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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