Do you blame ethereum miners or graphic card manufacturers for the price hikes?

[Savas]

As my title asks, whether you blame the miners or the manufacturers for the current high prices of GPU's?

I've seen people slag off miners, but I personally think that the manufacturers are kind of getting off scott free here. I mean by now they should have been able to see the increase in demand and produced more cards? They've not responded have they really? So it seems they are quite clearly playing two sides here and getting the best out of the situation. Sure, good for them, but as customers we should be pissed off at them a little too, not just miners.

P.S. I am not a miner, just wonder why all the slagging off is going towards the miners in these kinds of discussions and wonder if I'm missing something.

[Millennium]

I don't like the fact that it takes as much power to do a blockchain transaction on bit--coin as it does to power a house for a WEEK!

I kind of don't blame anyone for this situation. Perhaps large mining farms. Certainly not hobbyists. Perhaps manufacturers have supply side problems. Certainly inflation of mid/high end gfx adaptor pricing has been too much.

There's my two cents.

[Corky34]

I wouldn't go as far as saying anyone is to blame because IMO it is what it is, card manufactures won't increase supply because they fear a collapse in the value of cryptocurrency will lead to a collapse in demand for their cards leaving warehouses full of cards they can't shift, and retailers have be able to sustain high prices because that's what the market is willing to pay, I'd probably have a different attitude if i was in the market for a graphics card but I'm not sure I'd "blame" anyone.

[peterb]

It’s a modern take on the gold rush. The people who made a good living were those supplying support equipment to the miners, food, drink etc. One or two miners got very rich, most didn’t, but the supporting industries did OK.

But while people are prepared to pay a premium for these graphics cards, the price will be at what the market can bear.

People stop buying the cards, prices will fall. (Up to a point where it costs more to produce and distribute the device than the purchase price)

[spacein_vader]

Also it's probably not the manufacturers who are making the extra premium on the cards but the retailer.

I guess the root cause is whoever invented bitcoin.

[scaryjim]

... I kind of don't blame anyone for this situation. ...

This is my take on it, tbh. It's simply market forces. If you want a scapegoat you could try blaming capitalism, but that doesn't feel very productive or cathartic to me.

The one thing I am a little surprised at is that there isn't a bigger market for dedicated mining silicon - there's a lot of extra stuff of a GPU that I'm sure mining doesn't need; the fact that there aren't dedicated mining chips suggests to me that the market maybe isn't as big as people like to suggest, otherwise surely someone would've produced something cheaper that *only* does mining.

Besides, supply/demand of GPUs themselves is only one factor in pricing: there's a also global short supply on memory that's forcing prices up, and compared to 18 months ago the pound is seriously devalued. So looking to blame a single group of people for pricing is somewhat short-sighted...

[DanceswithUnix]

It isn't just price, for ages there was almost no choice of RX580 card if you wanted one so it was availability.

As for just making more, it takes 3 months from order to get more silicon made, and then perhaps another few weeks to turn that chip into a graphics card in a box and get it into the shops for us to buy. I have never bought a wafer start, but I would guess fabs are booked some time in advance so even saying you want more silicon doesn't mean the fabs have spare capacity to make it straight away. That is a very distant prediction in the world of mining.

Some of the crypto currencies are designed to be hard to create an ASIC to generate, partly by requiring large amounts of vram. I do wonder if AMD could put a little something into the RX 560 level cards to make them really good at crypto. If you could get 580 crypto performance out of a 560 at low power consumption then that would ease pressure on the limited supplies of Vega 56 which are like hens teeth atm. Making a warehouse full of RX560 class chips would be much less of a risk, lower capital investment and lower end cards have a better shelf life after a few re-brands

There are mining only GPU cards, but I don't get the value. A tiny decrease in purchase cost gets you a card you can't sell on as a graphics card when you have finished with it so the lack of residual value makes mining far riskier.

[Corky34]

....The one thing I am a little surprised at is that there isn't a bigger market for dedicated mining silicon...

There is a market for dedicated mining silicon although how the size of it compares to GPUs used for mining is beyond me.

[kompukare]

The one thing I am a little surprised at is that there isn't a bigger market for dedicated mining silicon - there's a lot of extra stuff of a GPU that I'm sure mining doesn't need; the fact that there aren't dedicated mining chips suggests to me that the market maybe isn't as big as people like to suggest, otherwise surely someone would've produced something cheaper that *only* does mining.

Well, there is for Bitcoin itself as GPUs haven't been able to keep pace for years (in the beginning CPUs were used for mining but GPUs replaced those ages ago).

For altcoins, AFAIK only litecoin has ASICs, but part of the design of the newer coins like Ethereum is that their algorithms is they were designed to be ASIC-resistent by being very memory intensive etc.

I'm sure modern GPUs have features which are not required for mining Ethereum, but taking them out for a mining-only card is risky.

Also, though there was some talk about that if a ASIC was made for Ethereum, the devs would change the algorithms to make it useless, so developing one would a risky venture.

[DanceswithUnix]

Also, though there was some talk about that if a ASIC was made for Ethereum, the devs would change the algorithms to make it useless, so developing one would a risky venture.

Hence my though that what we need are mid to lower range graphics cards aimed at the market. That potentially puts the ability to mine into more hands, as now having to buy a >£500 Vega to compete is not a currency for the people.

[kalniel]

Capitalism

[Xlucine]

This is my take on it, tbh. It's simply market forces. If you want a scapegoat you could try blaming capitalism, but that doesn't feel very productive or cathartic to me.

The one thing I am a little surprised at is that there isn't a bigger market for dedicated mining silicon - there's a lot of extra stuff of a GPU that I'm sure mining doesn't need; the fact that there aren't dedicated mining chips suggests to me that the market maybe isn't as big as people like to suggest, otherwise surely someone would've produced something cheaper that *only* does mining.

Besides, supply/demand of GPUs themselves is only one factor in pricing: there's a also global short supply on memory that's forcing prices up, and compared to 18 months ago the pound is seriously devalued. So looking to blame a single group of people for pricing is somewhat short-sighted...

It's bound to be at least a year between deciding to rearrange a GPU for better mining efficiency and getting silicon in stores, that's a very long time for such a volatile market as mining. It's an easy way to end up with egg on your face when the prices drop and no-one wants to buy mining cards anymore

[DDY]

How well do NVidia cards compare in terms of crypto-mining?

I don't want to give AMD any ideas, but if AMD compare favourably and I were in charge there, I'd stop selling GPUs, dedicate all R&D in to increasing mining efficiency and use every single bit of silicon coming out the factory to crypto-mine ourselves, make huge short to medium term profits and once the whole crypto-mining thing has fallen flat on its face, sell the GPU business to Intel and retire at age 30.

[jimbouk]

As my title asks, whether you blame the miners or the manufacturers for the current high prices of GPU's?

I blame Brexit for the prices, miners for the availability...

Can you imagine an RX 580 when it was closer to $2 to £1? And then you wake up

[Corky34]

Sort of related, Lisa Su appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch and apparently cryptocurrencies only take up around mid single digit sales figures, if true, and there's no reason to doubt that it isn't, blaming the high prices on cryptocurrencies would seem to be incorrect, thoughts?

[scaryjim]

Sort of related, Lisa Su appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch and apparently cryptocurrencies only take up around mid single digit sales figures, if true, and there's no reason to doubt that it isn't, blaming the high prices on cryptocurrencies would seem to be incorrect, thoughts?

That wouldn't surprise me at all, but of course if supply is already relatively short having that additional demand from crypto-miners is still going to impact prices. That said, it would suggest that there probably isn't a big enough market in crypto-marketing to make dedicated silicon - or maybe even more mining-focussed silicon - worthwhile.

I think it's fair to say that the currency exchange is probably a major issue. It's not that long ago that the pound was almost as low as $1.20, and once you stick our 20% VAT onto a card you're getting direct $:£ conversions. What's a Vega 56 currently, from £400 upwards? 2 years ago* that could've been as low as £350 instead....

* exchange rates 2 years ago were hovering around $1.51; currently around $1.34