper's prices for video cards, there's no reason on earth, why manufacturers wouldn't jump on that bandwagon.

Ask yourself a fundamental question, as a company who spent billions of dollars for a fab, "why should I content myself with a 25% margin, while some a**hole with a home computer and a couple of bots, can make 100% markup from MSRP, on every one of my cards they sell"?

I think you misunderstood me. While mining can sell lots of GPU short term it‘s also very hard to plan for and thus high risk. This is why both AMD got hit hard during 2018‘s mining crash. Luckily for AMD, their CPU sales had picked up but they still lost money.

Gamer demand is much more stable otoh.

AMD and Nvidia performed wildly different during the 2018 crypto crash — here's why

Nvidia is a pure GPU player, whereas AMD sells both GPUs and CPUs, said Christopher Rolland, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group.

markets.businessinsider.com

The above article mainly looks at share prices but the excess inventory and used mining cards flooding that market cost actual money.

Yes, I noticed prices are crazy - remember $500+ Polaris cards?

I am certainly not buying a graphics card at these crazy prices as my current GPU does just fine, so I definitely agree with you.

 

[captaincranky]

I am certainly not buying a graphics card at these crazy prices as my current GPU does just fine, so I definitely agree with you

In truth, the price of most everything is kind of crazy right now.

A few months ago, Samsung cut loose with a new 870 variant of their SATA III_2 1/2" SSDs. The prices were just about dirt cheap, to the tune of $55, to $60. for the 500 GB models, and $35. to $40, for the 250s.

I bought enough to replace all the existing C:/ drives in my 4 Win 7 machines, and keep the old ones, (SSD already), as, "restore drives". Samsung's migration software doesn't require re-activation, and I figure the less I have to do with M$ about Win 7, the better my quality of life will be.

So, perusing Micro Center for these same drives this morning, I'm getting prices of $95. for the 870 500 GB, and $65. for the 250s. I sure am glad I bought a crap load at the lower prices. In fact, I even have a couple of spares to put in enclosures for moving files around between machines.

After all, when I bought the 250 GB SATA drives, they were damned near at price parity with a 250 GB flash drive.

One of the 500 GB drives I bought was only an 860, (as if that really matters). It was only $54..!

Where I've put my foot down about graphics cards, is the $280.00 Newegg wants for a GTX-1050 ti 4 GB. Considering the one I already have cost me 1/2 that, after a $10. rebate. And they don't have enough juice to run your basic Oculus Quest VR headset. I'd experiment with VR at it's selling price, but with the card, ii would be well over a grand.

If you could even get one, god knows how much even a 1080 would cost new..