Zotac enrages gamers with tweet celebrating crypto mining

midian182

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Facepalm: Most PC gamers are far from happy about the latest graphics cards being bought in bulk for crypto mining farms. One would imagine that AIB manufacturers know this, yet Zotac USA seems to have missed the memo. The company tweeted a now-deleted post showing a mining rig packed with its White Edition GeForce RTX 3000-series cards. To make matters worse, it included several gaming hashtags.

Purchasing graphics cards in bulk for mining rigs has long been a contentious issue, especially when they’re almost impossible to find outside of scalped units on eBay. Back in 2018, the last time cards were scarce and prices inflated, Nvidia recommended retailers “make the appropriate arrangements to meet gamers’ needs,” I.e., give less priority to miners.

With the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum going through the roof, and chip manufacturers struggling to meet demand—despite increasing their output—buying an RTX 3000 or one of AMD’s newest GPUs has become a near-impossible task. Even when they are in stock, the prices are much higher than the MSRP; a problem exacerbated by the tax on Chinese imports.

But it appears Zotac underestimated just how strongly most gamers feel about miners grabbing what cards are left. The company’s tweet, which highlights “An army of #ZOTACGAMING GPU’s [sic] hungry for coin,” isn’t going to endear it to those who have been desperate for an RTX 3000 since they launched. It also includes hashtags for PcGaming, Gaming, Gamers, and even PCMR and PcMasterRace—just in case the image alone wasn’t inflammatory enough.

Not surprisingly, the tweet incited plenty of anger from gamers, with some calling for a boycott against Zotac. The post wasn’t up long before being deleted.

While it won’t solve all the underlying problems, we’ve heard that some firms, including MSI, are working on Ampere cards designed solely for mining use. Nvidia last month talked about restarting its CMP line, which are mining-specific cards lacking display outputs. Hopefully, this will go some way toward improving the current situation.

Earlier this week, we heard about an internet café in Vietnam that had switched its business model to a crypto mining farm because "profits are higher.”

Permalink to story.

 
I’m a “gamer” I hate that graphics card prices are inflated and availability is low.

But there is nothing immoral about mining. If people want to buy graphics cards to mine with then power to them. In fact I even think that making money is more important than playing games.

I think if you’re online sending hateful messages to individuals and companies because you want a graphics card to play games on thats quite pathetic. I wish gamers would be less entitled. It’s a **** situation that won’t be helped with us tearing chunks out of each other.
 
I’m a “gamer” I hate that graphics card prices are inflated and availability is low.

But there is nothing immoral about mining. If people want to buy graphics cards to mine with then power to them. In fact I even think that making money is more important than playing games.

I think if you’re online sending hateful messages to individuals and companies because you want a graphics card to play games on thats quite pathetic. I wish gamers would be less entitled. It’s a **** situation that won’t be helped with us tearing chunks out of each other.

We've been over this: If it was just the normal number of cards doing the normal workload it would be a fraction of the power used. Mining primarily wastes a ton of power, as much as entire countries for each of the big coins. Yes we can discuss how we are way behind in renewables and how this is *really* the fault of failed States that continue to basically take bribes from oil companies and do nothing to stop climate change.

But fact of the matter is things are not going to change immediately so artificially increasing the demand for electricity we KNOW comes from highly contentious sources of energy generation is akin to getting a huge truck, removing all environmental filters and just burning gas on your driveway 24/7 for fun and saying "Hey, is not my fault these trucks are causing a ton of emissions! Suck it nerds I've got a V8 truck running all day and night!"

Tearing individual users or miners won't help no, but boycotting companies like Zotac or encouraging some real consequences like class actions or maybe getting their workers to unionize or something else to cut into their profits I actually would fully encourage.
 
But there is nothing immoral about mining.
As with scalping, there certainly is when part of the process of a small number of people disproportionately acquiring large numbers of cards is to lie / give fraudulent addresses to bypass "max 1-2 cards per address" limitation (or purchase wholesale outside the normal retail supply chain like a retailer without then selling as normal retailers do).
 
I think it’s important to remember that when the 3000 series was released bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies had mostly been on the sidelines and no one was really thinking about mining. The real problem that led to the GPU shortage was the scalping where people bought the cards intending on making the end buyer pay more money to get one.

That would probably indicate that many of the cards being purchased now that the cryptocurrency craze is back in session were purchased from scalpers which means that the miners wasted a lot of money.

I am just glad that I was able to get the video cards that I wanted without having to deal with this bitcoin nonsense.

Hopefully crypto mining will be made illegal by governments.

India just made cryptocurrency illegal to hold and gave everyone who holds it six months to sell it.

They could justify making crypto mining illegal simply by pointing at the environmental impact or by forcing people to pay outrageous amounts of taxes in order to build a miner.
 
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Yeah, I'd say some Zotac social media managers are out of work as of a few hours ago, talk about a PR own goal.

As to this statement: "Nvidia last month talked about restarting its CMP line, which are mining-specific cards lacking display outputs. Hopefully, this will go some way toward improving the current situation."

How exactly will making dedicated mining cards help GPU shortages when it is the GPU dies that are in short supply? It is not a lack of video display ports that is causing GPU shortages.
 
We've been over this: If it was just the normal number of cards doing the normal workload it would be a fraction of the power used. Mining primarily wastes a ton of power, as much as entire countries for each of the big coins. Yes we can discuss how we are way behind in renewables and how this is *really* the fault of failed States that continue to basically take bribes from oil companies and do nothing to stop climate change.

But fact of the matter is things are not going to change immediately so artificially increasing the demand for electricity we KNOW comes from highly contentious sources of energy generation is akin to getting a huge truck, removing all environmental filters and just burning gas on your driveway 24/7 for fun and saying "Hey, is not my fault these trucks are causing a ton of emissions! Suck it nerds I've got a V8 truck running all day and night!"

Tearing individual users or miners won't help no, but boycotting companies like Zotac or encouraging some real consequences like class actions or maybe getting their workers to unionize or something else to cut into their profits I actually would fully encourage.
I agree that using energy hurts the environment and mining uses a lot of energy which will contribute to global warming. But that alone is not a reason to condemn miners. If it was then we should condemn anyone that uses a lot of energy, say for someone flying around the world on holiday. At least miners are making money out of their carbon.

It simply isn’t fair to claim that gamers have more right to obtain a GPU than a miner does. They don’t.

I would imagine manufacturers would prefer gamers buy their products. But without some kind of legal intervention you’re going to have trouble stopping miners buying cards. And I don’t think there is any reasonable grounds for legally preventing miners from buying cards.
 
Maybe we should be thanking Zotac instead of shunning them? At least they had the balls to come forth about crypto mining on their end....makes you wonder how many other AIB companies are doing this without actually saying anything....running some mining builds just because they can.

While I do agree it was a tactless thing to post since new GPUs are almost impossible to come across, I urge people to not be just upset with Zotac. All AIB companies, Nvidia (possibly even AMD, but I don't recall reading any specific news stories about them selling directly to miners/scalpers) and retail companies have been selling off massive amounts of GPUs to higher bidders to turn a fast, high profit. These mining outfits and scalpers don't just come across all their GPUs from botting sites and if you think they do then you should take a better look around and realize botting sites to snatch up GPUs is only a small part of the whole problem.

There is no way miners or scalpers could have gotten their hands on dozens and dozens of GPUs without the aid of AIB/manufacturers/retailers selling to them on the backend before the cards even officially went on sale.

As a consumer, we have a handful of options at our fingertips for how we've all been treated by the whole gambit:
1) boycott (which won't happen because people aren't willing to do so and also it won't matter since these companies will have miners to sell to until crypto mining on GPUs is no longer viable) AIBs/manufacturers for this whole fiasco they helped create
2) bend over backwards and take it up the *** with the artificially inflated prices from retailers when they do get some kind of stock in
3) keep waiting and see if inventory ever balances out and prices recede (this is not very likely, at least not anytime soon) or get extremely lucky to buy a card near MSRP
4) turn to the scalpers to acquire hardware
5) walk away from the PC building/gaming hobby and find other things to spend your money on

Personally, I'm waiting on option 3.
 
As with scalping, there certainly is when part of the process of a small number of people disproportionately acquiring large numbers of cards is to lie / give fraudulent addresses to bypass "max 1-2 cards per address" limitation (or purchase wholesale outside the normal retail supply chain like a retailer without then selling as normal retailers do).
Exactly, it's not mining that is the problem. It's the manufacturers and distributers that are failing with the scalping.
 
We've been over this: If it was just the normal number of cards doing the normal workload it would be a fraction of the power used. Mining primarily wastes a ton of power, as much as entire countries for each of the big coins. Yes we can discuss how we are way behind in renewables and how this is *really* the fault of failed States that continue to basically take bribes from oil companies and do nothing to stop climate change.
And we've been over this: this is special pleading. Gaming can also be considered a waste of energy, and arguably an even bigger one because it contributes basically nothing but idle amusement and self-gratification. Once you start making completely arbitrary moral judgements about what's considered a good use of energy, it doesn't stop until everyone is living in mud huts and foraging for berries. If that's the world you want to live in, get a move on, and leave the rest of us alone.

But fact of the matter is things are not going to change immediately so artificially increasing the demand for electricity we KNOW comes from highly contentious sources of energy generation is akin to getting a huge truck, removing all environmental filters and just burning gas on your driveway 24/7 for fun and saying "Hey, is not my fault these trucks are causing a ton of emissions! Suck it nerds I've got a V8 truck running all day and night!"
It's been known for a while now that electric companies actually appreciate the fact that miners use electricity steadily and constantly, instead of causing sharp jumps in demand during inclimate weather the way normal usage does. Considering a lot of miners concentrate their usage during the overnight hours, when power companies produce the most "wasted" electricity, your point is again completely invalid.
 
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I think it’s important to remember that when the 3000 series was released bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency‘s have mostly been on the sidelines and no one was really thinking about mining. The real problem that led to the GPU shortage was the scalping where people bought the cards intending on making the end of buyer pay more money to get one.

That would probably indicate that many of the cards being purchased now that the cryptocurrency craze is back in session were purchased from scalpers which means that the miners wasted a lot of money.

I am just glad that I was able to get the video cards that I wanted without having to deal with this bitcoin nonsense.

Hopefully crypto mining will be made illegal by governments.

India just made cryptocurrency illegal to hold and gave everyone who holds it six months to sell it.

They could justify making crypto mining illegal simply by pointing at the environmental impact or by forcing people to pay outrageous amounts of taxes in order to build a miner.
Sounds a lot like the time the US government made owning Gold illegal and forced everyone to sell it... Remember what came after.
 
The real stupidity is that they put gaming hashtags on the tweet. End of story.
That does make me think, someone could make a very slick operation by designing a rig that runs cloud gaming services on a card when requested by a customer, and then switches over to mining when the card is otherwise idle. Sort of an extension of how that Vietnamese gaming cafe was using its cards to mine to get through lockdown.
 
I’m a “gamer” I hate that graphics card prices are inflated and availability is low.

But there is nothing immoral about mining. If people want to buy graphics cards to mine with then power to them. In fact I even think that making money is more important than playing games.

I think if you’re online sending hateful messages to individuals and companies because you want a graphics card to play games on thats quite pathetic. I wish gamers would be less entitled. It’s a **** situation that won’t be helped with us tearing chunks out of each other.
I have no problem with miners striking deals with OEMs to buy cards in-bulk. I do have a problem with miners bulk-buying cards from retailers.

Honestly, nVidia and AMD should creating mining-specific reference designs, get their board partners to produce those, and then everyone (nVidia/AMD, board partners, Retailers) should cap retail cards at 2 per-quarter, and have unlimited mining purchase. Then let the market sort it self out from there. I am sure that board partners will still chose to produce more mining cards, but at least the retail cards they make would be reasonably protected from mass purchasing.
 
I have no problem with miners striking deals with OEMs to buy cards in-bulk. I do have a problem with miners bulk-buying cards from retailers.

Honestly, nVidia and AMD should creating mining-specific reference designs, get their board partners to produce those, and then everyone (nVidia/AMD, board partners, Retailers) should cap retail cards at 2 per-quarter, and have unlimited mining purchase. Then let the market sort it self out from there. I am sure that board partners will still chose to produce more mining cards, but at least the retail cards they make would be reasonably protected from mass purchasing.
You should write to these retailers and complain if you feel that way. It’s up to them how many they sell to each user. They will announce a 1 per customer policy whilst at the same time negotiating a backhand deal with miners.

Of course I don’t think they give a dam. They just want to be seen to be giving a dam to please people like you.

The thing is, after all this if retailers started stocking cards at MSRP are you going to boycott them? I don’t think so. Demand is higher than supply and that means if you’re after a card you are at a disadvantage. It’s economics 101..
 
I have a Zotac 3080... if there were any alternative available I would have sold it immediately after reading this.
I know, every single company is selling a good part of their production to mining farms, but at least they are not dumb enough to show us.
 
That does make me think, someone could make a very slick operation by designing a rig that runs cloud gaming services on a card when requested by a customer, and then switches over to mining when the card is otherwise idle. Sort of an extension of how that Vietnamese gaming cafe was using its cards to mine to get through lockdown.
I wonder if Amazon does that.
 
To everyone calling for more regulation and more control... Look... I know you hate mining, but... Be careful with what you are requesting. Whenever we try socialism, I.e. trying to artificially control the market, it has bad consequences. For some reason, people are still trying and even promoting those types of actions.

Don't be surprised if within the next couple of years (if not months), the whole world is like Venezuela. The graphics cards prices being inflated is just the beginning. When it happens to your food, you will know that something else is up.

Yes. This is a warning. What you do with it is up to you.
 
Mining specific cards will not solve the issue for gamers. Miners will say: thanks for this product, but I will buy all of your non mining cards as well. What gamers need are gaming cards, that do not run mining algo.
 
"While it won’t solve all the underlying problems, we’ve heard that some firms, including MSI, are working on Ampere cards designed solely for mining use. Nvidia last month talked about restarting its CMP line, which are mining-specific cards lacking display outputs. Hopefully, this will go some way toward improving the current situation."

Exactly HOW is this point to "improve the current situation"? The shortage is in GPU chips, NOT in the display output parts of the cards.
 
I think it’s important to remember that when the 3000 series was released bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency‘s have mostly been on the sidelines and no one was really thinking about mining. The real problem that led to the GPU shortage was the scalping where people bought the cards intending on making the end of buyer pay more money to get one.

That would probably indicate that many of the cards being purchased now that the cryptocurrency craze is back in session were purchased from scalpers which means that the miners wasted a lot of money.

I am just glad that I was able to get the video cards that I wanted without having to deal with this bitcoin nonsense.

Hopefully crypto mining will be made illegal by governments.

India just made cryptocurrency illegal to hold and gave everyone who holds it six months to sell it.

They could justify making crypto mining illegal simply by pointing at the environmental impact or by forcing people to pay outrageous amounts of taxes in order to build a miner.
Here we go again :)
Crypto will stay with us whether you like or not.
 
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