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German retailer MindFactory has removed many AMD and Nvidia graphics cards from sale because the products have a delivery time of 3 months. According to them, the GPU shortage affects "the whole of Germany" or even the "whole Europe".
The demand for GPUs to mine cryptocurrencies, particularly Ethereum, has led to OEMs creating products specifically tailored to cryptocurrency mining. For example, new cards that are smaller, have fewer display ports, with cooling systems:
While the GPU shortage continues, there are some signs of improvement. There are now several models of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 in stock from various OEMs, but prices remain high and relatively close to the price of the GTX 1080. There are also a few more GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards available, and the price on the least expensive one has dropped significantly, down from $484.80 to $259.99.
At the same time, however, the price on the least expensive GTX 1050 Ti has climbed by about $10, and several models now cost around $200. The price on the least expensive Geforce GTX 1060 3GB has also climbed by roughly $20, as well. This likely indicates that sales of these cards have increased somewhat, pushing prices up accordingly.
Meanwhile, several OEMs, including Asus, Biostar, Sapphire, and Zotac, have announced new mining graphics cards that are tailored for cryptocurrency mining. We have also seen a new motherboard from Asrock that can support up to 13 GPUs for mining. Biostar has a similar board for AM4 CPUs that can support six GPUs. Although we haven't seen them yet, EVGA and MSI also have mining GPUs coming soon, and MSI will also have a motherboard designed for mining. Although these may be attractive to cryptocurrency miners, one source told us that they use the same GPU cores as traditional graphics cards, and thus don't address the underlying supply problem.
The shortages go all the way to the source. OEMs are reportedly having trouble getting GPU cores from Nvidia, and Nvidia can't get enough from TSMC. This is presumably the same situation for AMD and GlobalFoundries.
Previously: BitCoin, Ethereum and Gold
Cryptocoin GPU Bubble?
(Score: 5, Informative) by MrGuy on Monday July 10 2017, @03:17PM (6 children)
At least as far as Ethereum goes, these are a terrible investment.
Currently, Ethereum (and many other crypto currencies) use a "Proof of Work" [wikipedia.org] system - you "earn" new currency by doing work to prove the integrity of the blockchain. This kind of "mining" is what heavy GPU is useful for - the more powerful your rig, the more work you can do, and the more currency you can earn.
Ethereum has announced they're switching to a new Proof of Stake [github.com] based system, which (unlike PoW) does NOT reward processing power - it rewards investment. Rather than mine currency with processing power, you mine currency by buying ether and putting that ether down as effectively collateral behind a given block. It's more like earning interest in a classical sense.
So, ethereum is very soon going to get out of the "massive GPU power = wealth" system, which will put a lot of these big heavy GPU mining rigs out of work as far as directly creating ether. There are other cryptocurrencies that still use PoS, and you can still currently exchange them for ether, so it's not like these will sit idle. But the return on them will depend on the demand for those alternate currencies, and I have a feeling that the owners of huge rigs will quickly crash the market in those currencies as soon as they turn their attention to them.
Maybe PoS will flame out and PoW will return to dominance, and the golden age of GPU miners will return. But if I have $100k to potentially spend, I wouldn't put it into a big mining rig these days.
Another helpful article on PoW" rel="url2html-17708">https://www.ethnews.com/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-explained">PoW [soylentnews.org] vs. PoS.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday July 10 2017, @03:19PM
Apologies - I butchered that last link.
https://www.ethnews.com/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-explained [ethnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:58PM (3 children)
Everyone that does the most basic research knows that ethereum is supposed to be moving from PoW to PoS. They are dragging ass at it though. As you mentioned, there are plenty of alt coins to address that particular issue, too. Also, what kind of whore didn't move to ethereum classic when the fork happened anyways. Oh that's right, a bunch of windows using gamers who don't care if a financial or government power can basically go rewrite blockchain history b/d they feel like it, as long as they get their 30 pieces of silver.
PoW isn't dying, overall, any time soon. I don't know why every time there's an article anywhere about how demand is high for mining cards, someone has to spew FUD about how "your're going to lose all your money". Anyone who has jr. high math can figure out if they will turn a profit or not. This is not that complicated or secret info only for insiders.
That being said, the market is not doing that great recently and could continue it's downward trend. That would make all the weak hands sell their miners/cards. This could bring prices down and when the stripped down miner cards come out, prices could go lower.
I'm going to mine regardless and continue to buy new cards and build miners. I came in late(i wasn't interested in bitcoin as it offered no built in privacy. now there are alt coins for that.), so if the prices go to shit and miners sell their cards, the mining difficulty will go down too. I could mine like that(lots of coins but at low coin prices) for a year or two until the prices go back up and then it's almost like i got in early.
This whole cryptocurrency "craze" is not going away. There are too many cryptocurrency/blockchain/ledger/distributedDB based platforms and apps being built for this to go away. This is "web 3.0" (or at least partof it) and the evolution of currency(and possibly many other social structures). Nothing's going to stop it. It could retract significantly as all the light weight miners and speculators freak out, but that's it. It will come back up eventually and PoW will likely still have a place at the table. Anything's possible, but several of these alt coins have looked at PoS and purposely decided to stick with PoW for their particular case.
Whether the people end up with something they can used to increase their freedom from usurers and the thieves in government remains to be seen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:14PM (1 child)
But where is the new Silk Road? I want to order some NBOMe. Maybe a few Quaaludes for old time's sake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @11:41PM
you can buy drugs in nxt's exchange. never done it though. it's not very fleshed out yet and maybe just honeypots.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 10 2017, @10:18PM
Perhaps we'll get lucky and all the hand-me-down ex-mining cards will become cheap gaming cards on ebay for the masses.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 10 2017, @06:27PM
Work for the sake of proof of work is terribly wasteful. Put your rig on FAH and get Curecoin while actually doing something useful.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @04:26PM
On the front page, pin the GPU shortage story and the Larsen C calving story.
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday July 10 2017, @04:26PM (6 children)
Guys who want to mine whatever cryptocurrency should first learn about difficulty mechanisms. Seriously. Usually they pay something like 5000 USD, to see that few months later their monthly payout falls below 1 USD. It has always been (since 2009) more profitable to buy some cryptocurrency instead. Just have a look at the price graphs (of whatever cryptocurrency you want), and the difficulty graphs, and do your math based on hashes per second, and speed of hardware available at that time.
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#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday July 10 2017, @04:45PM (2 children)
I'm wondering how many of the mid-sized miners are just IT guys who don't pay a dime for the GPU power they contribute.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:25PM
Careful there, Bob. A few of those bioinformatics startup fealls saw The Producers one too many times and aren't too shy about driving a Porsche on their way to "cure cancer".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:26PM
Loads of cryptocurrency mining is done via bundled crapware and outright botnets too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheB on Monday July 10 2017, @05:36PM (2 children)
Mining is risky. If your calculations don't have you making profit within 9 months you should probably stay away.
Some people do get lucky and invest in hardware at the right time.
A friend of mine purchased $12k worth of ASICs in January and has made $24k worth of coin in 7 months.
After operating costs that is about $7.5k profit so far this year.
He was lucky. BTC has doubled in price, his average daily BTC reward has only dropped by ~7%
The same hardware now cost twice as much and has a shorter potential lifetime of profitability.
It's a risky game to play but some people do make money... until they reinvest all their earnings back into equipment and the market shifts.
Things to watch out for:
-Difficulty goes up over time with more rigs mining.
-New hardware makes old hardware less profitable. Electricity costs end up being more that you can expect to mine.
-Coin prices fluctuate.
-BTC rewards halve every 4 years.
-Potential regulations.
-Ease of cashing out.
...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
Think about it.
If you make GPUs that give a massive advantage in mining, then do you
10 sell these GPUs
20 use the GPUs for a few months until they're non-competitive then goto 10
Once the competition field is equal there's less money in mining, so that is the point to sell the useless shit.
(Score: 2) by TheB on Tuesday July 11 2017, @11:47AM
ASIC miner manufacturers sell the hardware for less than they would make mining themselves to mitigate risk.
Guaranteed profit now as opposed to potentially 5%-20% more in 2 years.
It allows them to make more chips now than they could if they were mining, resulting in more profits for themselves.
Most of the time people would be better off investing in the stock market than taking on the manufacturer's risk.
It isn't a bad idea for gamers with $500 GPUs sitting around to mine while not playing games.
If enough gamers do so, GPU mining could become unprofitable again. This keeps the transaction verification decentralized.
Won't work with bitcoins or other SHA256 crypto currencies though. ASIC dominate there and without another large use for them professional miners can continue to exist.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Monday July 10 2017, @05:10PM
Time to sell those old GPUs while you can. Graphics tech ages very badly in terms of resell. This is the only time where selling your used GPU will net you double what you bought it for. If the mining craze will hold on for another month, i'll buy an RX Vega and sell off this RX 480 for the same price.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @05:28PM (8 children)
It's all shitcoin. Bitcoin was the exception, not the rule.
You aren't going to get rich from mining this stuff.
On the bright side, it will soon be a buyer's market for used video cards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @06:03PM
another lazy ass (or malicious bankster shill) who hasn't bothered looking into the assets that are being built on the platforms while shilling for bitcoin, the only coin not implementing new features.
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Monday July 10 2017, @06:11PM
You didn't check what's about the last ethereum surge? It's a complete Turing machine inside blockchain. That includes ability to implement namecoin or a citizen ID like in Swiss city of Zug: http://www.stadtzug.ch/de/ueberzug/ueberzugrubrik/aktuelles/aktuellesinformationen/?action=showinfo&info_id=383355 [stadtzug.ch]
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#\ @ ? [adom.de] Colonize Mars [kozicki.pl]
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday July 10 2017, @07:08PM (5 children)
On the bright side, it will soon be a buyer's market for used video cards.
No, it won't. The summary clearly says that these new GPU cards are tailored for cryptocurrency mining rather than video usage, so they're not going to be of much use to people wanting to use them for actual video. It mentions having fewer video ports, for instance. If a GPU card only has one video port, for example, that's rather useless for most people who want high-end video cards for video, since everyone has multiple monitors these days. (People who don't care about multiple monitors don't buy high-end GPU cards, they just use the built-in Intel graphics.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @07:43PM
Back in the day, we would have two or more cards for one monitor. Anyone remember CrossFire or SLI?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @08:54PM
I hope and pray the miners keep pushing GPU compute speeds. Couldn't care less for VGA ports or whatever.
Give us compute compute compute for scientific applications. This is how science progresses, by begging richer fools to believe in their own dreams. Yes you can be a millionaire, buy more cards, demand progress, etc. Incidental shit like magical brain scans, nuclear power and intercontinental flight are boring side-shows. Just line pockets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @09:15PM
I daisy chain three Dell monitors from one displayport.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday July 10 2017, @09:19PM
I wonder if these coin-cards are compatible with the multi GPU systems I'm familiar with as a gamer (Crossfire or SLI). If that is the case then having one conventional card for your displays and multiple slave cards to improve performance could save some money.
Although, I do have a Crossfire compatible mobo now and I've not been thrilled when I run it. It does give a serious performance boost, but at the expense of noise, heat and power. If used cards really drop in price then I could see myself running Crossfire again.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday July 10 2017, @10:22PM
At work I have three monitors. At home it's a single ultrawide. One output's fine for that.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @09:21PM (3 children)
With so much fluctuation going on in these markets (>10% change in a day), trading can be way more profitable than mining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @11:50PM
i was planning on doing that but it's too much stress for me. i'm just going to mine and hold the 10-15 coins i have right now, longish term. more predictable and steady, comparatively speaking. but, if you're already used to trading GUIs and you don't mind staying on top of it or leaving your coin in online exchanges, then more power to you. you're braver than i am.
please don't buy/trade in coins that help fund the enemies of humanity (banks, etc).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @08:48AM (1 child)
I'd like to tell you about this fabulous place called Vegas...
Seriously what is the next word? Get rich fast _____? ... it's scam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 11 2017, @10:54AM
The often heard argument of people who don't understand markets (and their emotions).
Beside the fluctuations in the market you also have a huge crowd of trader wanabees who follow each other without understanding what they are actually "investing" (speculation is the right word here) in. They also end in loosing money often, as they are very predictable. I started with bitcoin when it was worth a few cents, in the years the valuation of my assets have increased over 4 million Euro (starting with a few hundred euro). I use that to pay myself a salary of 2500 EUR/month, and I'm happy with that. Some of my friends went into the mining... they always see me as "the rich guy". Costs for equipment, place to put them, power price and effort are a heavy pressure on profits for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10 2017, @09:35PM
1849.