Nvidia says it is working hard to increase GPU supply, remains focused on gamers

[midian182]

The graphics card shortage caused by demand from cryptominers is showing no signs of abating, but Nvidia says it is doing “everything we can” to increase supply. CEO Jensen Huang reiterated that it is retailers who are setting the current exorbitant prices of GPUs but confirmed the company is asking them to prioritize gamers over miners.

Nvidia’s relationship with cryptomining is a complicated one. The company just reported record quarterly revenue of $2.91 billion, up 10 percent from the previous quarter, thanks partly to miners rushing to buy its GPUs, often in bulk quantities. Nvidia’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, Colette Kress, said: “Strong demand in the cryptocurrency market exceeded our expectations.”

But the firm values its core market of gamers and understands how they tie into Nvidia’s other products, such as its G-Sync monitors. Brand loyalty is another important factor—something not usually associated with miners—and it knows the mining craze is likely to slow down in the future.

Nvidia said it expected the situation to remain the same over the coming quarter but reaffirmed its commitment to gamers. “Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile,” added Kress.

Exactly how Nvidia plans to prioritize gamers wasn’t made clear. Its request that retailers limit the maximum number of GPUs they sell to each miner isn’t something the company can enforce. Hopefully, more sellers will follow in the footsteps of Micro Center and reduce the price of cards that are sold for gaming purposes.

“We’re working really hard to get GPUs out into the marketplace for the gamers. We’re doing everything we can, but I think the most important thing is, we just got to catch up with supply,” said Huang on an earnings call.

It’s also likely that Nvidia is facing supply problems caused by GDDR5 and HBM2 memory component shortages. AMD has confirmed it has had to contend with the industry-wide component shortfall, but Nvidia wasn’t as forthcoming about the situation.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/73225-nvidia-working-hard-increase-gpu-supply-remains-focused.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

GPU are not as good or as efficient as ASIC miners.

The answer is simple:

#1 design the GPU to be better at gaming and poor at mining - discouraging miners.

#2 Build your own brands of ASIC miners for the consumer market and business markets.

Hope everyone got into NVDA and AMD stock.

Long-term, I see nothing but upside.

 

[HIC99]

GPU are not as good or as efficient as ASIC miners.

The answer is simple:

#1 design the GPU to be better at gaming and poor at mining - discouraging miners.

#2 Build your own brands of ASIC miners for the consumer market and business markets.

Hope everyone got into NVDA and AMD stock.

Long-term, I see nothing but upside.

GPUs have a good resale value, and for a company to hurt themselves to appease another market is just bad economics. And ASICs are good till the market gets too hard to mine with ASICs and they don't have any resale value.
I have my own hates for miners but I still have to cope with them till they die off.

 

[texasrattler]

GPUs were never meant for mining. So the resale value is only as good as the uneducated person is willing to spend. Never ever buy a gpu that was used for mining. Typically half it's life span is already gone but you also may never know how long the card was or was not used for.

 

[KawiKami]

What they really need to do is fix their useless drivers. I as well as many others have yet to find a truly stable nVidia driver.

 

[Uncle Al]

"truly stable nVidia driver"

I'd be happier if we could find a truly stable leader for the country ..... what a concept!

 

[Prosercunus]

I would have possibly built another computer this year but with the prices I will be sticking with my sandy bridge and my gtx 970 for awhile longer.

 

[Evernessince]

"truly stable nVidia driver"

I'd be happier if we could find a truly stable leader for the country ..... what a concept!

Right now I'm just looking for a stable anything. Windows 10 updated and crapped itself on my main rig, had to do a fresh install of the whole thing. The funny part is, I had my updates "paused" in the settings menu. I guess that doesn't do squat.

I would have possibly built another computer this year but with the prices I will be sticking with my sandy bridge and my gtx 970 for awhile longer.

Yeah, it's a good year to skip. With all the issues the Spectre and Meltdown patches are bringing in addition to the prices, it's a pain.

 

[noel24]

"Nvidia says it is working hard to increase GPU supply." - Could They define what "hard" means?
At that moment, the only available 'high-end' card at the local store is 1060 3GB, at price $30 higher than I bought GTX970 4 years ago. Mind You, those are cards with more or less the same performance level.
Oh, well, at that rate I'll have to stick with 970 another 4 years.

 

[Evernessince]

"Nvidia says it is working hard to increase GPU supply." - Could They define what "hard" means?
At that moment, the only available 'high-end' card at the local store is 1060 3GB, at price $30 higher than I bought GTX970 4 years ago. Mind You, those are cards with more or less the same performance level.
Oh, well, at that rate I'll have to stick with 970 another 4 years.

Agreed, I really hate how none of the tech websites are pushing for this answer. Right now "working hard" doesn't translate to anything other than marketing. They could at least say "Hey were trying to increase supply" but "working hard" means literally nothing.

 

[hood6558]

That's nice that they "reaffirmed their commitment to their core market", but it's not anything new since their last statement. No need to keep saying the same thing, without any real action on their part. They could at least cut their list price a little, or perhaps earmark more cards for direct sales from their online store, (where they can at least make an effort to enforce the 2 card per household rule). Repeating the same old marketing drivel doesn't seem to be impressing anyone.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

GPU are not as good or as efficient as ASIC miners.

The answer is simple:

#1 design the GPU to be better at gaming and poor at mining - discouraging miners.

#2 Build your own brands of ASIC miners for the consumer market and business markets.

Hope everyone got into NVDA and AMD stock.

Long-term, I see nothing but upside.

Limiting mining performance means compromising FPU performance, good luck trying to pass that as anything but a boneheaded move.

If nvidia doubles their GPU orders, assuming TSMC can keep up, we all benefit. Nvidida doesnt benefit from ridiculous high prices from amazon and the like, OEMs do. If they keep a certain percentage of GPUs for themselves to sell through their own store, and limit the number per customer, gamers would be able to lap up some cards at MSRP while miners pay ridiculously inflated prices for amazon cards. Nvidia sells more cards, gamers have easier access to affordable prices, win win.

"truly stable nVidia driver"

I'd be happier if we could find a truly stable leader for the country ..... what a concept!

Good news! We already have one!

The truly unstable people are the liberal snowflakes that have been loosing their MIND at every little thing trump does, making the republicans freaking out over jade helm look like reasonable level headed people. Labeling everything he does as sexist/racist/transphobic, opposing logical measures like merit-based immigration (which every liberal european country the snoflakes worship already does), creating their own worthless benghazi investigation with russian pee-pee tapes (which the memo showed were basically completely false), assaulting free speech by vocally supporting groups like BLM and antifa, pursuing identity politics and playing the blame game rather then learning from their humiliating 2016 defeat, and constantly bringing up trump in situations where he doesnt matter, like you did with this comment section.

And dont forget all those sending our democratically elected leader death threats, making them look like proper lunatics. Or all those that called trump ~ist and ~phobic, only to be ousted as sex offenders themselves with more skeletons in their closet then a D&D crypt campaign.

The salt being generated is A+100%. Trump 2020!

 

[Evernessince]

Limiting mining performance means compromising FPU performance, good luck trying to pass that as anything but a boneheaded move.

If nvidia doubles their GPU orders, assuming TSMC can keep up, we all benefit. Nvidida doesnt benefit from ridiculous high prices from amazon and the like, OEMs do. If they keep a certain percentage of GPUs for themselves to sell through their own store, and limit the number per customer, gamers would be able to lap up some cards at MSRP while miners pay ridiculously inflated prices for amazon cards. Nvidia sells more cards, gamers have easier access to affordable prices, win win.


Good news! We already have one!

The truly unstable people are the liberal snowflakes that have been loosing their MIND at every little thing trump does, making the republicans freaking out over jade helm look like reasonable level headed people. Labeling everything he does as sexist/racist/transphobic, opposing logical measures like merit-based immigration (which every liberal european country the snoflakes worship already does), creating their own worthless benghazi investigation with russian pee-pee tapes (which the memo showed were basically completely false), assaulting free speech by vocally supporting groups like BLM and antifa, pursuing identity politics and playing the blame game rather then learning from their humiliating 2016 defeat, and constantly bringing up trump in situations where he doesnt matter, like you did with this comment section.

And dont forget all those sending our democratically elected leader death threats, making them look like proper lunatics. Or all those that called trump ~ist and ~phobic, only to be ousted as sex offenders themselves with more skeletons in their closet then a D&D crypt campaign.

The salt being generated is A+100%. Trump 2020!

Claps

It was truly hilarious reading this. Well at least we all know that your opinion on "winning" is based off how much salt is produced. I'll just sit hear and take out my popcorn.

 

[dj2017]

Waiting for MineWorks.

 

[Bp968]

GPUs were never meant for mining. So the resale value is only as good as the uneducated person is willing to spend. Never ever buy a gpu that was used for mining. Typically half it's life span is already gone but you also may never know how long the card was or was not used for.

This is just silly. Of course they were "meant" for mining. Bitcoin? No, equihash? Absolutely! Etherium was *designed* to be resistant to ASICs (for lots of reasons, mainly to try and stop centralization of hashing power). Many of the newest "coins" are specifically designed to not work (economically anyway) with ASICs or FPGAs.

As for "wearing them out" that's also silly and been proven wrong. Many cards that are 3-4 years old have been mining 24/7 for that entire time. Primarily what dies is the fan assembly. It's not the heat that kills them (unless they have been totally baked for years) it's the heat cycling that hurts (just look at all the first gen ps3 consoles with BGA GPU failures where the BGA solder fails and is fixed with a re-grid. Which is hard to do btw).

If miners get scared and dump their pascal cards for a song don't be afraid to snag one cheap, especially if the fan assembly is reasonably priced or you can find an aftermarket one cheap (or your going watercooling which doesn't need the oem fans).

As for Nvidia's statements, their full of it. Sorry but a gamer buys a new card every 2-4 years, and with SLI dying it's usually just one card. A small time miner might buy 12-16 cards at *once*. A single miner in one year makes the same sales as a single gamer will make in 24-36 *years*. Not being able to make enough of your product to meet demand isn't the worst problem to have, just ask Nintendo.

I suspect what we are seeing right now is nvidia scurrying to try and save face without giving the game away. They don't have any cards to sell because their not making anymore. Their tooling up for the ampre/volta replacement cards and they plan to announce them in the next 2 months. They just didn't expect their channels to completely empty of pascal stock while the transition was happening.

 

[yRaz]

GPU are not as good or as efficient as ASIC miners.

The answer is simple:

#1 design the GPU to be better at gaming and poor at mining - discouraging miners.

#2 Build your own brands of ASIC miners for the consumer market and business markets.

Hope everyone got into NVDA and AMD stock.

Long-term, I see nothing but upside.

People don't seem to understand that

1) not all cryptos can be mined with ASIC's

and

2)ASIC resistant cryptos are designed to mine fastest on GPU's

Why don't people get that GPU's are their own type of ASIC?

GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT

You can make an ASIC to mine "asic resistant" cryptos but you're just gong to create a graphics card

 

[davislane1]

GPU are not as good or as efficient as ASIC miners.

The answer is simple:

#1 design the GPU to be better at gaming and poor at mining - discouraging miners.

#2 Build your own brands of ASIC miners for the consumer market and business markets.

Hope everyone got into NVDA and AMD stock.

Long-term, I see nothing but upside.

People don't seem to understand that

1) not all cryptos can be mined with ASIC's

and

2)ASIC resistant cryptos are designed to mine fastest on GPU's

Why don't people get that GPU's are their own type of ASIC?

GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNIT

You can make an ASIC to mine "asic resistant" cryptos but you're just gong to create a graphics card

Most people who comment about crypto know nothing about crypto. They also know nothing about sales.

Say Nvidia designs a GPU that can't be used to mine any existing coin.

Two months later:

Introducing CryptoKrak (CKK), the only altcoin that can be mined on Nvidia 20xx GPUs! ROI at current difficulty levels is less than 1 week.

...and then the GPUs are gone again.

Crypto will have to become part of the GPU manufacturers' supply planning or they're going to have shortages from here on out. 2018 will be the year they officially begin marketing to that segment at conferences.

 

[yRaz]

Most people who comment about crypto know nothing about crypto. They also know nothing about sales.

Say Nvidia designs a GPU that can't be used to mine any existing coin.

Two months later:

Introducing CryptoKrak (CKK), the only altcoin that can be mined on Nvidia 20xx GPUs! ROI at current difficulty levels is less than 1 week.

...and then the GPUs are gone again.

Crypto will have to become part of the GPU manufacturers' supply planning or they're going to have shortages from here on out. 2018 will be the year they officially begin marketing to that segment at conferences.

The thing that I find really funny about this whole thing is that Nvidia has been talking about GPUs are the future of everything and will haves tons of uses. Now there is a major use for GPUs aside from gaming and their PR team has been distancing themselves from it

 

[wiyosaya]

"truly stable nVidia driver"

I'd be happier if we could find a truly stable leader for the country ..... what a concept!

Right now I'm just looking for a stable anything. Windows 10 updated and crapped itself on my main rig, had to do a fresh install of the whole thing. The funny part is, I had my updates "paused" in the settings menu. I guess that doesn't do squat.

I would have possibly built another computer this year but with the prices I will be sticking with my sandy bridge and my gtx 970 for awhile longer.

Yeah, it's a good year to skip. With all the issues the Spectre and Meltdown patches are bringing in addition to the prices, it's a pain.

My wife pauses her updates. In order to keep them from installing, she has to repeatedly pause them, or they will eventually install even though you may not want them to.

There are two ways to basically stop W10 updates:
1. If you have W10 Pro, go into the group policy editor and disable updates. Then security center will pester you, but not install them unless you specifically take action to install the updates. There is plenty of info on the net about how to do this.
2. If you have W10 home, disable the "Windows Update" service. This will also work for W10 Pro.

I am likely going to wait another year or two to update until fixed CPU silicon is available, and GPU prices are back to normal.

 

[wiyosaya]

Most people who comment about crypto know nothing about crypto. They also know nothing about sales.

Say Nvidia designs a GPU that can't be used to mine any existing coin.

Two months later:

Introducing CryptoKrak (CKK), the only altcoin that can be mined on Nvidia 20xx GPUs! ROI at current difficulty levels is less than 1 week.

...and then the GPUs are gone again.

Crypto will have to become part of the GPU manufacturers' supply planning or they're going to have shortages from here on out. 2018 will be the year they officially begin marketing to that segment at conferences.

The thing that I find really funny about this whole thing is that Nvidia has been talking about GPUs are the future of everything and will haves tons of uses. Now there is a major use for GPUs aside from gaming and their PR team has been distancing themselves from it

Publicly facing, that is what they are saying. However, behind closed doors, I bet that they are beside themselves with the money they are raking in.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Why not market a component strictly for mining so video cards can go back to normal? This seems like the best approach for a new mining market.

 

[davislane1]

Why not market a component strictly for mining so video cards can go back to normal? This seems like the best approach for a new mining market.

Current coins popular for mining are designed for GPUs.

Say Nvidia/AMD start marketing to this segment with specialized cards at slightly reduced MSRPs. Stripped down mining GPUs that don't have ports or gaming-specific support needs. The one caveat is that, should anything major happen in crypto, said equipment could zero in value overnight.

It also has zero value once the difficulty strips away the advantage of the hashrate on the hardware in relation to electricity cost.

So what's a miner to do?

Buy the normal GPU.

Why?

You can recoup part of the cost when you upgrade by reselling the cards at a reduced price. If the coins you're mining lose their value, you can still sell the cards to gamers.

Mining-specific components are a poor investment for this reason.

yRaz is correct. For all this talk about GPUs being the future of everything, Nvidia sure has been caught unprepared for their own predictions.

 

[Evernessince]

My wife pauses her updates. In order to keep them from installing, she has to repeatedly pause them, or they will eventually install even though you may not want them to.

There are two ways to basically stop W10 updates:
1. If you have W10 Pro, go into the group policy editor and disable updates. Then security center will pester you, but not install them unless you specifically take action to install the updates. There is plenty of info on the net about how to do this.
2. If you have W10 home, disable the "Windows Update" service. This will also work for W10 Pro.

I am likely going to wait another year or two to update until fixed CPU silicon is available, and GPU prices are back to normal.

I appreciate the advice. Yeah, I have been down that road, as in disabling updates via gpedit, but the constant nagging from the security center was annoying. I would then have to disable the security center and notifications all together, which I don't really want to do. So that's how I arrived at just pausing updates. For some reason windows 10 doesn't seem to last very long when I start modifying it in that way. With windows 7, I only ever had to install it twice (switched hardware). Windows 10 I've re-installed at least that much just this year and that's purely the operating system's fault.

Why not market a component strictly for mining so video cards can go back to normal? This seems like the best approach for a new mining market.

What you want are ASIC machines. Those take time to make as they are designed specifically for mining a specific currency. Not to mention, not everyone wants to risk R&D on a volatile market. Will they come out? I'd say yes, we just have no idea when.

 

[texasrattler]

As for the nvidia drivers n windows 10 installing them, ive only ever seen that happen when my driver is older than what ms wanted to install. no other time has windows updated my nvidia driver.
if ppl are getting constant updates from windows about a newer driver its likely that the one your using is outdated or you have something is going on with your computer.

 

[Bp968]

Why not market a component strictly for mining so video cards can go back to normal? This seems like the best approach for a new mining market.

The fix for this is simply to increase supply. I'm 95% certain nvidia is switching manufacturing over from the pascal cards to the new Ampre/volta designs. They decide these things way in advance and changing things isn't easy. I suspect they got caught off guard and didn't expect their back-stock of pascal cards to empty out in a month, but they don't want to just come out and tell everyone "sorry folks, no more pascal cards are coming because we switched to the new cards. get excited they will be here soon!!" because that would kill sales of their channel partners who still have some silicon left.

What makes me think this is whats happening? Because Nvidia hasn't restocked their own website in 2-3 weeks now, the timing is right for a new release, and more and more rumors are sneaking out about new cards on the horizon.